Day 35 14.08.15
Again we woke up fairly late (this mainly related to the drinking of the night before), but were greeted by lovely sunshine. We got to experience the island in all its beauty, and not hidden away by grey clouds.
Again we had a quick breakfast in our hotel room and headed out into the sun.
Our first stop – taking out free kayaks from the hotel and paddling around the bay. It was so calming and the sea water so clear and in some places very shallow. We observed a couple of children playing on a abandoned ship that had been rebuilt to have a large rope attached to the mast, from which the children could swing into the water from. They would always have to roll the boat in order to catch the rope again, so it was a lot of running from one side of the sailboat to the next… It looked like good fun!
Our next task was to rent out snorkelling gear, where we had to put down a bit of a deposit (45 dollars!!!) and therefore saved about 2 dollars actual renting costs.
We decided to go for lunch before heading out to see the others at West bay and went to a little restaurant looking out onto the ocean. It was a wooden building on stilts sitting further out in the water than other restaurants, and so we got to enjoy an undisturbed view of the sea, having some garlic bread and some chicken wings.
We started walking along the beach side, because seriously how far can 4 km be? We walked through a couple of beach resorts, turned the corner and tried our luck at a dock for a water taxi. We were in no mood to do any kind of climbing or wading through water, we just wanted to get there to go snorkelling. The water taxi costs us two 4 $, which was a bit pricey but then again we were desperate :).
We found the others right at the end of the west bay and joined them for a snorkel around the corrals, finding many grazing fish.
I thought that the parrotfish were especially impressive, as they were about 1,5 metres long and had a great turquoise and brown colour. Also the sounds they would make underneath the water, chopping away on corals with their very hard beak like mouths was quite eerie. Some of us even saw a barracuda and a turtle!
We baked a little in the sun and in the shade until some of us decided to go out for a late lunch, or in my case for a cold drink. I ordered my lemonade, however I ordered a second lunch too consisting of a Caesar salad. That swimming had gotten me a little bit hungry again, and so I scrapped dinner and just had linner.
After that we went for another swim in the crystal clear water and then packed our belongings and headed out to find another water taxi to bring us back to west end. On the way we got to see the sunset, unfortunately only part of it as in the last stretches the sun disappeared behind clouds.
We got ready for dinner, at least most of us did, some of us even packed a little, and then a couple of us met up for some rum on the deck. We had some interesting conversations and then decided, “if we don’t leave now we never will”. So we went out for drinks along the main road and tried to find the others. Instead we had a travel-rum and kept on looking. We eventually did find them and went straight into a mega dance session. We were getting a little bit drunk and so opted for a quick meal at a street food stand on the side of road. It was delicious. We headed back home and fell straight into bed.
