Saturday was to be our only full day on the Island. We woke up to find it was still raining, but it was not quite as relentless as the day before. After breakfast the rain had stopped, so I decided to go for a barefoot run on the beach. It was a great run. I had the quintessential overseas beach running experience. A group of young smiling and waving boys ran with me for a couple hundred yards down the beach. They soon got tired and one by one dropped away behind me. It wasn't long before I was completely alone. Just me, some strange sea birds and the Indian Ocean. After a couple of miles I turned around and headed back to the hotel. I wanted to run farther, but my feet were not accustomed to running barefoot in the sand and were beginning to hurt. Sure enough, when I got back to the hotel room I had big blisters on the tips of most of my toes from the constant friction of the sand.
Although the day was grey, Cassandra and I wanted to do some swimming in the ocean. We took a short boat trip to a reef to do a little snorkeling. The water was choppy and the visibility nearly zero, but we decided to give it a try anyway. I jumped in the water and not 2 minutes later was stung on my right arm by a jellyfish. It wasn't just a small sting either, it covered most of one side of my forearm. Shortly after that a woman on her honeymoon that was with us cut her leg on the coral of the reef. So only about 10 minutes after our boat trip began, we were headed back to the pier.
I nursed my sting for a good majority of the rest of the day. It felt as if I had been burnt by fire, and the pain did not subside for about 4 hours. I kept ice on it, and that seemed to help a bit.
That night the stars came out, and we had a wonderful meal of grilled fish and shrimp while the band played.
No comments:
Post a Comment