What's the Catch with the Beach?

---

We decide to go exploring. Google Maps seems to show a bit of a track around to the cove next to the resort, so we go to the end of the beach to look for it. We find lots of thick jungle, but no track, so Issy says we should ask someone. I'm pretty sure the resort wants its guests to stay on the grounds so that they spend lots of money on food, drink and activities, so I don’t think asking any of the staff would be particularly beneficial. I’m sure they’ll tell us that Google Maps is lying. Anyway I’m not into asking. I tell Issy that real explorers don’t ask; I bet Edmund Hillary didn’t ask someone the way to the top of Mount Everest, or Neil Armstrong the way to the moon, they just went. .... Issy asks one of the hotel staff and she directs us to a path that starts up the hill just outside the resort entrance.

The track leads us up a hill and then down the other side through thick jungle, and we then follow a smaller track off to the side down towards a beach. We emerge onto a wide powder white sand paradise backed by palm trees and thick jungle. Scattered along it are half a dozen or so rustic shelters with palm fronds for roofs. As far as we can see there are only two other couples here, plus a local family renting snorkels and selling coconuts from a small rudimentary shelter in amongst the palm trees. We set up camp under one of the shelters and one of the locals then appears armed with a large mat for us to sit on. This place seems too good to be true. Soon after we arrive the other two couples leave, so we've now got what looks to us like the world’s best beach more or less completely to ourselves. It only took us about a quarter of an hour to walk here from the resort, where the beach is jam packed by comparison.

We wonder why there’s no one else here; there just has to be a catch. Surely other resort guests can’t be so lazy that they can’t be bothered walking here. Maybe no one knows about it, although I’m fairly sure it didn’t just suddenly appear out of nowhere overnight. Maybe there are lots of sharks here, or deadly jellyfish, or sea snakes, or perhaps even stone fish lying in wait for someone to step on them and then die in screaming agony. We creep gingerly towards the water and then wade slowly in. Issy’s got a pair of goggles, so I tell her to watch out for the sea snakes, jellyfish and stone fish, and leave me to worry about the sharks. After a few tense minutes we start to relax. The bottom's all fine white sand, and we see the occasional small fish, but that’s about it as far as wildlife is concerned. It seems that this place really is paradise, and somehow we’ve got it virtually all to ourselves. We swim, and then retreat to our mat under our palm thatched shelter and fall asleep.

I decide that I should take some photos to prove that we’ve actually been here. I tell Issy that we should try to recreate the famous beach scene from Dr No where Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder walks seductively out of the water into the waiting arms of Sean Connery as James Bond. She's happy to oblige, and also happy to ignore the few obvious flaws in my plan such as us not having a movie camera, or a third person to hold it, not to mention me not really bearing all that much resemblance to Sean Connery if we did. I’m not sure I sound all that much like him either. We settle for some still shots of my beloved in the water, looking a lot like Ursula Andress.

We buy a coconut to drink. We're hungry and there's nowhere here in paradise to buy lunch, so we traipse reluctantly back to the resort. Issy says we'll be coming back here every day, and I've got no reason to argue. We decide that we must be very careful not to tell anyone at the resort about our piece of paradise. We agree that if we meet anyone along the track we'll put on our best terrified looks and start screaming about giant sharks, and lots of people collapsing in agony after stepping on stone fish. Issy says that I mustn’t mention this place in the blog either until after we’ve left. I don’t think she’s realised yet that the blog only has three subscribers, and we're related to two of them.

We spy a very cute monkey on the side of the track, trying to open a half empty whiskey bottle. We’ve been warned to be wary of monkeys, particularly if they're in large groups. When we were in Thailand a few years ago Emma was cornered by a large group on a beach, and she had to run very quickly to get away from them. Actually I’m not sure that she needed to run at all. I think that her high pitched screaming was more than enough to deter most of them, and the one that wasn’t must have been deaf. We look up to see that the whiskey drinking monkey’s family has decided to come and see what he’s up to. There's now a large group of them sitting on top of a large rock about five metres from the edge of the track. They do look a bit menacing. We look back as we run away, and fortunately they don’t seem to be following us.

As we're about to go back into the resort we notice a local restaurant and shop just outside the front gate. The restaurant serves excellent local food for a fraction of the price that we’ve been paying at the resort, and Issy's happy to note that the shop even sells chocolate.

We spend the rest of the afternoon relaxing and then head down to dinner. Our luck seems to have turned; they've now got whiskey that isn’t Johnny Walker Blue Label, and Max tells us that a shipment of Tiger Beer finally came in earlier in the day. I’ve been ordering Tiger every night since we got here. Now I’m not sure why. I take a few sips and decide that I don’t really like it. Hmmmm.

We agree that today's been a real highlight, although we still can’t quite work out why we had the world’s best beach virtually all to ourselves.

---

Photos

Ursula Andress
Isabelle Sheehan as Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder in a reenactment of the famous beach scene from the 1962 James Bond classic, Dr No