One of the foresters had met Mother Earth on her march to town in the previous year and offered to take me. Leading away from the abandoned ajoupa (bush hut) which had served as our base camp for two days, the now disused track followed the headland, covered in fallen vegetation, coconut fronds, leaf mulch, forest debris. We forded a stream, overhung by a decayed footbridge, occasionally glimpsing through the overgrown scrub the remains of the wooden houses which twenty years before had comprised small hamlets along the shore, and climbed to a small plateau facing the sea, backed by the mountains which descended to behind the settlement and then on either side dropped down to a rocky bay some thirty feet below. Out at sea pelicans floated on the tide, occasionally taking ungainly flight to dive for fish, only to have them contested by the wheeling frigate birds