Meeting the locals.....

I like to chat, I get it from my very sociable parents. So far the island has been unbelievably relaxing, but somewhat lacking in local flavour. This could easily be resolved by a Sunday afternoon trip to ' Island Style'. We'd been to island style before we escaped the unfinished 'spa' hotel - but we timed it wrong. Once the sun goes down the island goes into total darkness. The lobster we had was amazing, but left us all wandering what it actually looked like.

Anyway so we figured we could go for lunch - see the food - drink Tona - listen to the crashing waves. Sundays are also the day the locals go ( after repenting their sins at church that morning) and drink copious amounts of rum.

We arrived, bagged a beachside table and noticed that the table to the left included 4 men and worryingly 3 litre bottles of flor de cana. Beers arrived ( happy to report that Jess is starting to match my drinking pace) - lobster orders placed. It didn't take long for the ' interacting with the locals' to commence. My eyes were drawn to 3 of the men moving the chair containing man number 4 into the shade. Man number 4 had passed out - we found out later that he'd been drinking since Saturday morning. I'm guessing he'd missed church. The other 3 locals then tried to offer us shots of rum and we got chatting. There was one creole - a lovely fisherman called Rudi , and two Spanish guys Francisco and Enrique. Rudi was a tall, lithe guy - easy on the eye - and talking to him was lovely. He told us all about his family, life as a fisherman, how he loved meeting new people. He loved his island and he was incredibly sweet. Every time he touched my arm I felt a bit funny, and he touched my arm a lot :-)

Anyway lobster came, we had about 10 minutes of food heaven, and that's when unfortunately drunk Spanish guy woke up. He stumbles over, promptly falls over and then starts to strip off in front of us. He gets down to his briefs ( shudder, not even boxers) and then stumbles down to the ocean to presumably fall into that. Which he does. It's very funny watching him trying to stand up for about 5 minutes. Unfortunately the next 30 minutes he was trying to speak to Jess in a drunk spanish/ english combo and generally being very annoying.

This did give Rudi time to invite me round to his for a 'rundown' tomorrow night. I told him it was too hot for running, but it's actually a local kind of hot pot of lobster, fish, plantain and coconut milk. He told me he lived alone and he'd get the fish fishing that day. What did i think?

Apparently I thought it was a bad idea, and I should be sensible and going round to Rudi's shack for dinner wouldn't be a good idea.

A decision I may well regret

Photos of Rudi and the pissed Spaniard to follow....

X