Yesterday, Nathalie and me left Florian aboard with his boring sea chart sorting, and went on a Female Adventure Hike. We brought the diving compass to find the village on the opposite side of the island, and the VHF radio, in case we’d get lost.
A narrow little trail led us straight into the jungle, and after 3 km eventually also to the village. It was quite late and we only got half an hour to spend before we had to head back to the boat before dark. The village people were concerned about our safety, and made sure we knew how to get back! No problem!
However, after half an hour walking and chatting away in the last precious sun light, we found our selves surrounded by banana plantations instead of the rain forest-like jungle. We were already late and had been walking fast to get back with daylight so we had managed to get our selves deep into trouble. After some debating, we turned to look for the right track, but had to admit that we were lost.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a man with a huge machete stepped out of the jungle...
...but turned out to be our saviour! He had seen us heading in the wrong direction, but had hesitated to follow us since he thought we would get scarred by his appearance (very true!). Instead he prayed to God that we would turn back, and so he had waited on the trail for us to return! By the time we were on the right track again, and with nearly 3 km to go, it was almost dark. As you know, near the equator the sun sets really fast (not like in Sweden) and so we had to run, jump and swing ourselves back through the jungle as fast as we could! Only two hours earlier we had slowly sneaked our way forward on the same path to avoid potentially dangerous spiders, snakes and machete-men!
Stranded
Sweaty, but safe, we reached the beach just as complete darkness was covering the bay. We thought we had left the dingy securely anchored on the beach when we went ashore, but now it was gone... With the rising tide and increasing waves, the dinghy had been thrown over at least twice while we were gone. Luckily, our watchful skipper had seen it and swum over to rescue it, as he now had to rescue us from the braking waves. All together, both the dinghy and us are safely back on Filos II, and for dinner we had Spaghetti with tomato sauce... ;-)
Added March 7
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