Wednesday 10 December – giving Friwen village a Christmas present

In the morning we went for a really long snorkel, covering some of the distance we did yesterday. It is a very pretty stretch of colourful coral, with loads of very colourful clams too. There were quite a few anemones with different Clown fish in them, one was a very large cheeky orange fish, that was bravely coming out to see what the camera was. Another anemone had small little light orange Clown fish with a single white stripe running down its spine, I can’t remember seeing these before. The current was roaring through as long as you don’t want to swim against it, you just drift along without even using your flippers.

Later in the afternoon we went for a walk in the village. We need to make space in our guest cabins with the kids imminent arrival. We decided to give all our presents (knives, soap, tongs, glasses, clothing, shoes, old backpack) and tinned food to the village. It made up 3 big bags. It is a very pretty little village all decorated for the dignitaries that came on Monday, we still have not worked out who it was, could have been something to do with the church. The chief is away and the school was closed for the holidays, we eventually found two very friendly helpful young girls at a house. They had loads of little aloe vera plants that they were growing in plastic bags, i asked if I could buy one and they insisted I could just have it. We thought they were the right kind of people to share all the goodies with the village, they loved my old bras! We had a good walk around the tiny island and back to the jetty along the lovely soft white sand beach which was full of amazing shells.

The long jetty which we are not far from is a great gathering spot for the kids. The current thrill is letting off very loud crackers, that they have long tubes to get an extra loud bang I assume.