Dave has been making friends with the wildlife. You may have heard him from afar. This quiet man can up his decibel count remarkably on occasion.

We’d headed off for a walk to the wild Atlantic Coast on Elutheta from our anchorage in Rock Sound. Up the road for a mile or so, onto the beach and turn left. All good. A couple of miles later, we reached a big inland salt pond and an aerial picture of google maps (yes the cell phone reception is pretty good here) suggested a faint trail so we could make a loop back, a circular walk being much better than retracing our steps.

It started all fine and dandy. The trail obviously hadn’t been walked in a very longtime but we were making progress with the odd bit of thrashing. We were chatting away, dave walking in front. That’s when the decibel count peaked and a wild dance with windmill arms commenced. He’d walked into a rather large web and big boy/ girl arachnid 🕷 was now on his t shirt. Well they weren’t for long as windy miller did his thing and heart rates gradually abated. He or she was a large bugger,  and now faced quite an afternoon of work to rebuild their home. Dave made me walk in front for a while after that.

The trail eventually petered out and we end up wading around the edge of salt pond, sometimes in deep sand, sometimes on stoney limestone. Progress was slow but we emerged in a small quarry with a track heading out so all was tickety boo. Things got better when we spied a small restaurant, Rosie’s, up a hill so we headed there for a well deserved medicinal beer and an account of Rosie’s life. Lovely lady then gave us a lift back to town.

Liking a life of contrasts, we then headed to Little San Salvador, a small island owned by a cruise ship company. It’s like Disneyland for cruise ship passengers. We were the only boat anchored off the beach when a monster cruise ship pulled in. It disgorged its couple of thousand passengers onto the pristine beach for a few hours of entertainment and by 3.00pm they were all gone, leaving us alone again. It was fascinating to watch, we felt like were looking  in from the outside to the inside of a goldfish bowl. All in all, it was an impressively slick operation, although the taunting smell of bbq from the beach was most cruel.

To bring you upto date, we’re now on Cat Island and will depart likely tomorrow towards  Conception Island when the SE winds drop a little. It’ll be a bit of a bash to wind but when it’s warm, a few hours of relative discomfort don’t seem so bad.