Day 23: Isla do Campeche - Snorkles, boats and waves

We have not told you about the proprietor of our pousada in Pontano do Sol.  We´re not sure if he leaves the grounds of the pousada, he primarily walks around in dirty sweatpants and flipflops and smokes pot in the afternoon.  He means well, and though he told us he speaks Spanish, our conversations are in a language that we have termed Spanglishuguese.  Thus, the exchange of information is quite low.  This is somwhat of a problem as we are living in a fishing village, so tourist information is hard to come by ( i.e. it is nonexistant).  However, we did find out from our handy Lonely Planet, that there is an island of the name Campeche just off the shore of our island that is a nature reserve that is beautiful and can be reached by taking a boat from Aramcao, the village to our North. 

 

Somehow we were able to find out from the proprietor of our pousada using the Spanglishuguese language we communicated with that if we arrived at the dock in Armacao by 10 AM we´d be able to catch a boat to Campeche.  So we woke up EARLY and walked the 4 km to Armacao, forgetting we had significant blisters on our feet from the 20 km hike the day before and our inability to effectively adjust our Chaco sandals.  After a somewhat painful walk, we found the boat that would take us to Campeche.  It was a open faced boat that was very pretty, brightly painted in the style of fishing boats on the island.  The boat was about 25 feet in length with seating for about 15 people.  While we were waiting for the boat to fill, we rented snorkel equipment, hoping to see some fish off Campeche. 

 

After about 20 minutes, we hopped on with about 10 other people for a trip to Campeche.  The ride was exciting, especially for a couple of landlubbers like ourselves.  As far as ocean waves go, we think that these were not large waves.  However, as far as our preception goes (two people prone to a little motion sickness) while sitting on  a boat a few feet about the water, the waves seemed enormous.  The best description of the trip we think can be found in the Life of Pi (thanks Kim for the suggestion, we both enjoyed that book) where Yan Matel describes the waves as mountains and valleys.  Our boat was roughly the same size as Pi´s, the difference was that there was not a tiger on the boat and we weren´t shipwrecked and were very safe in our life vests. 

 

Isla do Campeche is straight out of a postcard.  The beach is about 1/2 a km in length.  There were only about 30 people on the beach because very few boats make the trip.  The beach is surrounded by mountains covered with a rain forest with palm trees poking out above the leaves.  There was no food or water (or sunscreen) to be purchased, just beach, beach and more beach.  We did a little snorkeling.  Unfortunately, the water was cloudy and we didn´t see anything.  We had an intensely relaxing day, returning to Armacao in the evening after a day on the beach.

 

Quiz time!

False and True, Olivia did NOT buy surfer trunks (she bought super-hip beach shorts) but she WILL become a surfer chick upon moving to Cali (see Day 24 for more info).

D, the bird/ bug sounds like an alarm clock.  Very strange, and very annoying.

Essay, thanks Mama Adams for the answer, our Portuguese is not as good as yours, but we got the drift.  In case you didn´t know, there was an ulterior motive for the essay question as we´ve had quite a difficult time adjusting our Chacos.

 

Answer to Ed´s question: an eagle.  Or five eagles.

 

New quiz:

True or false, while we were preparing to go snorkeling on Campeche, a coatis opened our Timbuktu bag, ate our peanuts and pooped on Chris´ towel.