11:00 pm – laying in bed
Today was good and bad. We started off the day by packing up the rest of the pizza from dinner last night between 2 pieces of pizza box cardboard and wrapped in bandanas. Very umm… watertight. All that went in the little green bag for our day-long adventure.
About 9am we trekked down to the water and rented kayaks so we could paddle around. We got them for all day long along with snorkel gear. The plan was to kayak down to the 5th town in the morning, relax, eat the pizza, snorkel a little, and then kayak back in the afternoon. Ha!
Well, our kayaking adventure begin when I, being the experienced seaman that I am, tipped over in the kayak after being in it all of 45 seconds. The paddles were weird and I was headed for another boat and I was trying to stop too quickly and *splash*, in I went. Now, you must remember, I was not in a canoe where the top is all open. I was in a kayak, one big piece of plastic with a hole on top for you to slide your legs in and your torso pokes out the top. So when I went underwater, my legs were lodged inside. Hmm… hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. I freaked out for a second. I remember thinking, “Hmm… legs inside kayak, body underwater, no air underwater. Not good.” But that quickly passed and I slipped out and surfaced (to the relief of my wifey, who I found out afterwards was freaking out more than me. She later told me that she was thinking, “Noo! I don’t want my hubby to drown! We haven’t even left the harbor!”).
Getting back in, however, was not so easy. I have been trained and have many getting-back-in-canoe skills. But my getting-back-in-kayak skills are a bit lacking. So I swam back to the ramp (20 feet away) and got back in (to the amusement of the kayak rental guy, who was thinking, “Stupid tourist, cant even get out of the harbor without tipping over. This is going to be a long day for him.” How right he was.)
Having gotten back in the kayak, we paddled out to sea. That’s right, we are on the sea. No, not a river. The sea. This is a fact I hadn’t considered. My past water experiences have all been on nice, pretty, calm, serene, slow flowing, rivers. Yah, the sea isn’t so calm and pretty. The sea has waves. Waves bounce you. Up and down. Up and down. Down and up. Up and down. Yah. Fluffy gets motion sickness. Up and down and fluffy don’t play well together. However, I paddled on like a good little soldier.
The next thing I learned is that unlike a river, the sea has currents that don’t all go in one direction. And since I am a big guy, I displace a lot of water. That makes me more susceptible to the currents. So I would be paddling one way (while going up and down, up and down, down and up), and all the sudden, my kayak would be pointed out towards sea instead of towards land. Hmm, not good. So I would put myself back in the right direction. Paddle, paddle (up and down), kayak pointed out to sea. So basically, I paddled in a zig zag pattern the whole time. Back and forth, up and down, (ok seriously, I’m getting motion sickness just thinking about it and typing it, no really.)
We paddled for a while and made it past town #2 (we started in #1) and got 1/2 way to #3 and decided to rest on a little rocky beach. However, when I went to get out of my kayak, I couldn’t walk. Not good (my leg had fallen asleep). I called to Bwige for help and she pulled my kayak while I lay there like a limp fish. After a bit I was able to walk and we sat down for a rest. We pulled out the backpack, the one I was wearing when I tipped over in the harbor, the one with our pizza, yah that one. Supprisingly, the pizza was dry! Yah! So we at the pizza before it got any soggier. That was about 10:30. We rested for a few minutes and since Bwige wasn’t feeling great, I decided to go snorkeling. However, since the beach was made up of tiny pebbles, they kept invading my feet and fins so that it was very uncomfortable. When I finally did get my feet clean enough to put them on, as soon as I stepped into the water, my foot was again invaded by little rocks. Arg. Oh well. They will come out when I get in the water. However, when I went to get in the water, I noticed the very forceful waves crashing against large rocks right off the beach. I decided I didn’t want to get smashed against the rocks into lots of pieces and end up like the pebbles on the beach. So I abandoned the snorkeling idea for the moment.
After a bit we got back into the kayaks and paddled on. After more up and down, down and up, and being thrown whichever way the sea deemed fit at the moment, I was getting really tired. My arms were exhausted and my back was aching from sitting so long with no support.. My head was spinning from all the up and down of the sea. I could go no further so we headed for the beach. As we got closer to the beach, Bwige made an interesting observation, we were headed for the nude beach that the guide book had talked about. Hmm… what to do? I could go no further (forwards or backwards) so we just headed for the least occupied part of the beach. Now, I know this wasn’t a great option, but you must remember, when you are hiking and you get tired, you can just sit down and rest. But when you are on the water, if you just stop you get pulled out to sea. So yah, this was the best option at the time.
