Wednesday, July 30, 2003

 

i sent this email out a few days ago but i thought i would put it here for posterity and just finish the tale as well....

Hello everybody,

i just thought i would send a quick email to let you know what happened when amy loren and i decided to stay on a desert island. some of you will probably being getting a similar email from amy. What could be more wonderful we thought them to spend a couple of days on a little dserted island. we should have known that when three blondes try to do anything disaster is sure to follow. It was off to a bad start when we arrived on our little tropical island with only bread, peanut butter and apple jam to eat for 2 days. we then failed to get our hammocks up by ourselves so the caretaker of the island had to come over and do it for us. Anyway after an uncertain start we are soon enjoying ourselves in the beautiful blue waters of the carribean, snorkelling along the coral reef. Loren then gets stung on the leg by goodness knows what and was in agony for three hours and i am fried to within an inch of my life (although its only on my back and back of my legs because i was snorkelling so it looks like i was cooking and someone forgot to turn me over). Amy meanwhile was cooking nicely back on the beach and ended up with some lovely burn marks on her bum. So the adventure continues, we are still perfectly content, we are not yet feeling the pain of our injuries (but o that will come later!) and we are sitting in the shade of the palm trees enjoying the view and deciding to stay another night (we had not yet experienced one night on this tropical paradise). The captain of the boat that brought us over from the main island comes over to tell us he is leaving and taking the day trippers back. "it is very tranquil here, yah man" (said in carribean accent) "you might stay forever, there will be no rain" so we give him some money and ask him if he will bring us some fruit in the morning, as we only have bread. So the day trippers have gone, the caretaker has gone, we are all alone..........................................

