MMMmm

distracted by deep fried food.

There is this thai girl who has taken to bringing us food! So we are eating some deep fried fish thing with chilli sauce, hey it has a stick in it… even the stick is delicious! I like this arrangement very much. Not least because we are both completely exhausted having just gotten back from two days of snorkling!

AMAZING snorkling, in fact. From one of the coolest places ever: Mae Haad. Mae Haad is a bay (thats what the Haad signifies) with a big long beach stretching along the interior. It shelters a little island called Koh Ma (koh = island). What is completely awesome is that Koh Ma is linked to the beach at Mae Haad via a sand bar! And there’s a restaurant on Koh Ma! And the sandbar is romantically half-submerged at high tide! And we spent the night on the island on the other side of the sandbar! And set the exclemation points free because this was no end of cool!

Yes I highly recomend Koh Ma resort to everyone I know under 30 and the restaurant to everyone. The price to staying on the island at the far end of a sandbar is not in baht (it cost us like 300 baht a night and they let us keep the room all today as well instead of enforcing some draconian check-out time). The price is in shackness. For those of you who have been to Thailand before you probably know what this place was like but this is the first night I’ve spent outside of our cosy house. Which now seems palacial.

The bungalo didn’t so much have rooms, furniture, doors, elecricity, water, flooring, walling or ceilinging. Let alone stationary or a phone or a closet.

It had the aboluste minimum. Which turns out to be: a bed with no bedding but a 1/2 inch mattress (with prints of scholastic looking bears wishing you ‘congratulations on your recent success!’) and a mosquito net. In a pinch we probably could have done without the bed.

Yes we found the spiders! We spotted about 3 or 4 in and around our room. Various species, all of them about 15 centimeters accross. No tarantulas yet.

Actually there was a small open-to-the-elements bathroom with a real-life eurpoean style toilet that even flushed between the hours of 7am and Noon. Which is when the water was running.

And yes between the hours of 6pm and around 10ish we had electricity. So look at me being overly dramatic in my list of things the bungalo didn’t have. It even sort of had doors.

So it wasn’t that bad. We didn’t suffer for the lack of bedding because this might be the middle of winter here but it’s still thailand. And in the end, of course, we didn’t spend that much time in the room. Pretty much just sleeping and napping between snorkling runs. I have no complaints about our time there. It was cheap and satisfactory.

The bar was really cool. It seemed to be run by 3 or 4 young thai guys who where all very friendly and managed to bolster a kind of summer-vacation eat drink and be merry atmosphere to the place. The food was decent and the view of the afore exclaimed over sand-bar was great. Also, there where people there! Mae Haad in general was fucking packed compared to the rest of the island. We must have seen 100 farangs the whole time. And at least 3 other people snorkling. Well, unless you include the boat-laden tours of snorklers that came through. We did see a few kite-boarders, gah! so eagre to get my kite board on, I found a place with lessons and everything!

We also had lunch in the worst restaurant yet. It was also the fullest we have yet seen. Coincidence? Not in my experience. Someone can tell Ae that his cuisine still reigns supreme. So far no thai food in thailand has been quite as good as his thai food. Although at under 2$ CAD for a panang curry the prices here are a wee bit better.

On the beach near the bad restaurant Sarah made the novel discovery of some honest to god quicksand. I had the idea that quicksand didn’t actually exist… wasn’t there a myth busters on quicksand? Anyway it does. Sarah lost her leg up to the knee in the discovery. It just looked like oridnary sand, just sitting there on the beach in a shallow bowl. The only hint was a little pool of water in the middle of the bowl. I thought it was cool so naturaly I had to lose my leg up to the knee in quicksand. The first leg went in to the knee, the next one went in 1/2 way up my thigh. My heart went into my throat. For a split second I thought I was going to be killed by quicksand. Which would have looked good on the tomb-stone, admitedly. I didn’t die because it seems to have a definite bottom. You free-fall (not sink) however deep and then stand up and crawl out. I didn’t play around alot more with it but I bet if somebody’s kid leapt into the middle of it they’d be a gonner.

I didn’t get a picture of the quicksand… it just looked like beach. I did try to take a bunch of pictures but obviously we didn’t get any of the best part: the snorkling

Oh what the hell, the power just went out. This is new. I wonder how long it’s going to last. Colin is going to investigate so I (Sarah) will take over.

