Liz's Journal - Formentera
Page 31
Formentera: 29 May - 2 June 2003
Upon arriving at Formentera I was surprised to see Pose de la Joue, a wooden green-hulled gaff sloop and home to Hughes, Collin, Baptist and Clarice, friends of mine that I made when arriving in Portugal.
The long white beach was littered with sea grass and odd shells. A roped off area of dune surrounded the beach and this is where we had the most fun. Not only was it a great place to go exploring, one of my favourite activities, but it was also great for playing 'hide and go seek' and 'Tag'. Although full of energy when arriving at the beach, we soon grew weary from running in the soft sand in the heat. At this time we generally dozed in the shade of dune or went on walks in the bush. On one of our trips into 'The great unknown' we discovered a saltpan or mud flat, when faced with an obstacle such as this the best thing to do is, be a kid. We took this advice and were soon undistinguishable from the gray sludge we were playing in. We could not stay to long in the pans as the salinity is very high and soon our skin was burning. On our walk back to the beach for a wash, I think we scared a few hiking tourists. I can well imagine why, five things walking out of nowhere covered in mud, SCARY! When we eventually made our way to the water the mud was caked on us so hard I was beginning to feel like a discarded clay pot. We had however discovered that mud mixed with dead grass placed on ones feet and then dried made for very good shoes, or at the very least protected us from the thorns that lay scattered along the path.
Finally able to lift the windsurfer rig, I had a go at windsurfing, never again will I laugh at Dad whom up till then had been the main attraction of the anchorage at his lame attempts to try windsurfing. After five days we moved on to the next anchorage as this one had become boring being the only ones there.