The Trek to the Other Side

January 18, 2023  

The next day we once again packed a picnic and headed to shore to hike across the island. 

We had not checked the distance of the hike as it didn’t look that far from up on the mountain, but it turned out to be further than we had expected.  It was over 5km one way, and being so flat and low there wasn’t much of a breeze until we got past half way.  It was a hot walk, but we had lots of water with us, and although the area was very interesting, it did get to the point that it felt like a bit of a hot desert trudge. 

At first we were walking through a sandy plain, grown in with a variety of large shrub-like plants, and Jason carefully picked us a route through this area as most of the plants had large thorns. 

The mix of large shrubs and small trees transitioned into smaller plants and larger cacti, and we followed the more open area along the edge of the red rubble rock that came down and formed a very clear line; red rubble rock sloping up the hill to the one side and a flat sandy plain to the other. 

It seemed to be impossible to avoid the patches of the grasses with bur seeds and we had to stop periodically to pluck them from our socks and bare legs. 

The bottom of our shoes got covered with them such that it felt like we were walking on platform shoes.   

As we passed the halfway point the sandy plains opened up even more and there were very few plants growing there, but one thing that was constant all of the way across the island was the number of shells and pieces of coral. 

Large old shells and large chunks of coral were strewn everywhere, and mounds of broken pieces of shell were pushed together on the edge of what was obvious as an old runoff area.  We speculated that during a hurricane this whole area might get flooded with the storm surge.   

When we reached the other side it was low tide and the sand flats stretched out forever.  Even at the waters edge the drop off was still so shallow that we did not go swimming even though we had thought that we would.  We had even brought our mask and snorkels with us hoping to spend some time in the water. 

After Falcon had had his lunch, Jason made him a shade structure from pieces of wood that he found on shore and while Falcon enjoyed the shade and the sand, Jason and I had our picnic and enjoyed the view before making the trek back to our side of the island.