When it Rains it Pours

I have no complaints about doing research in Palmyra. The food is made fresh everyday, other people do your laundry and the location is perfect. However, when it rains in Palmyra and it does almost every night and day it really pours. The pouring rain is not just a passing rain cloud either. The last two nights it has poured as hard as one can imagine for several hours and continued into the day. The cabin we live in is so loud from the pouring rain it is hard to describe but imagine a truck rumbling down the road for hours and hours (sorry for the lame analogy).

Today we ventured over to a site we had not covered yet, inbetween the two fighter jet runways. Historically, there has been at least 5 runways on this island, two fighter runways, one emergency runway and a side runway from the main one that is still used. The main one is a little over a mile and we use it almost everyday to run. Most of the trip was in less then a meter of water and often we had to pull our kayaks through. The most common animals we see on the sand flats are bone fish and grunts. These fish are usually being chased by baby black tip reef sharks. On one occasion the grunts where being chased and the whole big school of them panicked and started to swim right towards me. When they saw me they got even more scared and jumped out of the water. When the grunts jumped out of the water one hit me directly in the chest and one landed in my kayak. Now, fishing is prohibited in Palmyra so it is pretty funny that without any effort to catch a fish I caught one, which is better then I do when I try to catch fish.