Friday 30 December – a late Christmas celebration

After a big cooked breakfast we finally exchanged our Christmas presents, with delicious tasty treats for us…… cheeses from Phoebs she snuck into the country, and delicious nutty pastry bakes from Daniel, a Hungarian tradition. Everyone in the family bakes something for Christmas, so we were the happy recipients of an amazing assortment of delicious nutty chocolate biscuits.

The assortment of home baked biscuits from Daniel

Rowan the happy recipient of great chunks of scrummy cheese

Present time

All the kids got my brother in laws book he has just had published. Phoebe is wearing the trousers we got her in Colombia

Our spot in amongst the mangrove islands

Mid afternoon we thought we would go and explore the mangrove islands and try and find a restaurant for a late lunch. Rowan topped up JeldiJeldi’s tanks which was just as well as google took us on a wild goose hunt through the mangrove islands. We finally had to flag down a passing water taxi who set us straight and 20 minutes in the other direction we made it to Alphonso’s restaurant, a very quaint place out on the water.

We were relieved they were still serving food as they only had one couple in the restaurant. It was a magical setting even if the food didn’t quite live up to the setting. Disappointingly all their fish was frozen and from what we could understand it came from China, which was a bit off putting. We opted for the mixed fish platter without the fish and octopus. Sadly it arrived with very small lobsters. I keep saying I’m not going to eat lobster anymore and need to stick to it! It was a very jolly lunch with the usual pumping music, and endless water taxis charging up and down. Phoebe asked the waiter if we needed to be careful of alligators, and he just laughed saying there were none, but that he had seen a 12 foot bull shark near the restaurant! It has not made Phoebe any happier about swimming out at the boat.

A local trying to sell us a live conch and coconuts

Navigating our way through the isolated mangrove islands, searching for the restaurant

Misty mountains in the distance

Alphonso’s restaurant….finally got there!

Very colourful restaurant on the water

Our tiny lobsters

Fish at the restaurant, looks rather baracuda-ish

Plenty of clouds about!

Mentioning taxis, Rowan had a narrow escape this morning, he went snorkelling over to one of the mangrove swamps and on his way back Phoebe and I saw a water taxi pass him really close by, I don’t know if they had seen Rowan, but scarily Rowan never heard the boat. We will use our luminous swimming buoy in future in these busy waters.

We had a lovely sunset and then watched an episode from the second season of White Lotus. Stinky is a marvel, we can now download movies!