Nobody seemed to mind that I was driving a rental car down the runway. Otherwise, this was a rather empty airport. Today, there are weekly US military flights to an Air Force base in Florida and RAF flights to both England and the Falkland Islands. At a whopping two miles long, Ascension Island’s Wideawake Airfield is still a designated emergency-landing spot for the United States space shuttle. The airstrip was built by the Americans back in World War II, and then later lengthened to accommodate spacecraft. I kept driving-seeking, searching-and then drove my car right onto the island’s famous runway. I sincerely hope that I am not revealing any state secrets here, but the American base on Ascension Island feels like the most soulless college campus in the universe. The entire area displayed a kind of cold, mechanical dreariness with pebbled grounds and naked tumbleweed-type shrubs propped up bland beige buildings. I just rented a car and took off-driving straight onto the American military base and happily snooping around. There were no security checks or interrogations for me. The rest of Ascension looks dead, or at least in a coma.ĭespite all the secrecy, once you’ve managed to legally land on this very remote island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, everybody assumes that you’re supposed to be there. The odd mixture of bananas and vine trees has grown into a miniature rainforest, covering the highest (and wettest) point of the island. Grainy chunks of black and red pumice cover everything, except for the very middle of the island, where a tall green pinnacle of a mountain is proof that humans enjoy gardening-over the past century, bored military officers have experimented with growing all things tropical, be they edible or pretty. A dead, volcanic landscape stretches out between a dozen or so black cones, each streaked with earthy red tones. I had already received written permission from the island administrator and showed proof of the required air evacuation insurance-despite a long history of castaway pirates and marooned sailors, the Ascension Island government does not appreciate modern travelers getting stranded on this particular British colony.Īscension Island looks like Mars, if Mars was planted with imported trees. What could be so terribly secret on such a remote and inaccessible island? I was curious to find out and as luck would have it, I got the chance: while en route across the Atlantic, we had two whole days on Ascension. When a rather adventurous acquaintance of mine once sailed around the world, he tried coming to Ascension but never made it to shore-he was quickly approached by a British military patrol boat and commanded to leave immediately or face arrest. Prior to 2003, civilians were not allowed to visit Ascension, ever. Nor is it so easy getting permission to legally enter. Let me tell you-it’s not easy getting to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean-halfway between Africa and Brazil. ![]() I arrived at Ascension after nearly three weeks at sea on board the MV National Geographic Explorer. Most of them are no longer secret-thanks to GPS and Google Maps, anyone can pretty much look at anywhere they want. And yet the more I travel, the more I run into these “top secret” places all over the world. That’s the whole point of a secret military base-to remain unknown and practically invisible. ![]() For you as a user this will result in a better, and easier page to navigate.You probably haven’t heard of Ascension Island because they never wanted you to. Cookies are very useful for you as a user of mycall.no, and us as a service provider.- We can adapt our website based on the information gathered. We do not save any personal, identifiable information via cookies, and no information about you can be tracked via cookies. They can also be used to remember arbitrary pieces of information that the user previously entered into form fields such as names, addresses, passwords, and credit-card numbers. Cookies were designed to be a reliable mechanism for websites to remember stateful information (such as items added in the shopping cart in an online store) or to record the user's browsing activity (including clicking particular buttons, logging in, or recording which pages were visited in the past). An HTTP cookie (also called web cookie, Internet cookie, browser cookie, or simply cookie) is a small piece of data sent from a website and stored on the user's computer by the user's web browser while the user is browsing.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |