I can see clearly now the rain is gone...

We had our first clear day today. It was amazing. Both Morne Trois Pitones and Morne Diablotins, the highest two volcanoes on the islad, were free of clouds and perfectly visible. They are amazing mountains and look like what you'd draw when you were little and drawing a volcano- incredible steep sides convered in lush jungle. All that's missing is the eruption column coming out of the crater. We get to climb Morne Diablotins on Saturday too. I'm looking forward to it because it'll be the first time I climb the highest point in a country. We're also hauling up over 100 pounds of GPS to try to set up a site on the summit, so it should be interesting. If we succeed, it also means we get to climb it again to take the stuff down next week. The hike up Morne Trois Pitones is apparently only a couple hours, so hopefully I'll get to do that too.

The people here are amzing so generous and nice. Most of our GPS sites are on private land, and we've just been driving up and setting up our equipment no problem. Occasionally the land owner will come up and ask what we're doing, but once we tell them we're geologists and are studying the volcano, they're glad to have us there. I guess they appreciate the possibility of at least being warned about when a burning cloud of ash is about to destroy their house. The only run-in that has drawn some concern is with Manuel, a tall, ripped, farmer dude carying a macete who yelled at us "what are you going on my land!" as we were setting up a site. We thought we had explained everything, but then yesterday we found the site had been knocked over. Who knows...

We have tried to return the locals generosity by continuing to pick up as many hitchhikers as possible, today serving as a school bus essentially for the town of Portsmouth. I think we had 8 kids in the back of the truck at one point. We also tried to give a ride to a farmer who didn't need one, so Richard (driving) pretended he had stopped to ask what the farmer what he was carrying. It was a green kind of spherical, kind of really dented looking mini soccer ball sized fruit thing with little soft spikes sticking out of the skin. The farmer said the name, explained how to eat it, and then just gave it us. He probably could've sold it for a few bucks, but he just gave it us. Since I couldn't understand the name, I have since dubbed it spikey fruit, and will be eating it soon. This country is awesome.