St. Helena has many endemic plants that are barely hanging on in the face of the introduced and invasive plants such as flax that was a main industry on the island for many years. I, of course, was excited to see the weird and wonderful plants of tree ferns, he- and she-cabbage and several more besides.
St. Helena has a long history and on this day we visited many site of historic interest. The Boer War POW camp and Boer Cemetery; Longwood pavilion where Napoleon stayed in exile; and coastal fortifications.
From Longwood we hiked out across the grasslands of Deadwood Plane in search of the endemic wirebird and quickly found it scurrying amongst clumps of grass and flying with its gangly long legs trailing behind. There are only 300 or 400 birds left in the world and they are only found in a few isolated spots on the island.
Then it was on up to Flagstaff peak and views down the precipitous cliffs to the sea 2000ft below. From there we walked along a ridge top down to sugar loaf peak past a desert valley full of prickly pears peppered with purple fruit.
Onward we hiked, contouring around the coastal cliffs from valley to valley on old military tracks that use to connect the headland forts.
And finally we had the long climb back up Jacobs Ladder and the steep roads above back to our lodgings and a well deserved beer.
1 comment:
Lovely to see pictures of St Helena, never realised it was so mountainous, it looks really beautiful.
Endemic plants interesting- the new governor may not have feeding giant tortoises in her job description, but hopefully she plans some conservation.
Boer war cemetery of particular interest as my grandfather must have visited it
Judith
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