Day’s Total Distance: 6 Nautical Miles (NM)
Breakfast: Granola with powdered milk, an apple and a granola bar shortly after
We get a pretty late start and paddle from about 9:30am until noon.
I feel crusty already. My chin is red and sore from accidentally peeling too much of the sunburn from it, exposing raw skin to the scorching sun, and my hands are painfully sunburnt feeling tender and stinging to the touch. Keeping my head down with my hat on, I try pathetically to hide from the sun while in my kayak...this is ridiculous I think to myself. Only day one and I’m in piss poor shape to be exposed to the unforgiving sun rays.
All too quickly I’m realizing the importance of any kind of fresh water source - I am thankful for the small sea sponge I brought with me, making it so much easier to wash from barely half a cup of water that I sacrifice from one of the water bladders - I’m not sure if Jaime notices me taking from our drinking water supply or not, but even if he did, it’s too important to me to care otherwise. As he later points out during our trip, I am more like the Allie-cat I’m often called than I care to admit - if my face is cleansed and my hands are washed, physically and psychologically I feel so much better. What’s more, if I have a couple bottles of essential oils to apply, I’m good to go. My essential essentials are tea tree and lavender - why? Tea tree oil is anti-everything: anti-septic, -bacterial, -fungal, -viral, -inflammatory, -microbial....I could go on...it rids you of what ails you in no time! And lavender? For sleeping even with sore muscles keeping you awake, for sunburns, headache/fever/stress/anxiety, cuts & wounds, for smelling pretty, and smelling pretty enough to keep certain bugs away. (I’m not entirely sure if it works but I’ll do anything to avoid chemical bug sprays!) Jaime teases me for just wanting to smell pretty. Sorry Jaime, but man you stink! He’s happy bathing in the salt water for all he cares, and it’s all I can do to wash it off me! Men are from mars, women are from venus?
Quick-dry fabric covers for the backs of my hands (thanks Jaime), polarized sunglasses, rash/sun-guard long sleeved top, spray skirt, hat and pink sparkly scarf. I'm in the tropics with NO skin exposed. Sheesh.
All too quickly I’m realizing the importance of any kind of fresh water source - I am thankful for the small sea sponge I brought with me, making it so much easier to wash from barely half a cup of water that I sacrifice from one of the water bladders - I’m not sure if Jaime notices me taking from our drinking water supply or not, but even if he did, it’s too important to me to care otherwise. As he later points out during our trip, I am more like the Allie-cat I’m often called than I care to admit - if my face is cleansed and my hands are washed, physically and psychologically I feel so much better. What’s more, if I have a couple bottles of essential oils to apply, I’m good to go. My essential essentials are tea tree and lavender - why? Tea tree oil is anti-everything: anti-septic, -bacterial, -fungal, -viral, -inflammatory, -microbial....I could go on...it rids you of what ails you in no time! And lavender? For sleeping even with sore muscles keeping you awake, for sunburns, headache/fever/stress/anxiety, cuts & wounds, for smelling pretty, and smelling pretty enough to keep certain bugs away. (I’m not entirely sure if it works but I’ll do anything to avoid chemical bug sprays!) Jaime teases me for just wanting to smell pretty. Sorry Jaime, but man you stink! He’s happy bathing in the salt water for all he cares, and it’s all I can do to wash it off me! Men are from mars, women are from venus?
Jaime has to remind me early on in our trip to take photos too! So here's the proof that I'm doing as told.
Jaime doing what he does so well....capturing the magic, always
After a lovely morning getting sidetracked meandering down a river bordered by mangroves, and a chance to hang our legs out of the boat, exposing them to some sunshine and to recline, arching my back in a much needed stretch, we re-emerge to the open coast to find our first beach to break for the afternoon heat.
Beautiful lines
First Hour: Eat a lunch of pitas with any combination of fresh tomatoes, peanut butter, guava or blackberry jam, and cheese. FInger lickin', lip smacking yummy!
Second Hour: Dig a crab out of its hole in the sand, and use it for bait to fish. No luck catching a fish.
