Considering the swarms of crabs and scorpions on Revilla Gigedo, a rooftop was often the safest place to be!
Revilla Gigedo is an island 300 miles off the coast of Mexico, inhabited by a small group of Mexican Navy personnel. It took me five days to learn to pronounce the name of the place (try saying it yourself)!
The first thing you notice is there are about one million scorpions and crabs because the island has no natural predators to keep them in check. In addition to the hostile fauna, the island is quite rugged and volcanic. Revilla Gigedo looks the way Hawaii probably did hundreds of years ago. There were no banks, no liquor stores or no hotels, but the Mexicans were the most wonderful hosts.
The Mexican government allowed us to sleep in a cement block building for our "protection." It's rumored that back in the 1950s the multitudes of scorpions drove an American berserk and he walked off a cliff. I had a pretty good idea of the problem. One night I awoke, turned on my flashlight and saw scorpions everywhere. In the room. On the floor. Maybe on the ceiling. It took about one nanosecond for me to climb on top of my girlfriend and start spraying insect killer. I never travel without it now.
As for refrigeration, there wasn't any, but the Mexican sailors had an answer. One day, when we went to our radio, they shot a wild goat. The goat survived the gunshot. They threw the squealing animal into the back of the truck with us and, when the time came, it became dinner.
On this island I encountered unbelievably intense sporadic E. On 6 meters I was making four contacts per minute in a contest. There was even 2-meter E to Los Angeles.
Republic of Tuvalu: Pacific Paradise
The island is about six-feet high, and it is the first nation that will vanish when the ice caps melt and the oceans rise. Tuvalu is a long, narrow atoll-it seemed like it was about two houses and one road wide. The island road doubles as the airstrip, so your pilot buzzes it first to scare the pigs away before landing.
Getting through Customs was a breeze. There were no problems bringing in 18 suitcases and bags full of electronic equipment. The main thing they searched for was "sick" American videos full of sex and violence, the kind that even some Americans don't think are okay.
Tuvalu had no hotels, and I never found a bank or a restaurant. The only place to eat was where we stayed-it had six rooms and a carefree attitude when it came to meal schedules. (One time I had to remind them to cook for us.) But they were wonderful people-as wonderful as you could find anywhere in the world.
I worked many US stations on 50 MHz from Tuvalu, but all backscatter pointed to New Zealand. This is a good example of why you occasionally need power and big antennas on VHF.
Mystic Ruins-When the Unusual Captivates Your Interest
