The world according to me....

One of the longest journeys I took was from Suriname to Toronto, when I carried freshly laid eggs from the nesting beach to the laboratory for controlled incubation. The trip began at Matapica Beach, as night fell and I began to patrol for nesting green turtles. By 01:00h, we had found two green turtles that had laid their eggs below the high tide line, which was one of the requirements for the permit. Once we had packed the eggs in the travel boxes, so began the 8km hike to the boat. There, we struck out along the Matapica canal and then the Commewijne River, towards Paramaribo. We arrived just north of Paramaribo at 07:00h, and Henk Reichart picked me up to take me to the Zorg en Hoop airport, where I had chartered a plane (photo) to Georgetown, Guyana. The takeoff was delayed as we awaited the customs officer who had to inspect the eggs. Finally, we took off and negotiated the storm clouds until we arrived in Georgetown in the afternoon. I had to wait in the airport there until the BWI flight to Toronto was scheduled to leave. I hadn’t realized that we needed to fly by way of Trinidad, where we had to change planes. This entailed further waiting in the transit lounge in Port of Spain. Eventually, the final leg of the journey began by evening of the second day. We arrived the following morning in Toronto, where I discovered that certain regulations concerning customs had changed during my brief trip, so I had to fill out more paperwork, make several phone calls, and wait. Eventually, the required paperwork was accepted and I was allowed to leave the airport with my precious cargo. I headed straight for the laboratory, where I spent the next 6 hours carefully placing eggs into individual containers that went into the incubators. Only after this, more than 48 hours after the start of my journey, did I stumble home and bring to a close one of the most tiring trips that I ever undertook.