Okay, so snorkling: OMG!! We clambered over the rocks by our bungalo and put our new fins and masks on (we got a couple decent sets that morning in Chaloklum). As soon as we put our faces in the water there were fish! The tide was in so it was a little murky, but there were little striped fish (Sergeants) swimming around in the rocks and sand.

Colin says the neighbors are out too and these outages last 10min – 5hr. Yay for laptops! :) Also the weather continues to be cool (for here) and we got used to being without fan and air con during the bungalo stay on Koh Ma. When we came back a bottle of soy sauce had leaked and the place smelled of fish sauce, so we’ve opened all the windows to the great outdoors and a nice breeze. It’s wonderful. :)

So, back to snorkling! We swam a little farther in; still just rocks and sand but we got a good view of those little gobies that are common at our beach too. Colin confirmed that they are shacking up with a kind of prawn who digs their shared hole while the fish stand watch over it. Symbiotic relationships are cool!

Out in the shallows were gigantic black sea cucumbers too, about the size of my leg below the knee. Like diabolical sand filtering machines; they had a dozen little sticky feel bringing in sand at one end, and used-up sand coming out the other.

We swam on through the murk and the rocks, some more sand and colourful little fish.. then the coral started and the big fish arrived. Out of the foggy water ahead of us was a flash of silver as an entire wall of butterfly fish 6 inches in diameter appeared then disappeared again several times. It was so surreal, I felt like I must have somehow fallen unconscious and was dreaming it. We held hands and swam slowly torward them until we were almost surrounded by another huge mixed school of silver fish with yellow stripes, and several kinds of parrotfish. They were nibbling away at the coral or something on it, filling the water with the electric snap-popping sound of their biting.

We were just blown away by the size and number of fish, not to mention the amazingly diverse corals and the multitude of colourful little fish down below. We spent somewhere between half and hour and two hours out there as neither of us could tell how much time had passed. We must have seen a hundred different kinds of fish and corals. Totally wow! (Colin felt like he had to go in just to give his world view time to realign)

Our night in the little bungalo wasn’t actually that bad at all, though I was very glad for the netting. Notsomuch for the mosquitoes and flies, which there were some, but for the spiders! Yes, finally, actual scary big spiders – I guess we had a bit of a Halloween after all. ^_^ We spotted nasty ones in the bathroom, and the light in there was broken so at night I had to go in the pitch dark with the possibility of menacing creepy-crawlies all around me (not to mention no tp or running water). When we woke the next morning there was a huge spider on the outside of the netting not one foot from my head, trying to figure how to get in no doubt!

I make big about the spiders, but really, I’ve seen ones back home that could have given these guys a run for their money. We’ll let you know when we hit tarantula pay-dirt. Spider count now stands at 10 (tho the last three should probably count for 10 apiece)

So, it was incredible. Today we snorkled some more, and got to see low tide and some sunlight streaming through. Saw some more beautiful fish and giant anemonies, worms and sea cucumbers and a shy spotted ray (colin, who didn’t get to see the ray, is wicked jelouse). We hung out at the restaurant and talked some more with the guys who ran the place. They had slept out on the restaurant porch under the stars as they do every night, with some incense burning to ward off the skeeters and nasty-crawlies. Seemed like a good life to me… if only they had a net connection. And power for more than four hours a day. :p

We got a taxi back and man did that guy drive like hell. And the girl next door was here with a tasty meal for us! And the power came back on, just in time for the 6pm sunset over the water. Ahhhhhhhh – life is good!

We’re on the wrong side of the island!

We’re up in the north in Chaloklum. We heard rumours that there where internets of great strength here so have come hunting.

A conversation with a german shop-keep and the frankly abysmal state of this internet cafe suggest that we came in vain. Oh well we’ll just have to go snorkling instead. We have purchased some reasonably priced snorkle gear and we are off to Mae Haad where apparently the best snorkling on the island awaits.

We where planning on going snorkling up here and getting a bungalo for the night but conversation with the german diver changed our mind. Apparently the snorkling here in the north (2nd best on the island!) isn’t so good this time of year. In fact we where all keen to stay in bottle beach which is pretty well accessable only by beach. The german fellow suggested that the typhoon warning in vietnam probably made this a sketchy idea. Tourists have known to be stranded for days. Which initially sounds pretty romantic but he says the resorts slowly run out of food as well. Which sounds less romantic.

