For the Madeirans arriving in Guyana, the wild life must have been bewildering. Madeira has no indigenous land mammals at all, no poisonous creatures, and no snakes. By contrast, Guyana has the biggest ants in the world, and the biggest freshwater fish. There are head-crushing jaguars, strangling snakes, rivers of stingrays and electric eels, and whole clouds of insects all eager to burrow in under the skin. To some, this is hell. To others, it’s an ecological paradise, a sort of x-rated Garden of Eden.
On the other hand, Madeirans were used to some exotic marine life. The island is basically a 5,000m mountain rising up from the Atlantic seabed (with only the top 1,800m breaking the surface). It therefore gets deep very quickly, and all manner of deepsea creatures can be found off shore. Dolphins are easy to spot (see my photo, from last week) but there are also plenty of whales. But, equally, intriguing are the scabbard fish. Long, evil-looking, black, and eel-like, they inhabit the very depths of the ocean but surface at night. That’s when the Madeirans go out to catch them, about 8km off shore. Back in the market, the ‘espadas’ may look like dinosaurs … but they taste delicious.
