Paradise Found

Some of the time while I was away we went to Jinack Island also known as Paradise Island. This was the bit of the holiday that required a boat ride. I took some sea sickness tablets and they seemed to make things a bit easier although I felt slightly green around the gills by the time the journey was over. The sea was very rough and the sun was beating down and this wasn’t the best combination. We were on a pirogue which was not the most stable form of transport either (it did have a motor though). Anyway, I made it to the other side and resisted the urge to kiss the golden sand. We actually landed in Senegal, so I managed to go to two African countries while I was away and then we walked along the beach to the place that we were staying. A place with no electricity, no running water and no light at night apart from the moon and hurricane lamps and, as I said yesterday, I’ll show you what the en suite bathroom consisted of when I get my photos back.

We were staying at an eco resort (resort being a somewhat misleading word) in straw huts that fortunately had mosquito nets, which weren’t particularly useful for mosquitoes, as you don’t get those at the coast, but they did help to protect us from the bugs that were there. The others all found bugs in their beds at various points during the night and my friend actually was bitten by some ear wig type thing while she was asleep (which quickly woke her up). But it was a really beautiful place and if you like bird watching then this is the place to go.

One of the people who helped to run the place took us to his village and I felt a bit like the “great white hope” there and was actually a bit uncomfortable with the way the children swarmed around us like we were something special. It felt a bit like we were gawking at them in their somewhat basic village. Mind you they are probably not all that poor there as apart from the rice they grow for them to eat, they also grow very large amounts of cannabis. Apparently it is legal to grow it on the island but that is only because officials are too scared to go on to the island because of a curse. Lovely.

I did have an offer of marriage while I was on the island, which after careful consideration I decided to decline. I just felt that if I was going to give up my life to live amongst rice and cannabis then that was probably worth more than three cows. *thinks* Maybe it’s because I am so picky that I am still single. The chap who took us to his village was also rather friendly, and this will sound rather more creepy than it actually was, but he was somewhat tactile when he spoke to me and on a few occasions would sort of run his hand across my back or some other part of my anatomy as he walked past. The first night we were there he did come to my hut as I was about to go to bed and ask me to join him at the fire. I politely declined.

The only downside to being there (apart from the boat trip to get there and back) was that in the earlier hours of Wednesday morning I realised that I was dreaming that the friend I fell out with and I managed to sort things out and we were back on good terms with each other. I woke up in the morning and felt really happy that we’d sorted it out, but then suddenly I remembered that it was just a dream and actually there’s no solution to this one. My heart sank and I just felt really sad and disappointed after that and still do to a degree. I feel quite happy generally and had a good time away but it just had an element of sadness to it because of that dream.

Even so it was a good couple of days on the island, involving bugs and lizards, much lounging about in the 36 degree heat, I *wasn’t* sick and I could have married a Gambian. Paradise indeed.