So I think we’re off to snorkling. I think Sarah’s caught you up on our last few days. Pretty chill. Very nice. We are very worried about the intertubes. It looks like we’re just going to have to pay for a year contract for a service that averages 25% uptime. Woot. That is if they don’t want to hold onto a passport for the year. Which they might (vague wording on malee’s note to us re:intertubes). If they do then we just can’t do it. We needs our passport to renew visas. We also have the option of moving into the thongsala-ban thai area where they have ADSL. I like our place and our location but needs drive the devil’s muster.

Off to Mae Haad for snorkling! Sheltered from typhoon waves and resort prices at 1/2 of the high season rates! Wish us good snorkling.

We’ve been chilling out and swimming, eating out and stuff for a few days. The tide has been very high during the day, meaning we can actually swim just a few meters from the shore instead of having to wade out for 20 minutes. We heard high tide will rise even more when the rainy season really gets going next month.

The weather has been very nice – a cool cloudy 25 or so in the morning (based on what our air con thinks “25” is, which may be meaningless as I think its thermometer is busted). So we can walk in to Sri Thanu for breakfast or early lunch (we are still waking up at 7). Everyone continues to hawk their motorcycles to us along the way, and suggest we must be excersize fanatics to be out walking when we could ride. It’s a freaking 20 minute walk people – jesus!

So we’re probably getting a motorbike from Malee next time we see her. I’m totally against it but it does seem to be a requirement around here. I don’t think it will help us if we want to go on excusrions inland where the dirt roads are steep and windy, or when it is stormy. Even the decent cement road in front of our house becomes a three inch deep lake after just twenty minutes of hard rain. But renting a bike costs less than a taxi ride a day, and you don’t have to wait forever for one to come by.

Now for bitching about the continuing lack of Internets:

Malee should be coming by today to talk Internet with us. Hopefully she will have gotten address of our house from the owners, which is what we’re waiting for before we can order satellite internet. Unfortunatly we’re having second thoughts about it now. We’ve been visiting a cruddy little email-and-tickets shop in Sri Thanu whose highspeed connection was down the last few times. Colin spoke to one of the owners who had nothing but bad things to say about IPStar and their satellite service. He says 75% uptime is about what you can expect, despite their promises, and he isn’t even getting that anymore. So this is going to cost us 70 bucks to set up, 70 bucks a month, a locked one-year contract and possibly our passports or a huge deposit. If it’s going to be down for days at a time, we need another option.

Cell modem would be cool as a backup, if I could find any bloody information about it around here. Also the busier south end of the island is wired for ADSL, and we’ve heard they’ve got a similar thing going up north in the fishing port Chalokum. We’re going to head up there today and maybe stay overnight somewhere to get a feel for the place. Our house here is cool but a house just can’t be a home without the nurturing teat of mother Internet.

Now for cool stuff we’ve seen while swimming! There is so much neat flotsam and such out there during high tide, and though we don’t have snorkling gear yet the water has been clear lately. We’ve seen:

– tons of tiny brown jellyfish with big stubby tentacles
– one jellyfish 2 inches in diameter, totally clear, with long hanging tentacles
– a stick encrusted with little white-shelled worms with red feathery mouth-feeler things that pulsate in and out of their shells
– little yellow fishes that swim near the surface and dart between floating seaweed clumps; might be juvenile Three-striped Whiptails
– little gobies that dart back into their holes in the sand when we swim by
– what look like dead floating blue jellyfish with deflated bells, although they look more like anemonies from underneath
– a snail floating on the surface, that seemed to be producing an egg sack consisting of a string of bubbles on top with purple dangly bits (the eggs?) on the bottom. I wonder if it was supposed to be floated up to the surface or if something had gone horribly wrong for the poor snail. Curious!

Yesterday we adopted a group of 7 of the little yellow fishes; they followed us out for about twenty minutes, presumably because we were good cover from whatever they are hiding from. They looked so lost like they were trying to find the reef so I swam out toward it with them in tow. I was collecting floating stuff together to make a shelter for the little guys, when I picked up a plastic fishing float that had another yellow fish laying on top of it in an inch of water (why?? was he sunbathing?? suiciding??). He was about 1+1/2 times the size of the biggest of the school, and when he joined them they followed him around. After a minute the whole bunch promptly disappeared down into the water. A successful reunion!

