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Published: October 10th 2008
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After breakfast we decided to ditch the trip we were supposed to be going on as Matt’s knee was hurting and the trip mostly involved snorkelling which he wasn’t sure he’d be able to do.
Instead we headed down to the beach and set ourselves up for the day with a couple of good books we’d grabbed from the resort library.
I decided the water looked good for snorkelling so went in, leaving Matt reading on the sun lounger. I swam along the side of the reef and saw loads of fish. Much further along there were some big shoals of different types of fish and I just floated and watched them for ages. I knew that getting back to the reef opening would take a while so I slowly started making my way back to buoys which marked the entrance. As I approached the buoys the water became really murky and I couldn’t see where the reef opening was even though I knew it should be in front of me. I wasn’t sure where to go, as I knew that I couldn’t risk going over the reef as it was no longer high tide and I could end
up hitting it which would damage me as much as the coral. Eventually I decided to put my trust in the bouys and set off right in the centre of them knowing that logically I was in the right spot for the reef entrance. Luckily I was and before I knew it I was back on the beach.
When I got back to the beach I saw our sun loungers empty and guessed that Matt hadn’t been able to stand it watching me snorkelling without him. I looked out with the binoculars we’d brought and spotted him heading the opposite direction to all the other snorkellers. I hoped that he wouldn’t go far with his bad knee but he kept going further and further away. After twenty minutes when he was way way out I started to worry about him as not only is his knee bad but he’s also not a strong swimmer and getting out along the reef is the easy part; getting back takes much more energy in the sea. I sat worrying and thinking what I’d do if he started to struggle on his way back. Eventually he did turn around and I could tell
he suddenly realised quite how far away he was. He decided to cut a corner and swim directly across rather than skirting around the reef which followed the shape of the bay. I kept watching him with the binocularus and could see that he wasn’t enjoying the long swim. Eventually he made it to the reef opening and swam in.
I told him off for doing too much with a bad knee when he was supposed to be resting it but the knee support he had worn seemed to have done the trick and he said wasn’t in any pain.
After lunch we headed back to the beach to read and when it all got too hot we headed inside for a game of scrabble which is now our new addiction.
In the evening we made it to the bar for sunset this time and took a few pictures. Every time we try to watch it it seems to go behind the clouds at the last minute which is really annoying as otherwise there is nothing in the way to obscure our view as it goes down out at sea directly in front of the resort. I
really want to see if I can spot the green splash that sometimes happens the moment the sun disappears behind the water, which is what a few people told us to look out for when we were on our cruise a few years back.
Dinner was a curry buffet and the food was great - proper Indian style curry is something we’d been really missing. We sat with three people from New Zealand and after the meal we all stayed on to do the quiz night. It made a good mix of age ranges as we were there to answer film music and literature questions and they were good for all of the pre 1980 questions! Chris, the guy who runs the resort with his wife Kylie, was a perfect front man for the game and he had us all in fits. He brought out a beautiful assistant who happened to be a male guest, dressed in a tight red lycra dress with fake coconut boobs, to keep score. The first couple of rounds went really well and at one point we were joint leaders. Unfortunately we were seriously let down by the talent round where we had to all perform something as a team. We had no hidden talents between us so we decided to do a Fijian dance. In the break we roped the barman in to play guitar for us and we practised in pairs. Six steps forward, six backwards, six forwards and then the pair who have their arms linked behind, turn and do it all again the opposite way. We were to start off on our left foot. Simple. Nothing could go wrong. Seeing as we’d got five people and needed six we drafted in another barman to be one of the partners.
The first group to go did an amazing dancing act with a lady belly dancer as the centre piece while the others danced in the background. Then it was our turn. It all went horribly wrong from the moment we realised one of our barmen had been selected as judge so could no longer dance. That meant that Matt had to have a lady on each arm instead and meant we couldn’t even do the turn. It didn’t help that both Matt and I started off on the right foot instead of the left, and we only did three steps forward instead of six. It was like everything we’d practised had gone straight out of our heads. The crowd were in hysterics at us and out of desperation Alison and I decided to attempt a sort of turn which was really just us twirling under Matt’s arms. It was officially terrible and we were glad to sit back down.
Some of the other acts were just as bad, others were actually pretty good. But our lack of points let us right down and although we clawed some back in the music round we still managed to come last overall
By the end of the quiz we’d spent the whole evening laughing and realised what a friendly, warm resort we were at. The managers really suit the role and put their personalities into everything. It’s them who make it and by taking part in the evening we felt like we were part of a big group of friends. It turns out the managers had a two year lease on the place and only had six months left before they had to head back to New Zealand as their kids are approaching school age. By the looks of them they’re really going to miss the place and the resort will really miss them as the reason we’re loving the place more and more is because their enthusiasm is infectious.
We didn’t make it to bed until after midnight; our latest night on the trip so far!
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