Yes, we have no bananas

In field-food has a tendency to become very repetitive, especially when it’s the same thing everyday. Because cave work is so hot and sweaty and the caves are dark and humid and often muddy you never really feel like eating anything. But the energy is needed and snacking always helps give you a blood sugar boost in the cave. Our in-cave food consists mostly of Pokari Sweat, an isotonic drink that I believe is Japanese, and SilverQueen, a brand of chocolate bar. The Pokari Sweat is excellent because drinking just water isn’t enough in the caves to give you energy back and replacing lost salts when in the tropics and doing hard work is obviously a very good idea. Plus its not too sweet. As for the SilverQueen, we try for the dark chocolate variety, partly because it has a slightly higher melting point than the other ones, and partly because when you’re in a muddy cave, the dark chocolate hides the dirt the best.

One food that never travels particularly well is the humble banana. So you can imagine that in a situation where there are big packs with everything loose inside being banged against rocks and hauled up pitches that bananas would not necessarily be the cavers’ fruit of choice. And yet we haul in quite a few bananas. Being the tropical variety they are the very small ones which you can eat in two mouthfuls, or one if you feel like showing off, and not too sweet. Very tasty but not very practical.

Bintang Beer

Ahh, Bintang Beer, Indonesia’s local brew. For the first half of our trip we’re in southern Sulawesi, which is quite a conservatively Muslim area and so drinking is fairly unheard of round these parts, at least for Indonesians. Still being a fairly tolerant bunch, westerners aren’t expected to comply and it’s fairly easy to buy. Of course, public drunkenness is still very much frowned upon and since the owner of our accommodation is quite a devout Muslim, a Hajji we don’t drink at our place. We are therefore generally forgoing the post-field beer (which is a travesty for any self-respecting geologist) except when discussing goings on with the village patriarch who some people visit on the occasional evening before dinner. The second half of the trip will be spent on a catholic island though, so I expect there will be more drinking there. Meanwhile, in the port area of Makassar, the nearest major city where we’ve spent a day or two it’s possible to buy a couple of bottles, and sit and watch the sun set over the Celebes Sea. Perfect.