I love the smell of dead iguana in the morning

Upon landing on Bonaire it is immediately clear that hell is, in fact a place on earth. As the plane taxis back along the runway to the “terminal” a flat arid expanse lays before you and in the distance you can see salt mountains towering in comparison to the scrubby plants. The plane makes and abrupt right turn and comes to a halt on a parking stand you’re fairly certain the captain will have to pay and display like the other cars you can see just off the wing.  Stepping from the plane a wave of dry heat hits you as you make your way across the tarmac to the bright pink “Flamingo international” terminal.  Immigration, a sullen “woo you’re a tourist,” and the bags have beaten me from the plane.  On the other side of the exit doors I stand blinking I am either supposed to be met by Echo’s head “Chris” or the camp manager “Michelle.” I have seen a photo of Chris, which incidentally he no longer resembles, but have no idea what Michelle is supposed to look like fortunately, she spots me.

We clamber into what is left of a pickup truck (well what is left of a car, there may well have been a roof over the back at one point but it has long since vanished leaving what resembles a ragged pickup) and head off down the road. Michelle points out the sites and I quiz her on the state of the islands nature, although I am far too tired to take any of it in.

“What is there in terms of terrestrial animals?” I roar over the struggling engine

“Apart from the obvious” she says swerving between a goat and a donkey, “A snake, and iguanas and a few smaller lizards are all that’s native”

A second later we come to a halt outside a house and peer through its gate. “There’s one now” she says gesturing. Towards the gate lumbers a large dog triumphantly carrying a dead iguana.

            

            Bonaire is not the tropics I am accustomed to, there is no canopy to shelter under. The sun is fierce, with night time temperature falling to a frigid 27 Celsius. The only thing that prevents you from collapse is a more or less constant breeze out of (I believe) the northeast.  If that stops you have nowhere to go, if you try and seek shade it will cut you, quite literally. One of the problems on Bonaire is the invasive herbivores; pigs, donkeys and goats, that will eat anything and everything they can. Together they have uprooted or grazed out all native plants that aren’t defended by savage thorns. All that is left by the sides of the roads are stunted shrubby trees with a thirst for blood. That’s not all that wants to cut you. The rocks are jagged volcanic looking outcrops that slice at hand, legs and boots alike.

The forests are for the most part silent, stiflingly hot and alien habitats. The plants are xerophytes, tolerant of extreme lack of water and have taken forms that seem conjured from the imagination of Dr. Seuss {picture above}. The forest floor of sand is littered with drag marks of the reptiles that roam them. The reptiles here are not the slow and sluggish beasts you see in northern zoo, but possess a frightening speed that makes you grateful the only snake (the Bonaire silver snake (Leptotyphlops albifrons)) is at most 15 centimetres long, 1cm wide and completely harmless {picture below}. That speed does not necessarily apply to the mental abilities of the reptiles. The iguana, for instance is an arboreal species with one elemental escape strategy: let go.  When a threat is perceived the iguana will simply drop from its tree and make good its escape. If, of course it is not too concussed from the impact of falling from a tree on a small cliff to do so.

The other thing you notice about from time to time walking through the forest is the occasional sudden stench. It is slightly sweet, but sickly. It is of course rotting flesh. It is, inevitably emanating from a deceased iguana. It is not a victim, as our first case, but has simply died as it lived, sprawled upon a sunny branch in a tree.  There, after its demise it has become snagged on the thorns of whichever spiteful tree it was in at the time and fermented in the sun.

But up ahead there is a clap of wings, a screech, a “troo-pee-oh” and blazes of colour against the arid backdrop.  The diminutive dinosaurs of the class Aves race overhead. The birds have escaped the hell that is on the earth here by taking to the skies. Only they thrive here, everything else must do its brutal best to just remain in existence. This is their island, a Jurassic park in miniature and it is this I have just begun to explore.