And then we stayed another week…

by clairederek

About two weeks in to our adventure on Kecil we met Jo and Tom, a couple from England with oddly similar characteristics to ourselves. Both Claire and Jo are the older of the pair. While both Derek and Tom graduated with a degree in Engineering, Claire and Jo graduated with degrees in Social Science. Both couples are traveling on the cheap and understand the beauty of finding inexpensive, local food to make room for an ice cream or mango smoothie in the day's budget. And this is just the tip of the ice berg.

We had one week left on the island upon meeting them and ran into them the following evening at dinner time. Somehow they seemed to know half the people on the island, so we had quite the long table for our feast. This became a daily event, dinner after sunset and until late in the evening, talking about everything from Mars space expeditions to the size of Gibraltar to the best curry on the island, and of course, to our travel experiences and the sightings of the snorkeling and scuba diving adventures of the day. We had some other regulars at meals, Anna from Germany, Vivian from Australia, Chris from Gibraltar and a number of other people coming and going.

It was wonderful. Community again. We clicked and talked for hours, sometimes over lunch, as well. In the meantime Derek raced through all seven Harry Potter books and Claire read a weird sci-fi book and a good but somewhat depressing book about the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia.

Challenge: find the lizard. Hint: it's green.

On our last Sunday on the island we, of course, partook in another Adventure Sundays adventure with Jo and Tom. This involved a long walk to the other side of the island for some snorkeling (black tip reef shark and colorful sting ray sighting) followed by a painful, shoeless walk back through the jungle to retrieve our things. All in all, an adventure.

When it was time to leave, we enjoyed our last few meals eating our favorite island dishes (veg curry, mango shake, banana and chocolate shake, pineapple and eggplant curry) with our favorite people on the island, we gave in and went on a snorkeling trip (which was awesome), and picked through our hair another couple of times to rid ourselves of as many lice and nits as possible without a lice comb.

And then, we hopped on a boat and said goodbye to the island we couldn't seem to leave for three whole weeks.