So we pulled up onto the beach, arms exhausted, backs aching, and legs stiff. We flopped out of the kayaks and lay sprawled out on the beach like a bunch of passed-out drunks. After we recovered for a second, we pulled out kayaks together, and lay on the sand, in the sun, under one of Brigette’s sarongs (which is basically a big thin square piece of cloth). In the end, there really weren’t that many people on the beach, only about 10-12 at most. However, faithful to their surroundings, they were enjoying themselves in the raw.
Now, I do have lots of thoughts on nudity and the like… and I could go into a long deep discussion on the topic, but I’m tired and don’t feel like chasing that rabbit trail tonight, I’m tired. Let me suffice it to say that while it may be fine and fun with your spouse, because of the whole lust and leading other’s to bad thoughts, its probably not the best idea in public.
So there we lay. Sprawled out (and totally clothed, if you were wondering) on the nude beach. Then down the trial comes a family. Hmm, this is going to be interesting. Middle school boy and high school girl lead the way with mom and dad following. Mom and dad stand and stare for a moment, not sure what to think. They have this perplexed look on their face like… is this what I think it is? Interestingly enough, boy and girl pass right on by and head down the beach. They don't seem to be phased. I later figured out that real mom and dad were nudists, and perplexed (who I thought to be mom and dad) were just other beach-goers. However, in the end, all stayed. The perplexed couple set up camp on the entrance side of Bwige and I, and boy and girl and parents set up at the far side of the beach. It was so interesting to watch the faces of people coming down the path… they just seemed perplexed at first, then the just kept going. It was interesting that another boy and girl came with parents (all kept their clothes on) and just went swimming.
Anyways, Bwige and I laid there trying to recover from the beating the sea had given us. However, since we were laying in the sun with only a sarong covering me, we weren’t resting very well. So even though I still felt sea sick and tired, we got back in headed back home. Yes, the plan was to go to town #5, but we only got half way past #3. Oh well, neither of us wanted to be beat up by the sea any more… and our hopes, like the water, were severely dashed upon the rocks.
On the way home, though we had stopped half way, I decided to go all the way in one stretch. I was tired, hungry, exhausted, and didn’t want to stop and delay our homecoming any longer. I don’t know how good of a decision that was, but I made it… barely. I really almost didn’t make it back to the harbor. I was so exhausted from all the paddling. Not only that, I was paddling twice as far as I should have because of all the extreme zig zags I was doing. The up and down of the sea was also making my stomach sick. Sitting in the kayak was making my back hurt really bad and my butt worse. However, through much frustration, we did make it back to the harbor and I literally collapsed onto the rocks and just lay there for a bit. (oh and Bwige was just fine. For whatever reason, weather she displace less water and wasn’t affected by the current or she was just more skilled, she did fine going straight and wasn’t all that tired.) We made it! Praise God!
We finally got up and returned the paddles. I got an ice cream bar on the way home. MAN WAS IT GOOD! I don’t know if that was the exhaustion or the ice cream, but it tasted fantabulous! After passing out on the bed for a few hours, we got up about 7:00 and donned our snorkel gear and headed back to the water. Although we were sore all over, we paid 20 Euros for that snorkel get and we were going to get our money out of it danget! Man am I glad we did.
Snorkeling is so amazing! There is a whole world under the water! We swam around and saw boulders bigger than our house. We saw schools of fish bigger than our house! We saw rocks the size of cars just sprawled out on the sea floor. And we only got 100 yards out into the ocean. Man… I am just so amazed.
Again, I have lots and lots of deep thoughts on this, but I am really tired and falling asleep so I’ll just give them in brief.
First, God did all that. Wow! He made all the different things work together. The fish eat the scum that grows on the rocks. The rocks beat against each other to make pebbles. The moon works to make the waves. It all balances out. (insert part of me digging on the beach and no matter how big a hole I tried to make the sea just filled it in. when I left, it looked as I had never been there. God makes things even out). It just amazes me that God takes care of all the details that we don’t even consider. OK, that didn’t make much sense, but remember, this is a brief. It will make more sense when it is several pages long.
Second, wow, its big! We only saw one cove on one beach on one stretch of one minor sea. Wow! Again, its all there by God’s imagination. He put it there so that we could be amazed and give glory and honor to him for making it all work together.
OK, that’s about it, I’m tired. Its time for bed. We had dinner sitting outside a bar. The food was ok, but not great because it was pretty much microwave dinners. I had pesto w/ pasta (which by the way, pesto was invented in this part of Italy!). Bwige had mushroom pasta. They were good as far as microwave dinners go. Bwige also got a pina colada. However, it was not like the ones in the states which are like slushies. Instead, it was just juice with rum and coconut added (and whatever else is supposed to go in it). Different but not bad. Likewise, my milkshake was just liquid instead of being thick like we are used to. Not bad, just different.
OK, no really this time. I’m going to bed. Goodnight. Tomorrow we plan on hiking the 5 towns (or as many as we can get to).
