23 January 2009 - (3) An unexpected eventful day!!

8th January

We woke up this morning to the sound of continual rain, it hadn’t stopped most of the night. Over breakfast we chatted to Jodi the dive instructor, we were supposed to be going out this morning for a dive but looking at the weather we decided to give it a miss.

Just as we were finishing breakfast Kylie one of the manager approached us and suggested that we think about leaving the island a day early as they were unsure as to whether any boats would run the following day.

Dan and I decided to get packed whilst we waited to hear the latest weather reports, the last thing we wanted to do was miss our flight to Canada as we had arranged to meet up with Dad and Sarah on our arrival.

By 10am we decided to leave in the afternoon, we just couldn’t risk being stuck on the island however looking at the size of the swells in the sea I wasn’t looking forward to the oat trip back to the mainland!!

We were due to leave o the octopus speed boat but due to the weather they weren’t risking running it so we got our tickets transferred to the YASAWA flyer, this is a catamaran that runs through the whole of the Yasawa islands. It was due to pick us up at 3pm but again due to the weather it was running late.

At just gone 4pm we made our way to the shore, in order to get onto the flyer we first had to get the speedboat out to it…..what fun!! Due to the swells 4 or 5 of the male staff had to hold the boat whilst we got on…in the meantime some waves were actually coming into the boat. Finally we were alongside the flyer, climbing o was nerve wracking as the huge swells kept making huge gaps in between the two boats, this was made harder as we weren’t allowed to hold on to the sides incase our hands were crushed!!

Finally we were all on board the flyer, it was rocking around quite a lot so Dan and I tried to get to a seat without falling over, the passengers looked a sight as many of them looked to be suffering from sea sickness. Dan and I had taken some tablets an a while before and thankfully they seemed to e doing the job, fairly soon we both felt dozy and actually managed to sleep for a while.

After a couple of hours on the boat they stopped the engines in the middle of the ocean, everyone started looking out the window, we all saw an empty speed boat with life jacket strewn over the inside. This wasn’t a pleasant feeling, people on the boat started speculating if anyone had been thrown out of the boat etc, the staff of the flyer attached the boat and pulled it after them. I don’t think anyone had in the boat the chances of it breaking from its mooring seemed more probable.

Finally at just gone 7pm we reached the port, it was raining very hard and much of the car park area had been flooded, our backpacks were well and truly drenched, definitely a good thing buying waterproof liners so at least most of our belongings would be dry.

We were then taken to Horizions by the octopus shuttle bus, we would spend the night here then head off in the morning. Although the day had been quite stressful we were grateful to have gotten off the island and neither of us had felt sick…that’s a first!!!