I’ve had better days.
We slept in a bit today, had a leisurely breakfast, and then decided to rent bikes and head out to explore the island a bit. However, we somehow took a wrong turn, and ended riding 3 kilometers up a REALLY BIG HILL. I know, only 3 km — cry me a river, right? Well, it was 90F+ and humid as heck, and there was NO SHADE the whole way up, and because we have more good intentions than brains apparently, we went smack dab in the middle of the day.
3 km into the ride, we realized we were in the wrong place, and headed back down, stopping by an interesting-looking cemetery that dates back to the mid-1800s. Something I thought was neat — the graves from the Communist period still had crosses on them.Huh!
Old crypts.
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Anyway, we wandered around a bit, but it was so hot with the sun reflecting off of the crypts that we ended up just sitting in the shade and panting for a bit before riding back downhill. We were both fairly miserable by the end of the ride — let me tell you. Ugh.
Once we got back to our hostel, we decided a swim was in order, and headed down to the beach. It was PERFECT. OMG.
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This guy tried to get us to share our lunch with him. Ha.
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Me, right before my day took kind of a crappy turn.
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Shortly after the above picture was taken, I stepped on a sea urchin and ended up with a whole bunch of spines in my foot. It was, to say the least, less than fun. I didn’t realize quite the extent of the damage until I got out of the water and looked at my foot… it was ugly.
After hanging out a bit more, my foot really started to hurt, so we walked (well, John walked — I limped) back to our hostel (which was really really close, thankfully) and I spent almost TWO HOURS pulling spines out of my foot. Ok, it didn’t take all two hours — I kept having to take breaks since it hurt, and the way I had to sit with my neck bent to get them out gave me a big crick in my neck and back, and my foot kept falling asleep. Bleh. After that time, I’d gotten most of them, but there were a few stubborn straight-in, deep ones that I just couldn’t get to. So I hit Google for a solution, and found an old diver’s trick — soak the foot in vinegar and they’ll dissolve. Apparently it’s the same process by which you make a turkey wishbone rubbery (ever done that?) Something about the acetic acid in the vinegar reacting to the calcium in the bones, or in the sea urchin spines.
Well, we didn’t have any regular vinegar, so I decided to use some basalmic vinegar (which we’ve been eating with our bread and cheese for lunch) on gauze and taped to my foot to soak it that way. We only had an hour left on our bike rental at this point, and I didn’t want to waste it! So I taped up my foot, shoved it into a shoe, and away we went, sticking to the coast this time. All things considered, it was a lovely ride.
Flowers outside a convent.
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We had to return the rental bikes, so we did, then came back to our hostel and showered and did laundry (whee!) before going to eat dinner. The hostel we’re staying in is pretty empty right now (high season doesn’t really start for another couple of weeks) so the owner offered us a discount on a fourth night… Heck yeah!! So we’re here through Thursday.
Oh, the vinegar managed to dissolve all but one or two of the deepest spines–it’s hard to tell, since it kind of stained my foot. :-p So it still hurts, but at least I got most of them out. Depending on how it feels tomorrow, I may give it another vinegar soak tomorrow evening.
During the day tomorrow we’re going to rent a kayak and go cruise around… hopefully it’ll be a nice day, and not the comedy of errors that today was. Sigh. :-)
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Where we are now:
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