Thursday 9 June 2011

Beach Bums and Candy Canes


Day six of the race:

The day at the beach was much needed! We were all sleep-deprived at this point and just exhausted in every sense of the word. The beach was very rejuvenating! We had a simple breakfast at 10, though we were all awake by 9 and just chilling by the pool waiting for breakfast to be served. After breakfast we just went to the beach all day. The water was wonderful, the ocean was just gorgeous. Peru has a very hot and dry climate, so it was the perfect beach day. If you ask me the water felt like a warm bathtub, but ask anyone else from the team and they would say that it was freezing. When you grow up going to a glacier-fed lake, every other body of water is warm. We basically just spent the day swimming, and tanning, and chilling. I wish I had a picture, but I discovered the reason you never use spray-on sunscreen. I sprayed it on my arms and legs and thought I rubbed it in well enough... WRONG!! I didn’t realize I was burning until way later in the day and I burnt in a lovely candy cane pattern on my legs; I had two white strips down my legs and two bright red strips, in a sort of twisting pattern. It looked (an still looks) absolutely ridiculous!! I stood up and everyone laughed, I laughed to because of course this would happen to me. My tan line now is great; my legs go white, dark brown, white, dark brown, and the best part is that they’re peeling for a second time – I can now say it looks like I have a flesh-eating disease because it’s so gross looking. Anyways we eventually moved to the pool because the waves were getting pretty big and crashing up to where we were laying on the beach. The waves were also starting to get pretty rough; the first five or so feet into the ocean is all rocks and then when the waves come it feels like you are getting dragged over a cheese grater. You know how most people pull splinters out of their hands; I was digging pebbles out of mine. The rest of the day was just chilling by the poolside, walking down the beach after sunset, and then getting on an eleven hour night bus to Trujillo. Thankgoodness for gravel otherwise that trip would have been unbearable as the back of my legs were fried. I want to see if I can get as dark as the one section of my legs know that I know that I can actually get that dark. I’m finally almost caught up with blogging about the race; did three days today which I think is pretty good. More in a few days -  going to Portoviejo and I don’t think we’re bringing our laptops with us. My goal is to get completely caught up by the end of next week... here’s hoping!!!!

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