(Wednesday)
Having giving up hope on the whole ‘snorkeling’ joke, today we decided to try our hand at Kayaking.
$15 gets you a big red plastic two-person kayak for an hour, and after strapping on a very flattering orange life vest, you’re free to go drown yourself—I mean, kayak—around Fisherman’s Beach, provided you stay inside the ring of buoys that protect you from getting flattened by ferries or Geoff’s Water Taxi.
With no instruction, we were pushed out into the ocean and suddenly paddling for our lives against the wind and waves. Tip number One: it’s much easier if you both paddle in sync with each other.
Out in the deep water, it was very peaceful. This time, the water of Fisherman’s Beach appeared crystal clear: blue and clean and sparkling under the sun. Perfect for oh, I dunno, say snorkeling?
Kayaking is a very frustrating experience. A lot of effort for minimal results. But great exercise, and overall pretty fun. The best part is crashing back on shore and falling on your ass as you try to exit the boat.
Deciding we’d not yet had enough exercise, we grabbed our snorkel gear and headed to Putney beach to simply swim. I LOVE flippers! We spent a good hour just going as fast as we could, till I sounded like a winded racehorse through the snorkel. Who needs the gym when you’ve got an entire island? We swam sprints and circles and just had fun—until something stung my hands. Not a jellyfish, and no visible marks—probably just a water insect. But still, it was enough to kick-start my paranoia and shortly thereafter, we called it quits. The ocean is no fun when you’re scared of what lives in it.
We toweled off and went beach combing—where low and behold, Caroline found a jellyfish, dead and washed in on the tide. Well, well, well. All this time, the natives had been lying to us. Just wait till we got back to the Village and showed Geoff! Using a stick, we moved The-Jellyfish-That-Doesn’t-Exist back from the water so we could grab it on the way back, then continued on in search of safer game: sea shells.
And Putney was the place to do it. There were so many shells that the waves actually jingled. We found lots and lots of goodies—then realized that the tide was coming in, and quite quickly. In minutes, our stuff would be swept out to sea. We raced back—disappointed to see our Jellyfish-That-Doesn’t-Exist was already gone—but grabbed our stuff just in time.
View the booty:
Now thoroughly tired, we figured we’d actually try to write and eat some lunch. The group of kids that were in the house before us had left some chocolate birthday cake, which we were more than happy to enjoy. So we sat down on the porch with our laptops and cake and milk and began to write.
And then, Kevin showed up.
We’d seen Kevin the Kookaborough hanging around the Dolphin House from the get-go, presumably begging for food. What is it with all these Australian Animals, anyway? You’d think the tourists fed them all or something. Huh.
Anyway, Kevin landed on the railing, looking longingly at our chocolate cake. (In hindsight, maybe Kevin is a female.) But we were good and resisted the temptation to feed him.
Which made Kevin very demanding.
I’m taking non-stop pictures, of course, as Kevin is perched on top of Caroline’s laptop, staring her down. And you wonder why we didn’t get much writing done?
Then Kevin’s partner comes. Kevin2. (We contemplated Starsky and Hutch, and then Sam and Dean, but nothing beats Kevin.)
But still, we were good and didn’t give in, to which they became more demanding.
Finally, we caved.
There are hundreds of Kevin pictures, check out photobucket for more.
After all that excitement, we ran back to
Perfect end to a very fun day.
But I STILL heard animals under my bed.
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