Day 7. Well, I am back for the moment. It looks like everyone on this beach has been drugged with the sun or something. Given that most of the women are wearing almost nothing, and the men are still relatively clean given a robust swim in the sea, you would think that something would have happened in my absence. Goes to confirm my suspicions about folk musicians. Hot stuff out on the balcony, but Cyrano didn't get the girl, did he? On the other hand, as the bumper sticker says: "TRAVEL WRITERS ARE AS GOOD ON THE JOURNEY AS THEY ARE UPON ARRIVAL." Well, when I am finished with my new project, we will have to get to work on this.

Notes on my travels. The Royal Geographic Society will be bronzing these someday, so I better be accurate.

After I left this band of pooftahs on the beach, playing with their own instruments, I headed out into the forest.

Almost immediately, hard slog. Impenetrable woods, the worst kind, weedy grapevines, with tendrils everywhere, swamps, and a kind of greenblack tree that winds around and engulfs everything. Every once in a while I would break out into some high ground and some towering palms, and I could walk free, but mostly just slog. Thank goodness I had my big knife along. Thick dark trees, loops of vine, streaks of misting sun. I got further and further away from the landing point, and I was just getting to the point when I was going to turn back, day was ending, in that honey pre-twilight that is the best time of the tropical day, when I saw ahead of me a strange looking bird that twigged something in my memory, but it dipped out of sight too fast.

It happened that I had hit a patch of high forest at that moment, so I decided to hive myself up into a big baobab-like tree, and make like a jaguar for the night. Just in case there were beasties.

Days 2 -4.
More of the same. At least there was fruit about, and lots of fresh water in creeks. I circled around what I suppose was the north side of the island, skirting the tough bits, and what looked like a big mountain range in the middle. Lots more beaches. There is some wildlife about -- some kind of orangutang -- and a kind of boar that I wouldn't want to tangle with up close. Multicoloured birds everywhere, cockatoos and such, but not the big one I glimpsed on day one. More damn brush. No sign of any human life. Or folksingers.

Day 5.
I decide, what the hell, to move inland along a big creek, and see if I can get some purchase on the mountains. Maybe I can get high enough to see if there are any other islands in the vicinity. Very quickly it becomes hot and buggy. I wade, move along the banks, but keep moving. There are lots of fish in the water, none with big teeth so far. Towards midday, I come around a bend in the river, and I see something very strange ahead. A wall of thorn bushes. About forty feet high. Like a cordon around the mountains. Very strange. I come closer -- can this be natural? But then I see that it is woven together, almost completely tight. Nothing can move through it. Somebody made it, and made it over many, many years -- centuries even. What was it for? I cannot climb the thing, it would take a nuclear weapon to blow a hole in it. And then I realize that the creek runs under it. In for a penny, in for a pound.

I take a deep breath, and dive in against the slow current. About half way through this it suddenly occurs to me that I forgot to ask myself how thick the thorn bush was. It is very dark above me, and once again I find myself too far in to get back again easily, as the actress said to the bishop. I swim for it, and at the last moment, I break up out of the creek on the other side of the wall.

I rest there for a few moments, and then see that the foothills of the mountain rise almost immediately from where I am. I gauge the sun, and guess I have about 4 hours climbing time. No time like the present. I get moving. It is actually quite refreshing -- I quickly get above the sightline of the thornbush, and rapidly get over the canopy of trees. I can begin to see the outlines of the whole island, stretching out like some weird jumping catfish from north to south. It is a beautiful day, sun on the water, sparkling, endless blues in all directions.

I keep climbing.

About an hour into the climb, I come upon a cleft in the mountain, like a cut path into the interior. It again looks manmade, but I can see no signs of any kind of human presence. I take the path, and can see ahead of me, a whole new jungle opening up, as if the mountain, and its companion range, were like a bowl within which greenery flourished. Almost immediately, the cleft opened, and I went right down again to the jungle floor.

It was now not just hot, it was steaming, with water everywhere: circulating in the high forest canopy, and in strange gouged pools patterned over the ground like links in a necklace. Howls, chatters of what sound like troops of monkeys somewhere around. After about another hour of this, and just before night descended early behind this mountain range in its tropical rush, I broke out into a large open space.

I guess by this time I was expecting dinosaurs or something. Something to put my name in lights. But there was only a few herds of grazing animals that looked like a species of antelope, flecked with what was left of the day's light.

I sat down, got out my binoculars, and looked around.

Fascinating, but not, oh I don't know, The Lost World.

At that precise instant, a voice from high above me said in a low, sweet grumble:
"You were expecting maybe pterodactyls?"

I turned my head and came face to face with a knee. Big knee. Enormous knee. And then I looked up at a figure that blotted out the sky above me. A Tyrannosaurus Rex!

"Well, Regina, actually." said the ferocious monster. "Serena's the name. Pleased to make your acquaintance."