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Long Boat Ride

Today I went ashore to assess one of the Colombia clinic sites to see if it will be suitable for using the GATR antenna. There are two clinic sites for Colombia. One is in the city of Buenaventura, and the second is at the Colombian Naval Base in Bahia Malaga. I found a suitable site for the GATR at the Naval Base hospital, and will be setting it up there on Thursday.

It was a day of waiting. I was told to muster at 10:00 AM to go ashore, but it was actually 11:45 AM before they called me to go to the boat. About twenty of us climbed into a lifeboat, and were lowered to down to a waiting 10-meter utility boat. From there is was an hour ride (almost 9 miles) to the Naval Base.

After only a little looking around I found a suitable site in the parking area to set up the antenna. In addition, it's close enough to the building that I should be able to put the electronic equipment indoors. That is important, given the location we are working in.

The wettest inhabited location in the world is Buenaventura, Colombia, where an average of 265.47 inches of rain falls each year. Buenaventura is about twenty miles from the Naval Base at Bahia Malaga, and is the second site where we are setting up a clinic. Where I lived in Ecuador we have 240 inches of rain a year, so when I saw the spongy grass today at the Naval Base I knew they got a lot of rain.

There is actually a place in Hawaii that gets about 475 inches of rain a hear, but it's a place where nobody lives.

After preparing for the first clinic day tomorrow, the group was ready to return to the ship. The utility boat cast off at 4:15 PM, and a very rough hour later we were back at the ship. I think if I was on the utility boat for another thirty minutes in that rough water I might have got sick. The people sitting at the back of the boat got soaked with spray. I stood near the front, but it was very rough there, as the bow went up and down. I could have sat at the very front, under the cover, but it was so hot there that I stood a bit farther back just to get the air.

It's going to be a long week if I must travel back and forth by boat each day. We will be working in Colombia from August 23 through August 27. Maybe one or two of those days I can get a ride on a helicopter.

Posted by David at August 22, 2007 06:30 PM