Wednesday 8th December

 

This morning started like most others – fairly slow, led by the kids.  Our first adventure was to visit ^*^*ThE vAlLeY oF sHaDoWs^*^*^

We rode our bikes there, and had to clean our shoes before embarking through a thick palm tree forest.  We walked steadily upwards for a few hundred meters before popping out in a beautiful vista at a single grave of some kid who disappeared while snorkelling about 6 years ago.  Soon after this we came to a fork in the road, one way went to Middle Beach, the other to The Valley of Shadows and “The clear place”.  We followed the path to the latter, again through more thick forest until we came to another fork in the road; the Valley of Shadows and the Clear Place.  We decided to split up as this seemed the smartest thing to do when walking to a place called the Valley of Shadows; Dad and Tom went to the Clear Place to check it out and report back, and the rest of us went to the Valley of Shadows.  The Valley of Shadows mostly seemed like more thick forest, we got to a place with a bench and decided to split up again – I rushed ahead to do some recon on a path leading down while the rest waited.  A couple of minutes later the forest suddenly ended, and I was about 50m away from the ocean.  The path continued down to the rocks at the shore (there was no beach), but I took a quick photo there and headed back up the path to see the fate of the infirm.  Somehow, they managed to not get chased off and separated by the local fauna as I expected, and in fact Dad and Tom and re-joined the group by the time I arrived.  It sounded like the Clear Place was basically the same as the clearing I went to, and neither were enticing enough to make anyone want to walk there, so we headed back with the plan to visit Middle Beach for a paddle.

When we got to the Middle Beach fork, we bumped into someone else coming up the path. 

1.  They inferred it would be a difficult walk with kids, so Pip decided she didn’t want to try and take lbA down.
2.  George was getting quite cranky at this point, and didn’t want to go down, so Tom planned to take him back to the Lagoon beach.
3.  Dad needed to get back to drop off the hire car, so he couldn’t go
4.  Mum didn’t want to walk down all the steps, so she decided to go back with Dad

Lizl had charged ahead earlier and was already down there, so I decided to take Rory down and check it out.  

1. Turns out it was about 50 steps, and quite an easy walk in the end
2. George ended up being too cranky for any beach, so they took him home for a nap
3. Dad mistimed the return and could have easily come down for a 30 min dip
4. Probably see #1, but to be fair it was a lot of steps.

Easy enough with hindsight!

The beach was quite shallow (high tide)? Pretty rocky, but nice.  lbA had grabbed Rory’s swimming ring on the way back, so we didn’t get to use that, but we kept quiet and Rory didn’t seem to notice/mind.  Upon inspection we noticed some bluebottles on the sand which made me hesitant about going in.  I watched the water for about 10 mins, and after not seeing anything I decided to go in.  Rory was keen too and came in with me.  We practiced jumping over waves, and as has been the case with every time she has gotten in the ocean this holiday, she LOVED it.  After about 20 mins we got out and walked back up the many steps.  At the grave Rory asked me to read the gravestone, and then I gave her a flower to put nearby which she did very sweetly.

We then rode home, made Rory some lunch, and put her down for a nap, and made ourselves some lunch too.  George and Anna were already home and sleeping, although George visited Rory while she was eating… so maybe he wasn’t so sleepy yet.

At about 2:30pm we woke the kids and prepared for our final event of the holiday – fish feeding.  Mum and Dad vaguely remembered there being some official guy doing some fish feeding at 3pm from our last time, but we couldn’t find any mention of it in any documentation, and there was no one there when we arrived.  It didn’t matter, though – there was plenty of fish food available at $1 a cup.  We got the kids in their swimming gear, and gave them a cup each, then quickly decided they would probably just pour it straight in the water, so we took the cups back to ration in out to them.  Regardless, they loved it.  The fish were coming thick and fast, bumping against you to get the food.  There were mostly smaller fish (long and thin, about 20cm I would guess), but there were quite a few larger ones (bluefish, wrass (parrotfish), something drummer) which were cool to watch.  After we finished feeding we continued to swim for a while, Rory had her swimming ring and come out really deep with me, as always having a ball.

At about 4:30pm we went home, had some drinks at The Beachcomber table, and then set out to return the bikes and have dinner at the Anchorage.  This was a very fancy dinner (by island standards), I had a steak which was very good.  A killer sunset appeared and I rushed out to grab a few photos.  Dad and lbA were wandering around too and joined me.

We then caught the Anchorage shuttle back to The Beachcomber for a final round of Trivial Pursuit and an early bedtime.  Tomorrow we must be at the airport by 8am for a 9:35am flight (seemed way too early to us, but we’ll follow instructions).

Overall, a really great holiday.  Hopefully George and Rory remember some of it, but considering I barely remember any of the last time I came here 10 years ago, I’m not hopeful.

 

Points of note:

• I saw a red triangle painted on a tree during the Valley of Shadows walk, it looked just like a major crypto logo (Avalanche), and got I became obsessed with taking a photo of it to show some friends.  Somehow I couldn’t find it on the walk back though, frustrating. 
• At some point I invented a character called “Forest Boy”, loosely based on Mowgli from the Jungle Book.  I told Rory about it and George heard the rumour and got interested too.  Next minute I have made up a whole backstory for this kid, and I’m answering questions about his parents, friends, age, etc.  We were still talking about it at dinner.