Day 116: An Afternoon On the Beach Local Kids
With our excursion day behind us we were happily staring down two full days with absolutely no plans.
I worked out up on the deck of the villa and then took my daily plunge in the pool. The kids had already beat me into the water, waking around seven and getting right into their suits for a pre-breakfast swim.
Sergio our host starts bringing out kids cereal around 8am — a ridiculous buffet of regular, chocolate and strawberry Rice Crispies. The kids dig in while Margaret and I sit on lounge chairs by the pool, have our coffee and soak in the view.
We did some school after breakfast, had lunch at the villa and then made our way down to the beach.
It was a really fun afternoon. Several of the local kids wondered down the beach and we played with them for hours — soccer, baseball / cricket, sand castles, swimming.
The kids ranged in age from probably six to eleven. There were no parents in sight — except one mom who came to fetch one kid around 4pm. He promptly returned about 20 minutes later.
They were obsessed with the big bag of beach toys that we had at our little shaded hut, loving all of the balls, racquets, plastic buckets and shovels. They were very sweet kids, including James in their games despite his being much younger and playing nicely with Willa, building a beautiful sand castle city covered in shells.
We played some 5 on 5 soccer.
I threw some batting practice. They were much better at soccer!
And I got a few hacks too.
Interestingly they had no fear of jelly fish. Picking them up, slicing them into pieces, washing them and then saving a big bucket of them. The language barrier kept us from understanding exactly why they were doing this.
Margaret has been grinding through this puzzle and did some work on it before dinner.
We had dinner the four of us together — chicken and shrimp off the braai right next to the table.
