We were brought out to the reef on a very plush catamaran. It was funny the way the crowd on the boat split - all the English-speakers lurked at the back where there was some shade while those crazy foreign types sunned themselves on deck.
We got chatting to a couple from Birmingham talking about where we'd been. We mentioned we'd been quite happy to leave Havana after The Great Camera Robbery, which sparked a discussion about the whole incident. In the context of help from embassies I mentioned I was living in Wales and found there were four Welsh boys on board. They're all living in CArdiff now but two of them were originally from Mold and one of them (or maybe two) had lived in Bangor for a short time doing teacher training and living on the road Frodo lives on. Unusually for Cardiff boys they're Welsh speakers and they got so excited about my bilingual SU hoodie.
We reached the reef pretty quickly so we donned our snorkels and flippers (no wet suit needed in the Caribbean) and jumped in.
It took a while to get the hang of snorkelling. I kept getting water in the tube thing so when I breathed in I breathed in salt water - not so nice. It was a bit choppy (well, not considering we were right out in the sea) which made sorting out your equipment a little difficult in the water. Mum's mask seemd to be leaking so she was getting salt water in her eyes - rather stingy. It was incredibly salty, saltier than anything I've swum in before and my lips were tingling severely by the time I got out.
The reef was excellent. It's slightly eerie, the way it looms out of the water, and more than once I was startled by something touching my leg only to find I'd bumped into the reef. There were lots of little fishies, more around the edge than in the centre. I'll have to look them up in Frodo or Chris's fishy books, but there were black and yellow stripey ones and blue ones, none of which look like sharks so that was alright. Someone saw a massive jellyfish with a body the size of your hand and tendril thingies about a metre long, but thankfully I didn't see it and didn't hear how big it was until I was out of the water.
After a while I'd seen what I wanted to see and my lips were stinging way too much, and Mum's eyes were hurting way too much, so we clambered out and sat in the boat again. There were still a few people in the water but quite a few had already climbed out. So we sat there basking in the sunlight instead.
Once everyone was out of the water we sailed around the peninsula to the marina. It took about an hour, with everyone exchanging holiday experiences and the Welshies pretending to be Simon le Bon aboard his yacht for photographs. It was a useful conversation, ranging from what to do in Vinales to buying black market cigars from a junetero with a pet alligator. We also chatted to the Welshies (when they'd finished posing) about rugby and anti-English sentiment in Wales and Ireland on sporting occasions. All very enjoyable indeed.
It was about four o'clock (or later?) by the time we berthed so we decided to head back to Trinidad. We shared a taxi with the Brummies, who had just come from Vinales, so we picked up some more useful tips there.
Our taxi driver was a bit of a liability, ploughing through hordes of cyclists and pedestrians milling through the streets of Trinidad. I'm not quite sure how they all escaped unscathed.
No comments:
Post a Comment