Hunting for wasps and chickens – How to lose a bag on a 10 minute flight

The island was visible almost as soon as we took off and crossed the old canefields of Antigua.  We approached Montserrat from the east and I was able to see out the window the great massive of the volcano, and the flows down each side, including where the flow had caused a new bulge in the coastline on the eastern side, and the remains of the old airport runway.  We circled the northern side of the island and I could see the new runway, precariously perched on top of the hill, and the clusters of houses old and new that made up the main settlement.  We landed and my colleagues, Matt from Durrell and Geoff from RSPB, were in the small arrivals hall.  But my luggage was not.  Due to the large number of passengers they had been unable to get all the bags in the plane, but no worries, I was told, they were going to pick up the remaining passengers and it would be on that one.  They will be back in under an hour.

So in the mean time I was offered a beer down by the harbour at Little Bay, where the ferry now came in; it being the only point known by Geoff to have adequate wifi.  We drove down the hill and pulled up by this old beach hut.  We checked email and started to chat about my task.  Geoff had been around for a week or so teaching staff to tag birds, and was going to overlap with my visit for a couple of days.  Matt was staying for a longer period, over a month.  Although he was full time on the project, he was based out of Micoud in St Lucia, and so was in an out of Montserrat from time to time.

We headed back up to the airport to collect my bag and just as we arrived the planed swept in to land.  We waited patiently for a few passengers to come off and saw a pile of bags being manhandled off the plane onto a small hand trolley…. but I could not see my distinctive hard red case.  I was told it would be on the next plane, which was tomorrow morning.  So with the clothes I stood up in, a passport and a laptop, I got back in the car.  We stopped off at a small grocers in Brades so I could at least get a toothbrush and toothpaste, and a bar of soap.

Taking advantage of limited internet