Ooooooh barracuda

Not a great deal for me to add today after the blog was excellently taken care of by Allegra, and also Ruby in her own blog, although there was a little too much snacking on the bros for my liking. I am actually writing this tomorrow, as was pointed out I was very tired last night. It was a lazy old morning and early afternoon, apart from our adventure with a centipede apparently living in our sink. We first saw him the day before, he did not seem particularly happy and could not climb out of the sink, so we just left him there. Then this morning he was gone. The sink was used as normal, including to wash dishes so we thought nothing more of him. Later on I went to get some water and he climbed out of the plug hole! I just about cacked my dacks. Apparently they can grow to 15cm, live for 7 years, and have been known to eat small mice.
A bit of filming for the girls latest video followed and then time to go out. A walk to town for brunch, which was very tasty and then a stroll. It’s nice that this place is so un-touristy but it does mean there is not much in the way of shops. So we ended up sitting around for 30 minutes before our snorkelling trip started. Soon enough we were on the boat heading for our first stop, the green cave. We snorkelled, nothing majorly impressive although I did hang at the back of the group and after everyone had swum off it became the yellow cave. Snorkelling back to the boat, which kept moving as we followed the coast, was quite tricky as the water was quite wavy. Flippers helped but I didn’t find it massively enjoyable, there wasn’t actually much fish variety, just smallish dark ones mostly. It did get me wondering though, what if we were in some alternate universe where the fish was king and they just organised to come to this spot around 6 each day to see these strange creatures who appeared in the water above them in the summer months. It was a long snorkel, what can I say.
Eventually we made it back to the boat and headed for our second location but the sea was too choppy there so we then had to move to a calmer bay. More of the same really, with slightly more fish variety, although nothing i hadn’t seen before. Some jumping off the boat followed, allowing me to do a massive back whacker attempting a somersault, but really it didn’t hurt. I promise. We chatted with one of the crew, Ricardo, who told us how he had given up all material possessions and walked from the south coast of Spain to his home near Bologna, then he had walked the entire coastline of Italy and then went to Australia and walked around there. I think he was solving crimes and helping people being oppressed by bullies along the way, but I may have got confused there possibly. By the time of the third stop it was cooling down a bit and clouding up, so the sunset view was not what it might have been. Most people did not go in for this snorkel, but Jess and I did. Ricardo was a little ahead and excitedly announced that he had seen a barracuda, since I don’t know my little brown fish from my silver fish with a dark spot near its tail I just acted suitably impressed as I think that is what he was after. Jess was busy practicing her free diving but I was getting worn out so headed back to the boat and soon enough we were on our way back to port.
Then it was a walk back up the hill to our villa and the tiredness was really setting in, I was very happy when the girls said they wanted pot noodles for dinner rather than toasties as this meant I didn’t need to do anything. A 10 minute lie down when we got back helped me feel slightly human again, then a few sandwiches for my dinner also helped. We were all having our usual evening outside to recover from the day, and I don’t know if it was extreme tiredness, the beer and ouzo, or a combination thereof, but I could have sworn a little leprechaun appeared singing something about biscuit time. I ate several biscuits and by that stage it was most definitely time for bed.

I feel like I needed to add to this blog (Jess) as I really enjoyed the snorkeling experience. Our globe trotting Italian guide was a free dive instructor and so he would swim to the bottom of the ocean and lie on his back and blow air rings it was a very cool sight and at the same time I think before you become a dive instructor you must meet certain requirements. Interesting mysterious back story (give up a successful career to wander the planet alone), philosophical tattoo across bronzed muscled chest (weak animals never live alone, Charles Darwin ), very chill and calm and cool persona, and a trick to impress normal people. So he checked all the boxes of being a tour guide/dive instructor/free dive Instructor. At one point he was giving advice to a very insecure 16 year old boy who was clearly in love with him as to how to chat up a girl he fancied at a restaurant. The whole thing was actually really funny and so filled with testosterone that it furlled other testosterone actions from all the boys and men on the boat. I wonder if balls give off a signal of some sort which heralds a call to action to all men young and old to bond over jumping off boats and showing off together. Anyway enough about an overgrown balls filled boat and back to snorkeling. I loved it because of the silence and there was one moment I was on a shallow reef and all of a sudden the reef ended to this really deep blue abyss and it really felt like I was flying and for a moment I was worried I might fall. I had to swim this several times as there was no feeling like it. It was a nice break from the overgrown testes I had had to endure for pretty much the rest of the trip.Les mer