TIMOR-LESTE REPTILE & AMPHIBIAN SURVEY
ESSENTIAL SUPPLIES

This morning I was back at the museum working through the Toxicocalamus. I had two final species to deal with, T. longissimus and the most widely distributed and commonest species in collections, T. loriae. By the end of the day I had photographed and scale counted around sixty specimens, the entire Bishop Museum collection of Toxicocalamus which represents eight of the 11 known species in the genus.

Woodlark Is. forest snake, Toxicocalamus longissimus	Common forest snake, Toxicocalamus loriae

After all that work I went shopping for essential supplies at a supermarket. It took me some time to find what I was looking for but I was successful and returned to the museum guest cottage triumphant.

The Elixir of Civilisation

I have one more day in the Bishop Museum - tomorrow the priority is Micropechis.

Trans-Pacific Endurance

Meanwhile the rest of the team were flying home. All went well on our way back to California. In San Francisco, Hinrich declared our specimens to customs and presented the necessary paperwork for import, and after a very efficient process, the declaration was processed and approved within two hours of the team’s arrival in the U.S.!

In Los Angeles, Hinrich handed “the kids” off to their parents, received a few things needed on the next phase from Kim’s parents (THANK YOU, Mr. and Mrs. Antekeier!), and walked straight to the Singapore Airlines check-in counter to return to Southeast Asia. Even the well-traveled Hinrich admits that this was a trans-Pacific endurance test: the trip Singapore-Tokyo-San Francisco-Los Angeles-Tokyo-Singapore-Kuala Lumpur covered 17,761 miles and took 46 h. He now awaits the arrival of the German team in two days, and they will be raring to go!

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