Colin has also identified many of the birds in the area, with the exception of these two that don’t seem to be in our book. His descriptions, so we can hopefully find them later on the net:

A) Shape much like little heron. Colouring all brown. Series of stripes strong at the head fading down the body. Brown wings, green legs. Flesh coloured section of lower mandible. Longer neck, white underwings. In flight: all white but dark body.

B) Looks like little cormorant but with longer more conical beak. Heron-like (very) green legs. Yellow eye. Body held at 45 degrees. No visible ‘wing hanging out to dry’.

Oh, I’ve been playing the Sims 2 with the new Pets expansion. My first dog makes more money as a police dog than its owner does. Somehow I never imagined they paid those police dogs… ;) Also I successfully created a “crazy cat lady” with maxnum cats who hang out all over the furniture and attack visitors. My lappy actually runs the game better than my old machine!

Another great kayak trip today! We went south this time and made it all the way to the start of Thongsala, although we opted for lunch on the beach rather than going in to town. On the way back we hit another storm with a surprisingly strong wind in our face, so we pulled in to the nearest bar to have drinks and watch the rain.

The highlight was exploring the small river that feeds into our bay, Ao Hin Kong. We got surprisingly far through the mangrove-choked stream and saw, among other things, crabs that climb trees! Their shells resemble tree bark and they tuck their bright blue claws under them while they sit up in the branches over the water. If disturbed they quickly leap down with a loud plop – we thought they were frogs until we managed to sneak up on a couple for a closer view.

Speaking of frogs, we saw a big frog cross the road by our house they other day, and up near Haad Yao there were tiny black frogs (smaller than my pinky nail) hopping all over the ground. Much more impressive than the spiders, which a few tiny sightings today bring the count up to 6. One had super long whispy legs and looked like it could probably walk on the water like a water-skeeter.

Well, Colin is out cold but I should probably wake him up so we can go return the kayaks and get some dinner on our way back home.

The Kayak (which I have discovered, is how you spell it) Adventure

So we found some Kayaks! We where in the tiny little town of Seethanu yesterday buying some food and eating breakfast at the Rasta Bar. We thought it would be a good idea to ‘inquire localy’ about some kayaks. The coolest named place in/around Seethanu is Chills, which is spelled with a picture of a reclining man for the i (If we had a net connection I’d have found a picture), so we followed the signs past the SeeThanu’s make-shift harbour and down a mud road and up a hill and down it again until we got where we where going.

Oh my god this is going to be a long story. I can’t believe I haven’t even gotten to the kayaks yet. Or the day of the event.

Sos we wander up and there’s this nice looking little bar and an english accent hollers something friendly in our direction. I ask about kayaks and he says they just got two all of four days ago and isn’t that amasing. He quotes me 150 baht an hour (about 4.50 cad) and 700 baht a day. I ask him about two days because I recon we can just pull them up to our house at the end of the day. He hums and hahs and comes up with 1250 which sounds good to me. So we book 2 of them (both of them) for the next morning (well actually we book them for a couple hours later on that day and then change our mind at the top of the hill walking back but this is long and pointless enough already).

Skip ahead a day almost entirely spent swimming just in front of the house, a fairly restfull night, and a toast and tea breakfast. We have a date with Kayaks!

Yes, so, after that skipping we wander up towards chills again at like 9ish in the morning. The bar is just as nice looking, no sign to either of the guys I was talking to last night (sorry, one guy got streamlined out). Anyway after trying and failing to get Kayaks from both a very clean cut guest and a very thai waitress we decide we need some more breakfast. Which turns ot to be a very nice bowl of muslii, fruit, and yogurt (my breakfasts haven’t been real thai) with one of these fruit shakes that everyone here makes and everyone makes very well (my favorite is cococut, this one was banana. A close second).

Anyway the very clean cut american (it turns out) guest I tried to rent a kayak from decides he needs to watch That 70’s Show at 9 in the morning in an open air thai bar (I’m never going to refer to anothing eating establishment as ‘open air’ because I have yet to see one that isn’t). So we ate our tasty breakfast while realising certain things about western culture in general and that 70’s show in particular (omg! that short chick on that show totaly plays meg from the family guy!) until one of the english guys wandered down to the bar.

He remebered us, remembered the deal and, promptly set his man on retrieving the kayaks. Which his man uncomplainingly did.

I ended up chatting to the english guy who turned out to be really interesting and very cool, dispite ordering some thai dude to do all the heavy lifting when he himself was a bit of a free-loader at the time (remind me to edit this if I ever make friends with that guy and give him the addy to this). In fact he was far too interesting to attempt to discuss at this point in time, as his most interesting aspects are only tangentially related to kayaks.

