Day 2: On Our Own

Getting used to the time difference, and the fact the sun sets around 10 p.m. sure does make it difficult to get to bed before midnight. We had a very late start to our day and woke to an attack of ants in our family room! A flashback to growing up in Long Beach – these beach communities must be a magnet for the ants (and it doesn’t help when the kids drop crumbs all over the floor).

We finally motivated out of the house around 2 p.m. for the Regata de Botes. We could actually see the sailing race from our porch but ventured down the street to an old windmill site and watched from the overlook.

It was a beautiful calm day on the water. About 50 old whaling boats were towed out to the starting line, then sails were lifted and the race began. The boats did a few loops through the channel right in front of our house. Later in the day we saw a rowing race (same boats) – sails were down, oars in place. Now that looked tough!

Our friends were on another island today for a wedding, so we were on our own as we toured through the city. We found the zip line which goes from the street down into the ocean – we’ll definitely be back to check that out tomorrow. We grabbed some lunch, walked around and came back for a little r&r (because we haven’t been sleeping in late enough… ha, ha).

Lot’s of whining by the kids today (ugh!) – I’m hungry, I’m thirsty, I want to swim, why so much walking, why can’t I have this… why can’t we do this… and so on! I think they forget we are here for 4 weeks and we don’t have to do everything in one day! We are also trying to get them to eat when it’s mealtime (and not graze all day). So, it’s definitely a bit of an adjustment for them.

We did make it down to one of the swimming holes in the late afternoon. There is no sand here, and sunbathing with the locals on lava rock will take some getting used to (too bad I can’t bring a mattress down with me!). No body issues over here which is also refreshing – the bikinis are tiny and worn by every size, shape and age of women.

The kids seemed to really enjoy the swimming. They all brought snorkeling gear and said there are some pretty big fish at the bottom of the swimming holes. They also discovered the surrounding lava rocks are a blast to jump from. So I expect we’ll see a lot of swimming in the days ahead. Perfect.

Dinner was back at Festa – which didn’t happen until close to 9pm. Hot dogs (cachorro) and beef sandwiches (bifana). Pretty good. There was a parade, music and definitely a lot more people than Fri eve. We tried to stay late enough to hear the U2 cover band that had arrived from the UK to play, but they were just setting up when we left at 12:30 a.m! So it was (again) another late night with the locals!