Sand, sun, and jellyfish

Today started with intentions - good intentions. Our plan was to rent motorbikes & continue cruising around the island. After breakfast, we decided that a day on the beach would be a better idea. The beach was deserted; we were on the northwest side of the island which hadn't been developed. The beach was about a mile in length, and I would estimate that there were 40 people on the beach all day. I laid on the beach for 45 minutes on each side, so was to avoid any serious sunburn. However, I escaped only partially unscathed - there was a decent sized area of my back that I missed with sunscreen. I would regret the hasty sun screening for the next few days...


After a long morning of sunbathing & swimming, we decided to eat lunch at a new place. While we were sitting down, one of the guys across the restaurant struck up a conversation. James & I joined their group, which consisted of 2 Irishmen, 1 Irish woman, 3 ladies from London, and a lad from Australia. As we were talking, I had a hell of a time understanding Paul - one of the guys from Ireland. His accent was like Brad Pitt's character from Snatch - fast, Irish, and mumbled. I came to learn that Pikies are real, and despised in Ireland. We talked to them for a couple of hours before working up the energy to go snorkeling.


James & I decided that we would swim across the bay to Ko Ma, which had much better coral than our beach. The distance to the other side was about 1/2 mile, but it seemed like a distant point on the horizon. We rented snorkels, fins, and masks. I hadn't swam with fins before, and I found that they made swimming remarkably easy. The fins added a bit of confidence as my brain grappled with the fear of swimming across the bay. Once we were about 50 meters from the shore, my snorkel kept filling with water. I would pick my head out of the water, clear the snorkel, and then try again. After several times of having to do this, I was starting to panic. I still had a long ways to swim & I was expending valuable energy clearing my snorkel. After messing with the snorkel for several minutes, I decided it was leaking and it would be best to swim with my head above water. As my heart was pounding, I wished I had an extra 20 pounds of fat to aid in floating. Ecstatic that James didn't have to pull my drowning body from the sea, I crawled onto Ko Ma's beach to catch my breath.


After my heart returned to a normal pace, I went back out in the water without the snorkel. James was also having problems with his snorkel, so we left them and decided to just dive into the water and come back up for air each time. I saw tiny black & white fish fluttering along the bottom, and a few pieces of coral. The bottom was a bit cloudy due to the tide going out to sea. James & I headed farther out, and as we got farther out the fish suddenly grew in size. The ocean floor dropped sharply off the southwest coast of Ko Ma, and the fish were suddenly as big as my head. After a few minutes of excitement, another wave of panic started as we realized that we were drifting farther away from land. We both decided to swim as fast as we could to the other side of a rock outcrop to avoid the ocean currents. The entire time we were snorkeling, I felt small stings all over my body. I ignored them until I got stung in the balls - the damn jellyfish somehow got in my shorts! As I crawled onto a large rock, I inspected my jellyfish stings. They were worse than I though - I was covered in tiny red dots. They didn't hurt afterwards, but they served as a remainder of our snorkeling adventure.


After snorkeling, we were challenged to a few games of volleyball by our new friends. James & I were on one team - David, Tristan, and Paul were on the other team. We had to listen to them talk shit the entire time, only to get beat in 2 of 3 games. After the sunset volleyball session, we went to dinner at the Ko Ma restaurant, got drunk, and drifted off to sleep.