we go back to our hammocks and lay in the last rays of the sun...being eaten alive by mosquitoes and sand flies. We then decide to go sit on the beach and watch the sun set before coming back to lie on our hammoks and watch the stars. Just as we stand up it starts to rain, and i mean it really started to rain, we were experiencing our first tropical rain storm. So then its a dash to gather our stuff together trying to cover everything weith plastic and then we run for a shelter made out of palm leaves. we were only directly in the rain for about 2 minutes but we were absolutely drenched. Soon it had stopped and we walked outside to survey the damage. We looked out over the sea in a state of shock before returning to our stuff to see what can be done. Loren then points out that the storm isn't over, we were just experiencing a moment of calm. Sure enough we can hear thunder in the distance and loren starts counting between lightning and thunder...and it's close and moving in fast. quickly we start shoving our bags under a picnic bench and loren is fetching sheets of corrugated iron from the other end of the island to cover the bags. we are throwing extra layers on ourselves and planning to get in this giant orange survical bag loren brought when out of the darkness we hear "hola?" hurrah!! the caretakers have arrived back! we are saved!!!!! they soon drag all our stuff out and bundle us down to the other end of the island to a boat and tell us they will take us to a hotel on the next island. when we reach the boat i shine my torch on the boat and realise its a canoe....so i shine my torch to the other end in hopes of seeing a motor....but not only is there not any motor but the woman is there bailing water out. We are going to drown! we are not saved!!! They then tell us that there is not enough space in the boat for us and the stuff so we are going to have to walk through the sea to the other island. Dear God save us! so we begin oursaviours (yolanda and george) leading the boat with our bags ahead and we three wading behind. Loren trips on a sharp rock falls hits her hand on another rock and gets bits stuck in her hand. then amy realises her only jumper is about to get wet and the man tells her if she doesn't want it to get wet she had better take it off...the only problem is that she only has a bra on underneath and it's pink, so it looks like she is wading through the sea naked. I on the other hand am wading through the sea (its up over our waists) in my pyjamas and a rain coat. a raincoat, overprepared for wading in the sea you may think. But it was amazing walking through the sea at night in a storm. The lightning kept illumionating the scence like day and fire flies hovered above the water all around us. So finally we reach the other side and we are led to a darkened mansion of a hotel, we had no idea how we were going to pay. there was no electricity or water as the hotel was closed for renovation. the only other building on this island was a hut the caretakers lived in with their children, 2 dogs (good dog and bad dog) and a white rabbit. they bring us sheets and candles and a tub with which we can collect rainwater from a hole in the verandah so that we can wash. so we are left in this strange abandoned hotel and we commence to traipse salt water and sand throughout every room just to make sure we cause as much mess as possible. we then take turns to go on the verandah and use this tub to have a 'shower' i sure hope no one was watching. So to bed surrounded by dripping clothes hanging from every surface. we awake in the morning, surrounded by a cloud of mosquitoes, thinking that surely the adventure must end soon. we wash and dress and sit outside, still in a state of shock. Then george brings over coffee and sweet bread for us, this man was so kind to us. we caused so much trouble for this family and they were always helpful and kind. so 20 mins later we are packed and ready to go back to water cay, our tropical paradise, to await the boat back to the main island, utila. So we sit and we wait and we walk and wait and play cards and wait. i then realise my back is extremely painful and when i put my rucksack on i experienced something i can only describe as ripping skin. so doctor loren and nurse amy examine my back. there noises were not comforting and loren told me it look like i had 3rd degree burns and i had indeed ripped the skin. so no more carrying rucksacks for me. then we realise no one is coming because it is too windy and the man with our food and money is not coming back. so then george and his too kids invite us to sit with them and eat coconuts. george climbed up the palm tree by hugging it and just walking up the trunk. he made it look extremely easy he then fetched down coconuts for us all. then using a machete cut off the top so we could drink the milk. we are now starting to feel that we may have to go back to the mansion and be a nuisance to the poor couple another night. Just as we despaired a boat appeared on the shore Hurrah!! we are saved!!! so we ask this captain if he will take us back to utila an clamber aboard. Warning bells should have sounded when they proceeded to cover everything with tarpaulin, the captain covered his face and put on a raincoat and then put up a huge umbrella in front of him. so we set off into a very choppy sea and we might as well have swam because we were soaked to the skin! we were not saved! we were going to drown!! then we stop at another island because the captain needs to pick something up so amy decides to get off to use the toilet and loren goes with her. "careful there's a bad dog" again?!! everywhere we go there's a bad dog!! so they go onto the island and soon enough there is a barking and 2 dogs come racing across the island and amy and loren are chased up a tree. i have never seen anyone move so fast before. but then the owner returns and calls the dogs off. eventually we make it back to utila, soaked to the skin, burnt, bitten and stung...but alive. o the last awful thing i had to go through (and this really was the worst) i had to borrow a t-shirt from loren and it says 'football is life, the rest is mere details' ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

lots of love Brianne xxx

so we were back in utila and now we discovered that every hotel was booked out for the many divers there. We searched and searched in the midday sun and finally ended up in a flea infested hovel at the end of town. Later we decided to get our soggy clothes washed at the laudromat...we should have been warned by the fact that the same lady who owned the flea pit ran the laundromat. Our clothes came back bleached within an inch of their life!!!!! they were very much lighter, stretched or shrunk and the elastic gone. And we paid for this privelige. Anyway we are now in nicaragua about to head for a few relaxing days on an isla ometepe. We must be mad we don't have much luck with islands.

posted by Brianne 8:46 pm

 

hello!!! ages ago i meant to blog about gate crashing a funeral but i have been having trouble with blogger and not alot of time anyway but while i am waiting for a bus i shall quickly tell you all (or in fact if no one reads this i will just tell myself).

On our last day in antigua we decided to take a look around the cathedral and the many old churches there. We went to one called Iglesia San Francisco and sat down in the pews only to realise a service was going on so we decided to slip out. Later standing outside taking photos of the front the service ended and the people starting coming out...it was then that we discovered it had been a funeral. We had gone and plonked ourselves down in the middle of a funeral service. Needless to say we made a quick getaway.

posted by Brianne 8:39 pm