A Remote Island, a Shark Conspiracy and the Ever-Watchful Bread

When I was told that my next work trip would be to Saint Helena, I was very excited but also had no idea what to expect. There are only very few pictures of St Helena available online and the tales of slow-to-no internet, cash only except in the hotel and the unreliable flights are probably enough to put a purely leisure traveller off. I, however, am so glad I got to go!

Our flight from Johannesburg departed on time, landed to refuel as scheduled at Walvis Bay, Namibia, and, to our great relief, took off again. The seats were very comfortable and spacious, and we were so well looked after – we were provided with two meals and three drinks services during the approximately six-and-a-half-hour flight. My colleague, who I had only met the day before but quickly bonded with, and I very much enjoyed mishearing the much too quiet announcements from the air steward – I am quite sure he cannot really have said that use of the toilets was “suboptimal” – and speculating over the number of glasses of wine consumed by one particular passenger in business class (four large glasses in total, at the end of which he was noticeably inebriated).

The landing on St Helena’s relatively newly created runway was an experience not dissimilar to that of riding a rollercoaster. The manual feeling of the adjustments for the wind shear and the last-minute appearance of the island upon descent below the clouds did make it quite nerve wracking. Then, once we did touch down, fears immediately turned to whether we would stop in time, since there was a cliff edge drop at both ends of the runway. Everything went smoothly though, with only one attempt required – by no means a given in St Helena – and we had finally arrived.

Because the airport area had all been created from nothing, it was a bit like stepping out onto the moon, or at least a quarry, surrounded by black volcanic rocks and dust. As soon as we drove out of the valley, though, we were engulfed in a lush, jungle-like landscape, with steep hills and deep rifts, all covered in flax, eucalyptus trees and prickly pear cacti. It was wild and untamed, yet so beautiful and freeing to be amongst.

As we approached Jamestown, the main town on the island, the landscape changed again. It felt as if we were above the treeline on a mountain range, with the hills looming over us on each side and sparse foliage visible only in patches. Jamestown itself is densely populated, with the oldest Anglican church in the southern hemisphere, the institutional buildings and almost all the shops on the island. Our driver boasted to us that the roundabout is the only one in the world with parking on it, that the maximum speed limit is 30 miles per hour and that there are no traffic lights on the island.

Even this initial drive from the airport to our hotel was thrilling. The dramatic Jamestown scenery of the black cliffs plunging into the blue ocean, the ever-visible Jacob’s Ladder, 699 steps ascended the aptly named Ladder Hill, and the beautiful Castle Gardens with the bright purple bougainvillea filled me with nothing but excitement for our two weeks there.

We quickly became aware of just how small the island we had invaded was. During dinner at our hotel, we were surrounded by our fellow plane passengers, including the red wine drinker, who had two more glasses with his meal. By the end of the first few days, we already felt part of the community: we had sampled all the restaurants in Jamestown, met what felt like half of the population and settled into the routine of our new lives.

As in the Cayman Islands, our time during the day was dominated by meetings, and for the first couple of days, as we were getting used to it all, bread, safely holding my swimming costume, goggles, towel and flip flops, silently taunted me from the desk in my hotel room. The evenings, however, did offer a small amount of time to slip away…

My colleague first discovered the delights of the wharf. Just a minute’s walk from our hotel was the arch, which led to the harbour wall.

It was an industrial feeling port, littered with a growing number of cargo crates as they were unloaded from the ship, the island’s monthly visitor, cranes and building materials. Alongside this activity was that of fishermen and pleasure boaters, all of which harmonised to create an ever-changing landscape and energetic atmosphere. The juxtaposition between this, the surrounding cliffs and the open water beyond the bay made for a raw but very beautiful place, at first off-putting but quickly fully engaging and exciting.

As I first ventured through the arch, Bread in tow, I was thrilled by all the sights, at once so harmonious in situ and yet seemingly incongruous. We ventured down to the very end of the wharf, where ropes hung from metal frames to help incoming boats offload and ladders plunged down into the deep.

The colour of this water was different to that in Cayman and, to me, even more beautiful. The deep teal evoked the cold, unforgiving nature of sea and the clarity was unmatched in my experience. We could see right to the rocky bottom in small inlet we at first confined ourselves to and could see the depth shelving down beyond, with the hulls of the boats visible across the harbour. It was incredible to think that there was no land for so many miles, out beyond what we could see.

Read what happened next in part 2!