Our photos of Ascension's beaches
A map of Ascension
Up on Green Mountain
Around Georgetown
Ascension Island turtles
Other wildlife
Views of Ascension Island
Views of Ascension Island
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More Ascension Island info (including a webcam and more turtle photos) can be found from the Ascension Island category on our Links page.

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Liz's emailed tale

Hi everyone,

We arrived back from Ascension Island this morning (17th March), which was a day later than planned. We had an absolutely fabulous time but to be honest was glad to get a bit of relief from the very hot weather.

Andrew arranged the holiday as a surprise for me. I kept guessing long enough and managed to get enough clues that I finally worked out where we were going. It was still an excellent surprise. Andrew was on Ascension a year ago for work (see this page), and loved it so much that he wanted to show it to me.

It is located in the middle of the Atlantic at about 8 degrees south. It is the most isolated island in the world which makes it very special. It is only about 15 kilometres across but has very different landscapes. Most of the island looks incredibly inhospitable and has lots of lava flows and clinker. However in the middle of the island is Green mountain, and you guessed it - it's very green. It even has gum trees growing on it. The other great thing about the mountain is that while it is horribly hot on the coast it is considerably cooler at the top of the mountain.

What makes Ascension Island the most special must be the turtles. Every year the turtles come to Ascension Island to lay their eggs. The mother turtles make the journey from Brazil every two to four years.

So my highlights of our holiday? Number one would have to be the turtles. It wasn't just the turtles but the fact you have to watch them under the southern hemisphere stars on beautiful long beach. During the later half of the week the moon was so bright it cast very sharp shadows on the ground and we could see the whole beach. We went turtle watching every night and saw lots and lots of mother turtles make their way up the beach. It was such an effort for them. Once they find sand which is to their liking they start digging. Apparently the temperature of the sand determines the sex of the turtles that hatch. Once they have dug themselves into a pit they then dig a smaller cavity with their back flippers, and it is here where they lay their eggs. We were lucky enough to witness two turtles laying. It is easy to scare the turtles back into the water until after they start laying and then you can get quite close. It's obviously such an effort for the mothers as you hear them pant and watch them rest. They lay more than 100 eggs at a time and lay eggs about four times in a two week period. What an amazing experience.

We were lucky enough to see baby turtles just once. It was when I didnt have my camera. They are amazingly cute and speedy. They are totally driven little animals that they just follow the light. That is how they find their way to the water, and it confuses them if you shine a torch on them.

Besides tutle watching, everyday we did a little bit of snorkelling. There are only two safe swimming beaches on Ascension, and we mostly snorkelled at English Bay. I have never been snorkelling before and was amazed at the number of fish. Andrew was quite amused at how timid I was of them, but I am used to wild animals running away from me unless they want to hurt me. I was really amazed at the fish - they were just like a tropical fish mobile I had as a kid, with blue stripey fish, yellow stripey fish, blue stripey fish, little black fish with yellow tails and black fish with electric blue stripes. These fish were everywhere. We fed them an apple core and they went absolutely beserk, almost jumping out of the water to try and eat it. We also saw gar fish and two kind of eels. One of the eels was a Moray eel and must have been more than a metre long.

We also did quite a bit of walking, although it wasn't always that comfortable in the heat. I got the most severe heat rash I can ever remember. We tried to go for walks in the morning when it was cooler and do mountain walks or swim in the afternoon. They have walks which are called letterbox walks where you walk to where they have a box with a stamp in it. They were kind of fun. We walked through very sticky welsh speaking mud to the top of Green Mountain. There is no view from the very top because it is covered with bamboo. We also did a walk about 100m from the top which went around the mountain and gave great views of the whole Island. You wouldn't have seen much from the very top anyway as it was almost always in cloud.

Other walks took us over lava flows to cliffs overlooking bird islands. You get an idea of how isolated you are when you read in the letterbox that the last person to do the particular walk that you are doing was there a month before. We also walked into an old shallow crater called 'The Devils Riding School', which is kind of difficult to describe so you will have to wait for the web photos.

We visited a large sooty tern colony. It was a bit like something out of a David Attenborough documentary to be surrounded by hundreds of birds all making a huge racket. We thought we were simply following cairns into the nesting ground when we started getting swooped on by a number of these birds. I found it quite frightening. Maybe I have just seen the Hitchcock movie too many times. But we worked out that the cairns were showing the edge of the boundary where you shouldn't go!

We saw lots and lots of crabs, they even have land crabs. Crabs are really the only creepy crawlies that the island has. It was nice walking and not having to worry about snakes or leeches. Other animals on the island include the wild donkeys or sheep that have been abandoned. It was weird walking around the tropical mountain to have a sheep appear out of the bamboo.

We also visited an amazing blowhole on the beach. That was really excellent. There were quite a few blowholes along the beach so that it sounded like the rocks were breathing. It was very weird. I was wondering when the rocks were going to move and turn out to be muppet monsters.

We also walked into a cave which was an old lava tube. It was horrible and humid in there.

Well I think I have just about run out of highlights for now.....hopefully I'll get a chance to get our photos developed and scanned before too long.

Oh but I guess you might be wondering why we arrived back a day late. Well the plane we were meant to be taking back had serious engine problems on its way from the Falklands to Ascension. By serious I mean flames appearing out of the engine and they blew a tyre on landing. We had lots of jittery passengers with us on our way back to England when they finally sent a 'rescue plane' out.