11 May 2007

I set out not quite as early this morning as I have other mornings with the intent of finding something worth taking a picture of. I and a friend caught a bus from the "downtown" area and road it as far out as it would go, which tunes out to not be all that far. It used to run to Camp Justice which was our goal, but now it only runs to the far end of the runway, about a mile short of where we wanted to be. Camp Justice is now empty except for a few buildings that are used for storage and other minimal services. At the far end of Camp Justice is an old pier that juts out into the lagoon and it was from here we were hoping to get some good pictures. When we arrived at the pier it was fenced off with a sign saying that it was condemned and to stay off. Traditionally such signs have meant little to me, and nothing had changed that this day. So I climbed around the fence and was a bit more cautions, as much of the wood of the pier was rotten. However the center of the pier was a slab of concrete about 4 foot wide and the end was a large circular concrete pad. Staying on the concrete I walked around looking for a good picture from this vantage point, but was quite disappointed. From the pier there really wasn't anything much worth taking a picture of. More or less bummed out from walking here and not finding much we started to wander around the area just to see if anything would catch our fancy. Nothing really did and so after about an hour we started walking back. Hoping to catch a ride with someone back to a bus stop we looked around some of the buildings to see if anyone was around we could ask. We stopped at one warehouse that was used for storing generator lights, and my friend asked if we could take pictures inside. They said sure no problem, I wasn't particularly interested in warehouse pictures but figured what the heck I might as well see if I can get something interesting. While we were wandering around a gentleman approached us and asked us why we were taking photos. I responded that it was our hobby and we had the day off and not much better to do. He thought for a second and asked us if we had seen the giant trees out behind the camp. I didn't know what he was talking about so said no don't believe I have. He offered to show us the way and told us to get on a gator. We piled ourselves and our camera gear on one gator while our guide got on another. He lead us through the jungle for about 15 minutes where we arrived at some very large trees, and some old crumbling buildings. The Trees are larger than any other I have seen on this island and I was quite surprised that they could grow that large here given the poor soil conditions. The construction of the buildings was also interesting as they were built of chunks of coral mortared together, much the same as you would mortar stones together. The gentleman who lead us here asked us if we would be able to find our way back. I told him we would, and so he took off and left us to our picture taking. I was quite impressed with this little part of the island that I hadn't previously known existed. The term giant in reference to the trees I found to be quite appropriate. You will see me in several of the pictures I took that day. The reason for this isn't that I am vain and think everyone wants to see me or that I find myself all that luxurious to look at, but rather to use myself as a reference by which the size of trees can be gauged in the pictures (seen I'm not vain, I'm just a useful tool). I don't know how old these trees are but I would be willing to bet that a number of them are well over 1000 years or so. The buildings, we were informed by our guide had at one point in time been the leper colony of the island. Weather that is true or not I have no way of knowing, but it is a rather long way from where the other settlements were at. Needless to say I was no longer quite so disappointed with the results for the day and quite enjoyed myself. I was a bit rushed as we needed to take the gator back to the warehouse and so didn't get as many pictures as I would have liked; so I'm thinking that I will have to return to area again sometime.


	The mortar and coral walls are just about all that remain of these buildings, Interestingly there were two old metal enameled pots left sitting out in front of this building. If you look you can see one in front of the trees.

	The branch is wider than I am tall.
	The branch is wider than I am tall.
	There are still a few remains of the roof of this building
By far not one of the largest but still a fair bit larger than myself, I can barely imagine what it would have been like to hear and see this thing fall.	Not one of the larger tree, at least not in this neck of the woods, but one of the most interesting ones, the inside was hollowed out and that light you see inside is another hole in the other side of the tree. There is another picture further down and you can see just how knurled it is.
I should have stood closer the the trunk, here I'm still a good 7-8 feet away.	As you can see this tree has fallen over, It is however still taller than many of the trees around it. It is also still quite alive with new branches growing off the old ones. In a number of places the branches that came into contact with the ground re-rooted and have started to grow from there.
Old knurly tree.	I really messed up the pictures I took of this tree with me in them. Some how I managed to switch my camera to shutter priority mode, which had been set to 4 seconds from a previous time. This isn't such a bad thing for the tree as it doesn't move so much, but as I would move around after I though the picture was finished I tended to look sort of like a ghost in the pictures. This tree was probably the largest we came across.