Day 6: Fun Day

Our day off! As a group, we took a boat out to an island where there were many activities to do. We snorkeled, rode jet skis, rode on a banana boat, hung out on our boat’s decks, and swam in the ocean. One group of people decided to take a swim to the other side of the island, which was about a 45 minute swim. Several of us walked to where they’d be swimming, which only took about 3 minutes. Our initial plan was to stand there in the water and shout as they all swam up, “What took you so long?” But one of the guys saw some bamboo and string laying around, and suggested we make a boat. So the seven of us got to work, constructing a bamboo raft. About the time we saw the swimmers making their way over, the boat was finished, and we put it in the water to see if it would float. We flipped it right-side up and ta-da! It floated! We all cheered, and there were several boats of people around us who, unknowingly to us, had been watching us make the boat, and they all cheered too. Someone paddled the boat out to ‘rescue’ the swimmers, but those guys were hard core and wanted to officially swim up on shore. We wanted to take our bamboo boat out to the real boat, which was on the other side of the island. The 7 of us hoisted the raft on our shoulders and walked over the island like a bunch of natives. All we were missing was some chanting and grunting. The real boat was a swim away, because it was too shallow for the boat to dock on the shore, so we pulled the raft up to the boat and docked it by tying one of the strings to a life preserver. There it sat all day, in its life saving glory.