Today we met some other children at breakfast and arranged to just play all day at their chalet on the water. The girl was 10 an the boy was 7. They spoke very little English but everyone spoke the language of fun. The photo I was not able to take was of the 5ft Monitor Lizard – A cousin to the Komodo – that was waiting for me in the stream bed that I was running up. I stopped about 10 feet from him and he did not move. I finally turned and went down another trail. My run took me from Coral bay North up the West coast to Turtle Beach. At Turtle beach, I went snorkeling and saw a small bat ray and some other cool fish. The sun was setting as I was making my way back along the thinly marked trail through the jungle. Whoever tagged the tree limbs with red and white tape to mark “the trail” – thank you.
On the one day that we did not charge out , sneak out of the house and plow on to Long Beach to watch the sunrise – the sunrise from our vantage point of our chalet veranda looked to be clear and spectacular with high clouds and a sliver of the moon leading the way. We walked to the fishing pier with our Dutch neighbors to see them off. We could see many fish from the pier and the start of a very sunny dy. Their boat was a bit late but eventually arrived. I need to call and confirm our departure. At breakfast we encountered a family on holiday from Germany with small children 9 and 6. While the parents were at dive school, Ezra and Viena played with the other children the entire day. A good play date. Their chalet has a bunch of palm trees which make for good shade and any time of the day. Instead of doing another hike to secret beach we just decided to stay at the beach of Coral Bay and play with the other two children. The day went great. I even swam out to the floating doack in the afternoon. I even had a chance to pull out the word card game and play. I am so glad for the shade of the cocnut trees in front of their chalet. The day was so hot and the water ironically on this hot day did not appear inviting since the thought of coming out with hot salty skin was not appealing. What this island is lacking is a fresh water source to shower off after a dip in the ocean. The dive center had a shower, but nowhere else. Divers pay big bucks to come here. I am sure the dives are worth the price. Seeing the coral underwater is still so amazing to me. I feel like the coral and the underwater sea is a whole new world. Who knows maybe one day I will return here and attend Dive School. Later that afternoon I took a hike to explore the wild North part of the island. What a hike! Past romantic beach. Over teh rock coastline. And then into the deep forest, following only a small trail lined with red flag markers every 50 feet. I was going to try to find a different trail back instead descending again to romantic beach, so I stuck to the markers. The trail was strong and then the markers stopped. The trail kept going until a small riverbed that had a trickle of water not really flowing. I stopped here briefly and decided to bound up the riverbed in hopes of finding another red marker. After my first bound, but before my second, I saw in a small pool of water the largest monitor lizard – He was staring at me – not moving. Must have been almost 2 meters. Twice as big as the others we had seen and especially big in the jaw area. We had a stare off, but I needed to move towards him to go back down the trail. If I needed any other sign, this was my turn around point.
oneworldtwokids 