Christy’s birthday! Also happens to be almost exactly 50% of the way through this season’s adventure.

But it’s a fairly dodgy morning, rains hard a few times so the shuttle is pretty quiet going out to the island. Even a few people coming back early.

I go into town alone in the morning, there is a Brico hardware store about a km from the landing, surely they have plastic scrapers. Nope, just metal. But they do have an extension cord so I get that. I look around a bit more for plastic scrapers but no luck. Hit the pharmacy and buy some more Aspirin and some shaving cream. Then back to Milu.

By now the rain is all gone and it’s pretty windy but no rain in site. We load up and head over to the island. We go and inspect the lighthouse, nice views, and walk around a bit. Then back to the beach area. Christy goes for a snorkel while I snooze on the beach and try to forget about the burning fire in my shoulder.

There is a woman, Mina, offering massages on the beach for EU$25 so I think why not, can’t make things worse so I give her a try. The position on her massage table actually kills my shoulder and neck worse than if I was sitting down and she is not strong so I think it is not going to help much but I try and manifest the pain to leave my neck and shoulder and go out through her fingers. Every now and then she does something that makes the pain disappear for a second, but I really don’t know what it is. She takes quite a while for only EU$25 and I am glad when it’s over and I can get off the table. I don’t feel worse, for sure, but I can’t say I feel better. Mina was very nice at least, offers to do Christy for free since it is her birthday but for some reason she declines.

It’s not very comfortable sitting on a blanket in the shade – we’re going to have to get some fold-up chairs. But for now, we’ve had enough and head back to Milu. We clean up a bit and wait for the restaurants to open. Can’t go for dinner before 7 pm!

I get a customer call (Shanif) just before departure and have to spend some time with him, so that it is almost 7 pm before we head in. This is late for us and we almost cancel since it’s quite windy and a challenge to go in to that dinghy dock and back in the dark. But we go.

It is Christy’s birthday after all.

We are the first patrons at the restaurant which is a little scary but soon enough it fills up so that makes us feel better. We watch the locals play bocce ball in the square below the restaurant. Dinner is good, not great (steak) but the price is reasonable so that’s OK.

We head back to Milu in the dark. I have to adjust the forward dinghy harness a bit, the dinghy is rubbing on the davits so it needs to be a bit longer. Add a couple of carabiners to lengthen them, will see how they work.