31/05/2010 - Best Day Ever Pt. III

We woke to find out that we missed yet another huge party the night before,. Dammit!  In Anguilla we missed the first night party (it was a public holiday!) and now we missed one ‘cause we went to the wrong place,… we will get a party soon!

Today was the first dive day and the 6 qualified of us headed off to the dive shop which was all of 2 minutes walk away.  Myself, Meredith, Yohanna, Josh/Jon, Dan and Tammy enjoyed a shore dive right in front of the dive shop at “cha cha cha” beach, which was a great re-initiation to diving as it had been a couple of years since my last dive,..  The more experienced divers were paired with the less so and luckily I noticed the air tube to Meredith’s BCD wasn’t properly connected,.. that would have been fun!

We then left to dive in another location called Angels City where we saw Barracuda moray, etc

On our way back from the dive we tried to find somewhere to eat, but got distracted by a place that rented scooters.  En masse we decided to rent all the scooters they had,… Sophie wandered by and was convinced into coming with us,.. however since all the scooters were gone, she ended up riding pillion on Nadia’s ATV,.. they looked hardcore!   Everything was going according to plan until Niko actually started his scooter, accelerated too hard and ended up face down on the road with the bike on top of him,.. everyone froze, his leg was trapped underneath and it didn’t look good. The rental guy jumped up in an instant and lifted the bike off him, he had a few cuts and bruises, but didn’t look too bad, it wasn’t until a little while later that we realized his ankle had swollen to twice its normal size, but he was determined to continue and we zoomed off looking like something from Quadrophenia.  After taking the wrong road up the island we discovered a place that sold smoothies and decided to stop,.. unbeknownst to us the guy had no ingredients and I spied him a few minutes later coming back with what seemed like a supermarket bag,.. the smoothies were good, but either his maths wasn’t good or something wasn’t right as he tried to charge us exorbitantly for something that took about an hour!  

While waiting for the most expensive smoothies most of us had ever tasted we discovered that Shawn’s bike had decided to give up the ghost and was about as effective as our erstwhile waiter,.. after a few minutes I managed to start it with the kick start, and we left it running in the hope that it would recuperate!

We weren’t best pleased with our extortionate milkshakes and headed off to the flamingo reserve,..  Shawn had zoomed off ahead in a bit of a huff and after a few minutes we caught up with him,.. he had reached a beautiful lookout point and had inadvertently turned off his bike,.. could we start it?,.. could we bollocks!  But at least the view was nice,.. after unsuccessfully trying to kick start it at the cost of my sandals which parted with the effort we sent Niko to a high point to see if he could get reception and call the bike rental guy to come and pick us up… he returned a few minutes later saying he would be on his way in a few minutes!

An hour later we had sent everyone else off and Shawn and I were still sitting there and chatting when he turned up and pointed at us while saying,.. “you owe me 25 dollars!”.. secure in his conviction that he’d be able to start it within a few minutes… 10 minutes later he still hadn’t,.. both Shawn and I were relieved we hadn’t ended up looking like arseholes and while the bike and Shawn were loaded onto the van I zoomed off away from the setting sun to see if I could beat them back to the shop…

We managed to convince them not to charge Niko anything for the scratches on the bike and Shawn got a discount,.. although to be honest 17$ was a reasonable price for the afternoon anyway!  Plus they let him borrow an ATV to go on an ice-cream run!

Dinner consisted of some burgers at a local burger joint before heading to Little Havana in the hope of re-enacting the previous nights party, despite a lot of people being hung over!

After a while the party got started along with the dancing.  Although no-one was at the same level of the night before, en route back to the boat via the beach road at about 1am we were disturbed by shouts coming from the beach, only crew make that sort of noise and as we peered into the gloom we could vaguely make out pale naked bodies splashing around in the water.. within minutes everyone was in the water and Marco Polo and Chicken fights ensued, despite a few people being stung by the coral and Jimmy receiving a cut eye, possibly thanks to Yohanna, everyone returned to the boat safe and sound,.. but the night wasn’t over yet, before long, rum, water and throwing lines appeared on the dock,.. apparently a PC tradition, rope skipping/double dutch is something of an initiation.  I was absolutely crap at this and failed miserably,.. jimmy however could jump in and out of the ropes like he was an experienced 8 year old girl….  (in a good way!)

At about 4am,.. I think I headed to bed!!

 

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