Playa Colorada

We drove along the coast, passing many beaches and beach towns. Whenever the truck stopped and the air stopped circulating, the heat was unbearable. Our posada didn't have air conditioning, only dorms with mosquito nets over the beds. The evenings were inexplicably warmer than the daytime, as the breeze dropped. The heat didn't stop me having a go on the free climbing wall though. I completed the easy course without a problem but my unsuppleness and stumpy legs hindered my success at the next level. Damn my stumpy legs.

There's not much to do at Playa Colorada except go to the beach or kayak to the islands off the shore. We were here for 2 days so we booked in the kayaking for our last day. The next day we spent on the beach, which was beautiful and relaxing, but not as exciting as the waves at Playa Colombia.

The kayaking was not something either of us had done before. The group that went out the day before didn't see any dolphins, and the chance of seeing dolphins was the only way I could convince Dee to get in a boat again after the "rafting incident" back in Ecuador. Me and Dee were in a kayak together and I knew there was going to be trouble by the way Dee had a panicked look on her face at the sight of water. Sure enough, as soon as we got in the sea the abuse started; "what are you going that way for?", "why aren't you paddling?", "you're tipping the boat", "well paddle then", "you're splashing me", "we're going to crash" etc. The others laughed as I rolled my eyes. I did make the mistake of letting Dee sit in the back, which meant she could get away with not paddling very hard, while I put in all the work. She was also in charge of the rudder.

We followed the guide out to sea towards the islands in a zig-zag path, hoping to see dolphins. James, in another kayak, took some photos of me with my camera and threw it back to me, which I unthoughtfully leant over to catch. My mistake here was that I thought these things were supposed to be hard to capsize. We both ended up in the sea, our kayak upside down and full of water. Good job my ears were full of salt water at that time so I couldn't hear Dee screaming abuse at me. We swam around and collected the floating debris from around the crash site (bottles of water, sun cream, sandals etc) and the guide helped us empty the water out the boat. Dee gave me a look that could have made Satan tremble in his boots as we pulled ourselves back into the kayak. Luckily Dee's mood lightened when we saw a family of dolphins swim past us about 10m away. I was going to suggest we capsize the kayak again so I could swim with them, but I didn't think Dee would respond positively. It would have been better if the dolphins swam under us, because the water was the clearest I've ever seen, but they just observed us from a distance. After they left we parked the kayaks on a dirty beach on an island about 3km from shore where we did some snorkeling. To be honest, after the Galapagos, any other snorkeling experience is going to be a disappointment. We didn't see much we hadn't seen before, except a sea cucumber which I picked up and played with. After we were bored with the snorkeling Dee had a sleep on the beach while me, Anders, James and Ian went off in search of ice cream.

There was 1 restaurant on the island and when we got there it was overrun by giant iguanas. There was a family eating lunch and throwing scraps to the hungry, aggressive lizards which surrounded their table, up to 1.5m in length. I, as ever, was keen to get up close to the animals and feed them myself. I found some leftover rice on another table and rolled it together to form a nice iguana snack. Timidly, one of the big iguanas took it. I got a smaller piece and tried feeding another one, which looked at the rice hungrily, just as another, smaller iguana ran up to me and took a big bite of my finger. The razor sharp teeth went right into my flesh. It quickly let go and ran off before I could introduce the little bastard to my foot. The bite mark covered the tips of my index and middle finger and blood was pouring from the wounds, which I washed in the sea (looking out for sharks). I used to quite like iguanas, now I hate the little bleeders.

For the return journey I insisted that I sat in the back so I could keep an eye on Dee's paddling and we went a lot quicker (and straighter). We had done a lot of paddling that day and I got blisters on my hands, which, along with the iguana bite, stung really badly when I cooled off in the sea. Bloody iguanas.

That evening, Tim announced that he has had enough of the jungle and wants to stay in Playa Colorada for the next week, so he arranged to meet us again in Manaus at the end of the leg.