After getting in pretty late last night, I slept in a bit. Today I planned to go for my second kite surfing lesson. This time I was going to learn how to self launch the kite instead of having someone help me do an assisted launch and also try with an actual board too rather than just body dragging.
The weather was terrible this morning, when I woke up it was raining pretty heavily, but one thing I’ve learned about the weather here is that it can change pretty quickly. I thought I’d wait until it was time to go before worrying about it and made myself some French toast for breakfast.
The location of The Black Pearl is good because it’s pretty quiet, has a nice beach and is half way between Muri and Avarua, but it does mean there is a bit of a ride to go anywhere. I didn’t mind that because riding around on the scooter is pretty fun by itself, but it’s not very fun in the rain! I didn’t bring any wet weather gear on this trip, which was a mistake in this monsoon weather. A little bit of rain is OK, my clothes get saturated but they are normally pretty dry by the next day and my board shorts dry faster than my cotton clothes, but riding the scooter with wet clothes makes the wind pretty chilly!
As I was getting ready to go, I put my sandals on and the back of my ankles were
really sore, every step was pretty painful from the rubbing so I went to
reception and asked for some bandaids and also where I could buy a poncho from.
Jane gave me a few bandaids and a poncho she happened to have in the office, so
I got ready and headed out in the rain, which had settled down a bit from this
morning, but was still enough to make the ride a little uncomfortable.
By the time I got to Muri it was barely raining, I got there about 20 minutes early as my appointment wasn’t until 12 so I walked down to the beach to see if there were any other kite surfers out, but it was deserted! There wasn’t much rain, but there wasn’t much wind either!
I waited around for an instructor to arrive and when he said there was another mix up with the scheduling. Either way we went down to the beach and he confirmed that there wasn’t enough wind to go out, it had just died during that time and he couldn’t give me my money back today because they are normally closed on Saturdays so the office is locked and there’s no money in it, so I would need to come back another day.
I headed back to the hotel and just relaxed for a while, I even had a little nap. When I woke up, I had something to eat and thought I should use this time to go take photos of the waterfall seeming so it was raining so heavily. There was still a little bit of time before sunset, but not too long, so I started packing my gear. I remember there being a lot of mosquitos at the waterfall and my sandals where hurting my feet, so I thought I’d wear shoes and socks so there was less rubbing and also jeans and a jumper to cover my skin from the mosquitos.
I couldn’t remember exactly which road to take to get to the waterfall as it’s not marked from the main road. I tried one and it was wrong so then I asked a local and I was off by one street! As I was going down the correct road this time I remembered it from the buggy tour. There was one section that was really muddy and I remember my buggy sliding around a bit. When I got there on the scooter I was going really slow trying to dodge the puddles and the chickens but at one point the scooter slid out from under me but before it fell to the ground I was able to recover by putting my leg out and catching myself. I nearly fell over but instead I just got a bit of mud on one side of me. This is where I wished I wasn’t wearing shoes and jeans! I continued along the road but realised the sun was setting and thought I didn’t want to go through the muddy spot again in the dark on the way back so I turned around. I did better the second time through that muddy patch!
So instead of taking photos of the waterfall, I pulled over to the beach and
setup the tripod for some sunset photos. I had about 5 minutes before the sun
was too low to see but I still got some nice shots.
I rode home and washed the mud off my shoes and jeans. I had bought some steaks
earlier on and put them in the freezer, but left them out to defrost this
morning, so with dinner plans sorted I stayed in tonight.
Not the most eventful day, but reflecting back on what I’ve done so far, I think I’ve accomplished quite a bit with my time here, definitely taken a couple of small steps out of my comfort zone and tried some new things. I’m quite happy to do nothing for the rest of the trip, let my feet heal a bit, read a book and just relax before going back to reality in a couple of days.