Expedition Day 3

“Another s**t day in Africa” as Tony would say.
Started off early(ish), ready for the Dolphin experience boat trip for 7 o clock. Many of us were bitten to hell throughout the night especially George & Stuart. So we sat down and waited for the man to tell us what to do.
He arrived soon after and we were given a quick talk about how we would all get soaked and that if we didn’t strap ourselves adequately enough we would find ourselves floating in the water somewhere while the boat would leave us behind. You could tell at this point that the “dollar-a-day” had taken its toll. The tiredness in our faces and bodies represented lack of enthusiasm but that would soon change.
We soon followed him towards the boat (all but Glyn who had a ‘special’ coffee & Lottie who went scuba diving) and told that the girls would go to the back while ‘us’ guys would go to the front. Naively we all approached the boat prepared to jump on and set off. Thinking that the take off would be easy, the boat was released from the trailer and floated on the water. However this all changed, we all ran after the boat barely keeping up in an attempt to grab a hold of any part of the boat. When we did get into position we were battered by a wave; pulling Beth, Becky and a few others under the boat and tipping the boat vertically up. All I remember there on is looking to the left and seeing Ellie desperately trying to get on while one of the guys was pushing her up meanwhile we all would get hit by another wave. After she got on the boat I jumped on and strapped myself in.
From here on it got better. We were told that the Dolphins were just around the corner so we decided to chase them up and so headed straight for them. A few minutes later we saw a few dolphin fins popping up through the water. Approaching closer we came as close as about 5m to four bottle nose dolphins. Everything beforehand now seemed a distance memory and so we just sat in amazement that we were so close to the dolphins. We continued to follow them for about 20mins before heading off to find the whales. With Stuart guiding the skipper we found one whale further South seeing the huge creature appear up now and again from the water, occasionally shooting out a beam of water. Then finally heading up-shore northwards to see a final two more whales.
After giving us all a lollipop each we could see that we were heading for the beach, all bracing ourselves we had images of us going in at full speed with big collisions. This was because of the previous speech from both the workers and Tony who said things such as if you don’t hold on to the boat, it will stop but you won’t. However this was far from the truth, we actually landed very graciously (for a boat landing) hardly feeling anything. We all got off and you could see everyone enjoyed it from the smiling faces of everyone.

Next followed breakfast which was happily welcomed and everyone was just chilling out for the next few hours.

After everybody had recovered from the morning’s excitement, the first ever DofE beach rugby match took place. To begin with teams were Glyn, Nathan, Jess, Beth versus George, Peter, Ellie, Reagan and Glyn’s team won 5 tries to 4. Second round teams were Stuart, Charlotte, Peter, Beth versus Glyn, Nathan, Ellie and Reagan. The final score was Glyn’s team 3 tries to 2.

Everybody met up at bar 360 at 3pm which gave people a chance to visit the local tourist craft market which was the perfect chance to practice and enhance our haggling skills. George would go around with a similar speech for all merchants saying something along the lines of if you don’t give us a good price he would take all his customers to someone else. This went on for roughly an hour before most of us gave in and bought trousers, accessories or some other form of African style clothing.
Next we headed off to the 360 bar. Walking the same path as we did to the market we arrived having to walk up a steep hill to get to the top where the bar was situated. We all got our orders of food which was delicious and sat watching the scenery, before deciding to head back at around 5pm.

Nathan & Glyn