Great Rivers?

I happened to catch part of a TV programme last night called Only Connect. BBC3 I think. It's a quiz show with two teams and the idea is to connect things, mostly words. Towards the end they have a part of the show where they take vowels out of words, and you have to work out the words as they should be. They help by bunching them together, so at least you have an idea which ball park you're likely to be in.

So when Great South American Rivers came up as a topic, I settled confidently back, certain of a 100% score, being, as it were, on home territory. Now I know it's meant to be a challenging programme, rather than just plumping for questions which will fox only dimwits who don't watch quizzes anyway.

I got two out of four. The rivers were Orinoco RNC, Colorado (CLRD), Maule (ML)and Aconcagua (CNCG)

What?? Great rivers?? You're 'avin' a laugh aren'tcha? Three of those "great rivers" are in Chile. As everyone knows, Chile is confined by the Andes on one side and the Pacific on the other. Long and thin. About a wide as a piece of string. All the rivers flow westward to the sea - so they're about as great as the piece of string is wide. The only thing great about them is that they rise in the Andes. That's like saying the Teign and the Dart are great rivers because they rise on Dartmoor.

A whole continent full of rivers - great rivers - and we get three Chilean becks.

In Argentina, most Welshmen would easily identify the CHBT in Patagonia (they don't bother with vowels much anyway). The PRN, PRGY, RGY are probably a bit too easy.

In Bolivia the BN's a bit more challenging, as is the PLCMY (world's longest tributary of a tributary).

Peru's CYL and MRNN take a bit of thinking about; MGDLN in Colombia is easy. Guyana "land of rivers" should surely have merited a mention for one of SSQB, BRBC or DMRR - all easy.

Now I can see why they eschewed MZN - a bit too obvious - but if they think Maule's reasonable, they why not slip in SLMS (which is what the Brazilians call the upper MZN). Brazil's brimming over - XNG, MDR, SFRNCSC, and if you want a really difficult one, the 4-syllable PQ would be the one to catch them out. Not a great river, but a lot greater than those Chilean melt-water run-offs.

And the CSQR in Venezuela, whilst not actually a river - more of a natural channel linking the basins of the Orinoco and the Negro - could hold its place as an interesting watercourse. If you don't mind the mosquitos and sand flies.

I could go on - or even suggest that the producers of Only Connect come to me if they need inspiration with a Latin American flavour. Mammals of the Mato Grosso? Suburbs of Rio?

On second thoughts, don't get me started.

Beware of the Llama

Apropos Bolivian road signs warning drivers that an alpaca or llama might leap across the path at any moment, I was cycling in Norfolk last weekend, and passed a road sign warning of toads.

This wasn't one of those signs put up by local residents doing their bit to protect their cuddly indigenous or endemic local fauna. ("Mind our ducks" - usually in Oxfordshire). This was a proper triangular warning sign between Aylsham and Cawston. Clearly, someone in the council highways department had taken the trouble to get the artwork right. This was no vague representation of an indeterminate amphibian.

It was clearly a toad, a toad that any self-respecting witch would have been happy to call a familiar.

I didn't see any live ones in the danger zone (or even road-killed either), though there were a couple of squashed partridges, a squirrel and another rodent in fairly quick succession.

There's a distinction to be made here - those creatures which might cause a serious accident (deer, horses) which drivers need to be warned about, and those which motorists might choose to be merciful to.

Latin America has started to do this too. I'm sure I've seen an armadillo-warning sign near Punta Tombo in Argentina; and in Belize and Cuba, land-crab alerts.

Two years ago, near Trinidad in southern Cuba, tour leader Rose Latham cautiously warned the Tocororo group that our bus taking the coast road would mean mean squashing dozens of crabs (they cross the road in their hundreds); whilst retracing our steps on the inland road would be a much longer drive. The group consensus was "Sod the crabs".

And in Panama -note that road signs are in two languages, since 100 years of Canal Zone influence means that many Panamanians are bilingual - iguanas get their own (zebra?) crossing.