18 August 2011

Up Jackson early (leaving the boat by 8am) and an exciting dinghy ride surfing into the mouth of the river and then, as it's low tide, hauling the dinghy up onto the beach and tying it to a coconut tree. The 4 hour round trip to the waterfall was completely worth it, and absolutely gorgeous. I wore my flip flops as I take after my mother when walking and stride ahead expecting the kids' little legs to keep up. I also carried the backpack, this keeping me more in pace with Mark and the kids! It reminded me of when Jess, Robbie and we hiked in NZ 7 years ago and we had to strap Lochy to Robbie's chest just to slow him down! Lochy wore Mia's wellies - the only things that fitted him that weren't flip flops and Mia wore some type of walking sandals that just about fitted her. It's one of the benefits of sailing - we haven't bought shoes for the past year. We had to go through the river a couple of times, up to thigh depth for the kids, but they were great, mightily helped by being accompanied by the village dog who escorted us all the way to the waterfall. The kids were abit disappointed that they couldn't swim in the pool at the bottom of the waterfall, but once I had seen about 10 mozzies descend on my legs in some kind of Red Arrows formation, I had made my decision. We were going back. We had heard about the no-no flies that are here that are vicious little blighters so were all sprayed up, but those mozzies, they just laughed in the face of our DEET spray and we've all got the bites to prove it. On the way back, we were offered fruit and water from a local couple in exchange for some rope they needed for their horses.

Getting the water was a mission, let me tell you. We left the kids on the boat, whilst we dinghied up the river where it was now higher tide, but not yet high enough to use the engine so we row into the mouth of the river where the surf is opposing the flow of the river. Narly, dude. Once we have paddled up to the house where we have been offered fruit, we can fill the jerry cans from the tap, but our hose doesn't quite reach to the dinghy to fill the water bags, so we have to find a different tap. In my best French, which is seriously lacking the main vocabulary (like, what time does it get dark, because I'm slightly concerned about the return journey? - I knew what time it got dark, but I didn't want to be rude and say, thanks for the water, now we've gotta go because the sun is setting) it was lovely to chat to the man whose face was completely covered with tattoos. I found out that there were currently 10 people living in the village as the school holidays were over and those with children lived in the main town with their kids during school term time. 200 people lived in the village when it wasn't school time. I could have learnt more, but I'm restricted in my French. Must learn more. Anyway, back to the water; Mark and I discussed the benefits of a water maker in such circumstances, or at least a decent rain catcher and I conceded that although the day had been lovely in general, this last part was 'a bit shit.' As we headed back through the river and then the surf and the sun was setting but we had some full jerry cans, Mark said "put that in your blog and smoke it" so I did.