Nenya.net

Water, water everywhere

... except where we need it. Well, that's not entirely accurate- we do have water in the house at the moment, tho' this is mainly in large barrels that were recently acquired to ensure we wouldn't have a problem with the drought that is evidently anticipated by several people here. To add to the expected lack of water, one of the main pipes bringing water into the city from the reservoir sprung a leak, hence decreasing the amount of water available in the city. Having said that, some people here definitely haven't heard of showers, or if they have then they don't undertake them particularly regularly ;-(

Another place that would've been useful to have water would've been under our boat last weekend. A group of us went to Turtle Islands (beautiful and definitely desert island type places) to spend Easter there, taking advantage of the long weekend. It was lovely to get away from Freetown to somewhere quiet- no mobile phones ringing and a lovely opportunity to relax on the beach and read. Some people also played cricket- we had so very eager volunteers to help in the fielding, with the local kids vying to be the one who brought the ball back to the bowler. Some of the had impressive throwing abilities too- much better than mine, but I'm just glad I didn't actually manage to throw the ball backwards rather than forwards- yes, my abilities to throw a ball really are that bad! ;-)

Anyway, having water under our boat.... due to various technical difficulties, we arrived at the islands later than anticipated and right at low tide, meaning we had to get out and push the boat off the sandbank and into the deeper channel that led up to Paradise Island (at least that's what I'm told the island we were staying on was called). The accommodation was variable- some people had tents on the sand, some had mattresses in tents and 4 of the girls (because guys really don't like the idea let alone the practice of sharing beds) got to share 2 double beds. In some ways this was good, because guys would not have fit the beds (one of the girls being 5'2" complained about hitting her feet against the end of the bed most of the night) and definitely would not have managed to avoid touching the mosquito nets.

Having arrived on the Friday afternoon, we enjoyed fish and rice (something of a staple) and then chatted round the campfire in the evening and into the night. The breeze kept sandflies and mossies away. On Saturday afternoon (after a slightly different lunch consisting of chicken and chips), I went fishing, well, to be slightly more accurate, I piloted the boat round an old wreck while some of the guys went fishing. We caught Barracuda and Bonita, the latter looks like a small shark and really fought to avoid being caught but in the end it meant we had plenty of fish for supper.

The trip back on Sunday morning/early afternoon was much less eventful, but it was brilliant to go along the coast of the peninsula and watch the gathering storm clouds (apparently the wet season doesn't begin until May but I'm not sure if anyone told the weather that this year). We arrived back in Freetown somewhat more tanned but also with more bites (Saturday night not having favoured us with a breeze and therefore we'd been liberally attacked) having all had a relaxing couple of days in Turtle Islands. Having been assured that there were no longer any turtles in the islands, I was to surprised to actually see a turtle, tho' I think it belong to some of the locals.

Labels: fish, turtle, water

posted by Nenya @ 3:37 pm