Third Hour: Nap. Write. Yoga. Jaime sets up the tripod filming the other crabs and hermit crabs that weren’t killed in the making of this trip.
The midday heat is carefully managed.
A lightning quick dash from the sanctuary of the shade, over burning hot sand in the relentless heat...I'm careful to manage the sunburn factor, bit by bit.
The afternoon paddle is along rocky coastline, and we’re watchful for any beach to camp on. I’m covered head to toe with my sparkly head scarf as a face mask, earning me the nickname of bandita from Jaime, and my kayak skirt fitted around the coaming of the boat, making it grossly and uncomfortably clammy inside. Sweat drips down the length of my legs, feeling as though I’ve just been swimming, which, in a way my legs are...water sloshes around in my boat, I think due to a small hole somewhere in the seam of my skirt. It’s absolutely dreadfully hot. My butt is numb, my boat always seems to drift to the right, so my arm hurts from pushing my paddle so much to compensate, and frankly, I’ll keep going if I have to, but man I’m happy to stop anytime!
We finally find a beach that offers fairly large, smooth round rocks, and a fresh water source! Yahoo! Jaime barely has his boat pulled up the beach before he’s got his fishing line in hand and casting it into the estuary to catch a fish for dinner. There were some big ones we saw, but they were spooked too quickly. Oh well. As I set about filling our solar shower, washing my clothes and myself, Jaime calls back to me,
“Don’t linger too long, and don’t turn your back on the water for too long either”
I infer from this that he's alluding to crocodiles who may be lurking in the water. Great! I take no time at all to finish washing (oh my god, feels so good!) and quickly head back to where he’s setting up a fire and the kitchen.
Bandita!
We finally find a beach that offers fairly large, smooth round rocks, and a fresh water source! Yahoo! Jaime barely has his boat pulled up the beach before he’s got his fishing line in hand and casting it into the estuary to catch a fish for dinner. There were some big ones we saw, but they were spooked too quickly. Oh well. As I set about filling our solar shower, washing my clothes and myself, Jaime calls back to me,
“Don’t linger too long, and don’t turn your back on the water for too long either”
I infer from this that he's alluding to crocodiles who may be lurking in the water. Great! I take no time at all to finish washing (oh my god, feels so good!) and quickly head back to where he’s setting up a fire and the kitchen.
Dinner: Rice and beans cooked with garlic and onions, with hot sauce and fresh corn on the cob with a chocolate cake for dessert. We’ve already been dreaming of our first cravings, liquados (fresh fruit shakes) by the end of day one. (We're only 2 weeks away from them now!)
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| The sun sets as we make our dinner |
“Don’t move” He hisses. “There’s a boat.”
My heart goes still. We’d heard rumours of there being drug boats and illegal fish poachers and loggers on this exposed side of the island, and I was all too quick to brush off people’s comments of there being danger in what we were doing. Now it was right here, a black shape barely
distinguishable in the black water against the black night, lurking right in front of our camp, potential danger looming!
“Do you think they see us?” in the quietest whisper I dare. As if over the sound of crashing waves pounding the rocks, could they hear me whisper.
Just then a bright spotlight comes on, scanning the beach to the right of us. My heart goes from still to beating rapidly in my chest. This is it. The light barely scans over us, Jaime sitting against the log and I still half bent in mid-air, too stiff to move a muscle. I wonder how much they could make of us in our dark clothes. Suddenly they turn their light off, we hear some voices, and the boat starts to murmur away. PhEW!!! (FYI, Jaime and I have agreed to disagree on our differing version of this story - we’re still laughing that we could have such different takes on it) We decide that the boat wasn’t big enough, loud enough, fast enough to be a drug boat, but that it could have been fish poachers even. We’ll never know. It was alarming enough though!
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| It always seems odd to have a fire in the tropics, but keeping it small enough to cook in our dutch oven is all we need. It later died down surely too small for the boat to notice |
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Photos and edits courtesy of Jaime Sharp and Allie Carroll
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