Location: Brazil
Hi friends, family, and stalkers!
Today the five students that are scuba certified had an early wakeup and left when everyone else woke up. It felt empty during breakfast, especially when we had to pick up and do their jobs for clean-up. It was a sunny morning, so the minute we finished cleaning up, we went ashore. The island is quite small, with one bus that has three stops. One of those stops is by the port (where we were), one by the main square, and one further away on the island. Our plan (the 11 of us not diving), was to take out money for the bus, go the the main square, maybe buy some snacks, rent surfboards, and go to the beach. Only one problem: the bank (or ATM) is located in the main square, and we need money for the bus to take us to the bank… Walking it is!
The sun was blazing hot, sweat was running down our backs and dripping from our faces, and we had to walk up and down a steep hill. It felt like hours had passed when we finally got to the town (maybe 30 min had passed). Who did we find there? Yes, the five people who stayed behind to buy cold drinks at the gas station and were smart enough to ask the bus if they took dollars, which they did, and they had a cool, nice ride into town. Oh well. Half of us half-dead and hot, the other half energized, we walked to the bank, which was a small room (with AC, thank god) and three ATMs. Nobody was successful in getting any money, though. Thankfully, Fernando is not like St. Helena, where everyone only took cash, so we could still buy snacks for the beach with our cards.
From town, it was only a five-minute walk to the beach, and it started to drizzle a little. We welcomed the cool rain and a bit of a break from the hot sun. On the beach we found a place to rent surfboards and also umbrellas to hide in the shade a bit. It turns out they work amazingly for rain cover, too. What had started as a drizzle soon turned into a full rainstorm (not technically, maybe, but it was raining a LOT). The umbrella was leaking and our stuff slowly got soaked. The rain did not stop anyone, though. The surf-renters had a fun time catching waves, and others swam around and played mermaids. Lunch was expensive, but we did not want to run very far in the pouring rain, so the only restaurant close by would have to do.
Once it started to clear up a bit, around 13-14, we walked back to town and did some shopping. A few of us also got back to port to go back on Vela earlier so that we could do laundry and deck-showers undisturbed.
For dinner we were all reunited, the ones that came back to Vela earlier, the ones that stayed behind on shore, and the Scuba-crew. Since I am not certified, I did not dive, but I got a quote from Tom who says this about their dive: “The diving was great. We saw sharks, turtles, eels, rays, and a bunch of beautiful reef fish. Very cool!” -Tom Beacham. For dinner, we had takeaway pizza, which was delicious. It came in octagonal boxes, which we all thought was weird. Maybe that is the secret to a good pizza. Because it was great. For entertainment, Freddie took his clothes off and jumped in the water to retrieve a fender that had gotten loose. After his return, we had ice cream as a dessert (he was dairy-free and did not get any). Because of how fast the ice cream melted, it almost had to be inhaled.
During clean up we got attacked by flying ants. They were attracted to our lights, so we tried to turn everything on red mode. It was too lateants in beds, ants in chart-house, ants in heads, ants in galley. Today (two days later), I still find ants lying around. When I wrote this blog post the first time (it accidentally got deleted, so I’m rewriting it a few days later), ants were even crawling on the computer screen. They are not harmful, but obviously, it was not fun anyway.
That was all from me!
Bye until next time 🙂
(Hejd alla dr hemma som lser detta. Jag listade ut hur jag kan skriva med , och . Frlt om jag inte hunnit ringa alla och ocks prata klart. Flera samtal brts mitt i. Jag frsker uppdatera om allt i Barbados, jag vill ocks hra om allt dr hemma!!! Puss och Kram.)