So yes, we obtained a couple of Kayaks! First kayak mission: to the house! we need a passport in order to rent the kayaks! Yes. He informed us that morning: “Huh, gee, I should probably get a passport or something off of you so you don’t just run off with the kayaks”. Of course it would be really inconvenient to walk all the way back to the house and then back to chills with a passport so he suggested: “why not use the kayaks to pick up the passport”? Genius! Why didn’t I think of that?

So there we where in the water bobbing off towards the house, which wasn’t really very far away at all. So we bobbed between some rocks that buffeted the very small beach Chills is perched on, and past the clumps of very small mangrove (I think?) forests to our house. It probably took about as long as it takes to walk. Well the way there took much longer because we kept sneaking up on little flocks of Whimbrels (we checked three new birds off today!) trying to identify their whitish patch on the rump extending up the back in a V. Which we did. They have very neat curved beaks. And green feet! Which is actually pretty common here for waders.

Yes so we got the passport and then b-lined it back to chills, dropped off the damper than expected passport, and continued on past, into territories unkown.

Well actually we knew the territory at least poorly. We had walked all the way up to Haad Yao (you all have a map of Koh Phangan handy right?) where we spotted a used snorkling place. So we had walked past everything we where about to paddle past (altough in alot of places the road doesn’t follow the beach). In fact it was our informal goal to make it back to Haad Yao by Kayak to buy some used snorking.

So we paddled past a very small wall of the gorgeous granite that the entire island seems to be made up. We paddled through the bay SreeThanu lives on. Past their port. The bay is very very shallow except for a narrow trench leading in to the docks. Sarah thinks the narrow trench might be man-made but that seems like a big job to me for a tiny fishing village. I think it is more likely the village exists because of the trench and not the other way around.

We paddled past a floating… room. Made of bamboo right on the edge of the trench. Mabey for crabbing or fishing? It honestly looked like it was where the traffic guard stood when directing rush hour boat traffic.

Past one cabana, two, cabana, three cabana, more. And then to the end of the bay. This felt like an accomplishment. Recounting it to you now it doesn’t seem very far but there are factors I have not mentioned. For one, I said kayaks but we did not get kayaks. We did not get what you get if you walk down to the water in BC and ask for a kayak.

We got what tourists in the bay of thailand get when they walk down to the water and ask for a kayak. I think they’re called ducks? But I may be making that up. Anyway they are small (7 feet long?) and open. And being open they bob your centre of gravity around 20 centimeters over the water instead of a couple of centimeters beneath it. Anyway they where not like paddling a kayak. They where like paddling a log. A very admirably designed log, but a log none-the-less. Actually they didn’t act like a log in terms of the yawing with each paddle stroke. Each stroke brought the bow through something like 10 degrees so you kind of waddled back and forth. I just kept staring at the bow and cringing at all the energy I was expending to make that stupid little waddle happen. So keep in mind we where not doing this in an elegent vessel designed for nar-whale hunting, we are doing it in a chunk of plastic designed for drunked germans.

It also doesn’t seem like very far to me because I just got back from doing it in the other direction. And let me tell you, with the current the way it is I barely had to be awake for the return trip. Even though I was paddling a duck.

So yes, we where starting to feel the effects of that marathon 2km paddle as we rounded the head of Seethanu’s bay. And wow, we saw, weather. The darkest storm cloud we have seen to date filled the entire sky up ahead of us. It reached down to touch the water in places where it was raining, and it was moving towards us steadily. We were doomed!

Luckily as we rounded the bend we also came upon a small deserted looking beach – shelter! We paddled down it for a bit and noticed all the fishing refuse and palm tree stumps. It really was a nice beach; deep fine sand and a tide line of broken coral bits and beautiful little shells. They must work pretty hard to keep the tourist beaches so clean. Sarah thought the garbage and stuff was actually pretty cool and set off to walk down the beach, and Colin climbed the sandy bluff to investigate our first small forest, made of these trees that look like giant horsetails, and big vines that hung off everything. Oh – and we got rained on, a lot. It was wonderful. :)

But all the storms we’ve had so far last for about 10 minutes, so we were off again after some more tooling around and spotting some beautiful new birds (so glad we have the binocs again!). Around the next bend we could see what looked like a shipwrecked ship up on the rocks, with torn white sails flapping in the wind. These guys had their decor down – it was the famed Pirate Bar! With an entire wall of speakers and DJ booth – outdoors no less; can they do that? I can see why the bar is way out on the rocks a long way from nowhere. Dude from Chills said he did some DJing at the Apache Bar the next beach up; I wonder if he has been to any parties here.

