Day Off for Good Behavior 

May 18
Well, today was definitely a day off. And we deserved it, as we’ve been keeping a pretty torrid pace, not burning the candle at both ends, as we’ve gotten to bed at a very decent hour, but our (sometimes ridiculously) early starts have made for tiring days. I felt a particular need for the day off, because I didn’t sleep well due to constant itching. Not exactly sure the cause, but it seems to have gone away.

The idea of the place we’re staying at is terrific. The setting is beautiful, it’s decorated with great flair with items made largely at the women’s workshop we visited yesterday, the staff is friendly and the food is very good. The reality of the place, though, is not quite so good. The sand is hard on your feet, the rooms, while large enough (and we have a two-bedroom cottage), do not really provide a place to put stuff. A railing on a small flight of steps would make the room safer.  While water sports are available, there’s nobody with a real presence to make use of them easy. The bumpy roads are just the way it is, but you’d be more likely to use them to travel around the island if the suspension in the vehicles were better, less bone jarring.

Anyway, I’m sounding like the ugly American, and I don’t mean to. It’s very lovely here, but not perfect. It’s actually quite a good spot to do what we did today. Nothing. We lazed around, Zoe and I swam some and used the very slow (there I go again) internet. Folks around the world are having whole lot worse days than we are, that’s for sure. It’s sorta nice just to have a day off in a lovely spot.

My camera got a deserved day off, too. I did get photos of a beautiful, green bee eater in the tree outside our cottage, but I’d have to download several hundred photos to get that for you, and you really didn’t want to see the damn bee eater that badly, did you? If you did, let me know, and I’ll send it to you when I get home. For now, how about making do with these iPad photos of our environs, which will give you a pretty good idea of our day.

And, okay, here’s the damn bee eater, too.