August 29, 2007 - Wednesday
Crew Anya
Already our last day here. Time certainly flies when you are having fun. I am getting more and more aware of how true this is.
Today I had ‘some errands of my own to run’ so I took the car and drove back to the pareo place to buy the two pareo’s that Judy liked so much yesterday. After all, it is her birthday tomorrow and what better gift than this? I had already bought a book on the history of the black pearls but I loved the pareo as well and they looked really good on her. Bought some great envelopes with Gaugain on them to share with Ann and Judy to match the paper that Judy gave me a couple of days ago. The funny part was however, that when I gave them they had a real laugh because they had both bought them in another store with the exact same idea: to share them with me! Great minds think alike..
Since it is our last day, I realized it would be my last chance to go see the waterfall that my guide talked about. Gaby was willing to come with me so us girls took off in the car, whizzing over the island to find that one little dirt road that would lead us to the start of the track. We talked to several people on the way, saw some spots more than once but finally found our way to the start of the path. After only 5 minutes we had to make an executive decision: turn left or right? The sound of water came from the left but the path seemed to go to the right. After a short hesitation we chose right and after about 15 minutes we were at the waterfall’s location. Only…..where was the waterfall? Last year when we were in El Valle – Panama we went to see the waterfall El Macho, which turned out to be El Nacho for the lack of water. Compared to El Nacho this waterfall was El Nada! We had to really look hard to find a small trickle of water falling down from the rock. We definitely are here during the dry season. Obviously there is a waterfall during the wet season but we were just at the right place at the wrong time. We had a good laugh about it and proud to have gotten our exercise for today, we made our way back to the car and drove back to Club Bali Hai to tell the others about our adventures and join them for Mai Tai’s at the pool where we were entertained with a group of traditional Polynesian dancers.
The men were all in trance due to the amazing hip movements of the Polynesian women who had hair down to there bottom and magic hips. I can totally understand that it threw James Cook and his men off center when they first encountered the seductive dances. We women were too enthralled by the male dancers to worry about that because “was or wasn’t that dancer wearing underwear underneath that loincloth?!” We even got the chance to find out for ourselves when we were asked to join them for some dancing ourselves. I have some great shots of John wiggling his knees whilst dancing with a Polynesian lady and Gaby and I had fun dancing with the men. After a communal dance lesson in which all spectators joined we thanked them for showing us their traditions and made our way to the restaurant to have our Polynesian dinner. I enjoyed a wonderful kebab with a mixture of seafood and a salad in the moonlight under a star spangled sky. Aaah… having to leave this place will not be easy.