Ascension Island 2

Photos uploaded on September 24th but blog posted 29th




Large numbers of green turtles come to Ascension Island to breed, many on the beaches just by Georgetown, but unfortunately we have never visited at the right time of year to see them. These pools were built 1829 and were used for holding live turtles before they were loaded onto ships to provide fresh meat for the sailors (and turtle soup for the Lord Mayor of London and the Lords of the Admiralty.


There are quite a number of "wild" donkeys and sheep wandering around, both in town and out in the countryside. In fact they are very tame and seem to get well fed!

The island is volcanic and many of the hills are still bare cones of volcanic ash. This is Sisters Peak and an old lava flow can be seen in the foreground.

Much of the coast is very rugged, especially where lava flows have entered the sea.

This is English Bay a few miles from Georgetown. This is where we went to do some fantastic snorkelling. Providing the sea isn't too rough it is usually fairly safe to swim here. We saw a large number of different fishes, some very colourful, and some large morray eels of 2 different kinds. Last year we saw a young green turtle in the sea here which had lost one flipper but seemed able to swim well without going round in circles. This year a hawksbill turtle swam up and took a close look at us which was very exciting. Near English Bay is the BBC South Atlantic relay station and also the islands power station and desalination plant.


This is Comfortless Cove, another popular spot for swimming, although it is very small. From around 1830 this small inlet was used to land sailors who had contracted yellow fever. They were quarantined in this area and many did not survive.


Just inland from the cove is Bonetta cemetary where some of the victims were buried, although I can't imagine how they dug graves in this inhospitable landscape.

Comfortless Cove is also where the first submarine telegraph cable was brought ashore in 1899 and Ascension Island soon became the centre of a web of cables stretching between Europe, Africa and America.