Speaking of parties! They’ve been building a house (or maybe a house/business) just up the street from us and are now celebrating it’s completion with a karaoke party. We’ve been wondering what the deal with the loud Thai music was; Colin just strolled up to take a look and met someone we knew from a nearby restaurant who explained it. I’m glad it isn’t just obnoxious tourists! :)

We’re pretty wiped tonight after so much paddling and sunshine, we couldn’t even drag out butts back out for dinner so we’re dining on snacky odds-and-ends. I’m happy to say they have those little chestnut and bean paste cookies here that Sarah liked so much from Thriftys. Also sticky sweet rice wrapped in leaves – yum!

So anyway we continued on past the pirate bar, and five-cabana-six (more like 20 at this point), to the fabulously clean Sunset Cove with resorts surrounding it on all the hillsides. The going had been pretty tough so far; there seemed to be a (wonderful, coolin) wind blowing in our faces and a current to fight against, so we stopped in for lunch at the clean clean beach. And found the most beautiful resort (all wood and gorgeous flowers, and wooden paths everywhere, like botanical gardens) which also had the best food so far. Even the bathrooms were super-wow with a sink and mirror carved out of a gnarly tree base. And TP! We’re keeping places in mind for those of you who will be joining us next year and this one is tops (although we were too polite to ask the price).

We noticed the start of our sunburns at this point, and after re-lathering up with sticky white sunscreen we decided to head back. It had seemed much too far to go two more long beaches to Haad Yao, but as soon as we turned around and had the wind behind us and the current going our way, things were a breeze. We discovered we had much more time and energy to get back with so we took our time and poked around the rocks and stopped at the cool deserted beach again. We saw an amazing huge jellyfish with bright blue tentacles, numerous crabs, one very well-to-do hermit crab and a school of silver fish that jumped out of the water around our kayaks.

There is a large grove of trees growing out of the water (mangrove trees (?) – at least three species) just north of our bay, and we spent a couple of hours trying to navigate our boats around inside the dense dipping branches (or are they roots?). The water in there was extremely still and shallow, and the only sounds were birds around making eerie hoop-hooop noises.

Yes, the mini magrove forests where completely fantastic in the little ducks. It’s like being 12 again and wandering all through the woods. I hasten to mention again that these where small patches. I don’t want people all imagining these amasing mabgrove forests just to feel lied to when we finally get a picture out. The tallest trees in stand something about 5 meters and the largest patch is probably on the order of a couple of mabey a hundred meters to a side. But they are very dense and they are very cool. They are pretty much exactly as you’d imagine a tiny mangrove forest. Much like a normal forest of tall sapplings but all standing on roots as thick as thumbs arcing every which-way into about a foot of water with a sandy bottom. It is SO much fun navigating the maze of roots in the little ducks. I admit that a real ocean kyak would be completely useless here. Far too long and far too hard to manouver. I don’t know why but the huge tangle has these little sort-of-paths running through it. Paths where the tangle is just a little less dense and you could, if you layed down flat on your back and pulled your little faux-kayak along by the branches, sneak through the maze.

We crept along inside the forest exploring and looking for unfamiliar birds (two of which I startled but did not get much of a look at). The sun was shining, the ocean was warm, there was a marine thicket in need of exploring and good god life is just really really good.

Spider count for Erin: Sarah has now seen four. A second fuzzy little wolf spider has been sitting on our front door, and there were tiny tiny tiny little webs in the grove with equally tiny spiders in them. Sarah *thought* she saw a terrible ugly big spider nest in a bunch of hanging leaves, and actually capsized her kayak to avoid smacking her face into it. It may have actually been caterpillars of some sort but she was happy to leave that investigation for another day.

Oh, and there were rocks in the middle of the grove that we climed up on to. What a view!

Wheuf; exhaustion has hit both of us for reals, and we’ve checked off in our bird book what birds we could identify (the hoop-hoooper was a Greater Coucal which we spotted once). So I think we will both rest well tonight; despite the bass thrumming of the karaoke party down the street.