I can't believe we've been here 2 weeks already, the time has just flown. We've been enjoying the glorious weather and beautiful beaches, as well as making the most of the local facilities; I've been swimming every day in the pool and enjoying ice cream from the local gelado shop. Gaz has been running most days and enjoying beer from the local beach bar! So we're both quite content.
We've secured our first complaint from the neighbours. Unwarranted I'll have you know. Apparently we were making a racket early in the morning?? Gaz was quick to assure reception that it couldn't have been us as we don't wake until late morning lol. In actual fact, whilst it's more like 10am as a regular wakeup which I appreciate is late, but not embarrassingly so, I knew the culprits were somewhere above or beside us as their joyous partying had woken me up at 3am.
At the start of the week we walked to the other side of the town, and down on to the Santa Maria pier which is used as a local fishing port. There are many small boats moored in the turquoise waters of the bay, and their catch is brought to the pier to be prepared and traded.
As we approached the pier, people were milling about everywhere. Side-stepping fishermen carrying laden buckets, or pushing wheelbarrows of fish, we made our way along the pier. All along fish were being delivered to people sat under makeshift shelters or umbrellas, then sorted, de-scaled, boned and filleted before being sold.
The noise of people doing business, preparing the fish and general chatter was loud, with vibrant colours of the turquoise waters and colourful stalls and pungent smells attacking the senses from all sides. There were knives slamming on to choppping boards, and fish being thrown into buckets and fish guts being thrown into the sea, and boards being scraped. In such a busy and fairly crowded place, you had to watch your step or risk being covered in fishyness of some description. it was intense but amazing to be amongst it.
When Gaz was out running, he realised that the beach he was running near was not made of sand, but made of large broken conch shells. Millions and millions of broken conch shells.
We walked out to the far South East of the island to get a closer look, and sure enough the black coral coast was piled high in peaks with shells and the peaks overlapped and continued for 200m or more. We watched as a small boat came in close to the shore and two men carried sacks on their shoulders to the beach.
It was later when I was researching more about it that I learned that the beach has been formed from illegal conch fishing; Conch are under threat so only shells over a certain size can be fished. The conch shells appearing at the shell cemetery are undersized - rather than bringing the catch in officially on to the Santa Maria pier, they are brought in and harvested at the other end of the island away from the officials.
Thankfully the mosquitos haven't been quite as prolific as they were in our 1st week - maybe they can sense fresh meat when it gets off the plane or something? Now we've been here a while, we're not as tasty. lol Or maybe we're being more sensible about closing windows and doors when the sun goes down, and using deet spray to keep the little shits at bay. Dunno. But it does mean that we feel more comfortable eating in a restuarant on the beach in the evening thank goodness. Last night Gaz decided to go and get a couple more beers and some water. Unfortunately as he reached the table carrying a tray of heavy drinks, they unbalanced and the whole tray fell on to the table in a mini tsunami of beer, right where Gaz's expensive Microsoft Surface Laptop was sitting waiting to soak it all up. His lightening reflexes came in handy and after mopping up the spill and drying everything off, miraculously his laptop appears (touch wood) to be ok. I'm genuinely not sure how. Those that know Gaz know that he has 9 lives, so I'm left wondering if his computer now does too. It's truly remarkable.
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