Day 5 - more diving

 Local transport

 "Tiny"????

Hey, my boy!

 Green is the in colour for bicycles

 Blue door family

Pre-election fun on Laamu

Yet another early morning. The plan was to do two deep drift dives. This morning it is Callie who cannot equalise and there will be no deep diving for today. Jude takes Luc and myself out to two stunning sites. Our dives are relatively shallow to allow for Luc’s 12 meter max.  The first dive has fantastic fish and I use the opportunity to film the diving. Decide to leave the camera on the boat for the second dive. Big mistake. We see White Tip Reef shark and a very nosy Spotted Eagle Ray, who keeps on coming back for Luc! Perhaps because they are the same size! Stunning dive yet again. We are so amazed by the number of different fish all around.

Luc is exhausted. He is not used to the repetitive diving and he sleeps most of the travel on the boat. I am very impressed with his skills both as diver and creating a new underwater sign language. Jude kills herself laughing when Luc tries to explain to me that I need to go down to the sand to find shark teeth. Of course, mother understands nothing of what he is trying to say!!

We go back to our Green Coffee Shop, this time with Bonnie and Tyrone. Once again we make the stop at the corner cafe to get a big supply of Milo and Cokes – keeping in mind the spicy food. We tried to order less spicy food, but alas it is all smiles and no comprehension. This time we get a huge plate of bananas and this should have served as a warning of things to come! There is no NOT spicy in this town. The tears run from Luc’s eyes as he tries to eat the noodles helped on by some bananas!

The Polish group of two couples also venture into the restaurant and decide to follow suit. We say nothing, but enjoy their pain and discomfort when they launch into their plates of noodles. At least they can take a joke and end up laughing about it!

After lunch Callie and Luc take me for a stroll through the little village. It is very 3rd world. They are very excited about one of the little shops and the collection of cheap imported Chinese plakkies they are selling! They even have Facebook ones!!! What a great gift! We are also a bit disappointed at the lack of curios for sale - there is absolutely nothing here! 

We have heard that the ex-president is in town. It turns out that he is staying at Reveries and Tyrone (with no clue of who he was, pushed his party out of the way to get to the other side of reception). This president was the first elected in the democratic elections in 2008. He was ousted with a military coup in 2012 by the old president. It seems that he started doing many positive things, but democracy can be difficult when the country is still ruled by old money and people with serious connections.  Well, there is an election this year again and many hope that he will win again.

Dinner is a beach barbeque.  Tyrone and Luc seat themselves at the only table with chairs – to be moved off promptly as this is for the president! Tonight’s menu includes rice, pasta (as every night!), vegetable curry and a huge sailfish! Luc immediately decides that he is not eating that fish! It turns out to be very nice.

We hit the bed not too late and decide to watch an episode of Bones. Please note that there are about 5 TV channels that work.  The local TV channel, Al Jazeera, some or other Chinese channel, a French channel  and Fashion TV! We are astounded by this – TV channels are banned except Fashion TV (which has an age restriction in my house!).

Shame – Luc is so tired, he falls asleep half way through Bones!

TYRONE’S CORNER:

Tyrone dumped about 3 spoons of what he thought was salt on his spicy noodles – turns out it is sugar! Well, he says it made the burn more acceptable!