Unknown Beaches

Because this island is so small and there’s really just the one road, it’s easy to think that we’ve seen everything that there is to see here. But when we stop and explore we keep discovering new things, primarily new beaches. The first one we found is a few minutes past where we live. It was bigger and emptier than our normal beach, and is supposed to be one of the hot nightspots on the island. The road to this beach is a long, windy and hilly one that seems almost entirely uninhabited and is great fun to drive on the scooter, and on the way back reveals a good portion of the island spread out between the palm tress lining the road.

The other beach that we went to more recently (sorry, no pictures yet), may or may not be called Kiki Wharf (it’s unclear because everyone always says it in Creole). Silvia found it on her own first, after having four or five different people guide her closer and closer to the place. It’s very well hidden, and unless you knew what you were looking for you would never notice it. You have to park on the street, and go through a break in an old stone wall and hike down an overrun path for a few minutes, which just generally contributes to the feeling of seclusion and secrecy of the place. You eventually emerge along a little freshwater stream onto a rock outcropping that divides two beaches. The two beaches are both backed by cliffs, and are clearly known only to the locals, furthering the perpetual quest of overcoming our tourist status. We explored the one on the left first. The beach is small and crescent shaped and nestled into the cliff wall behind it. The rock extends fairly far on both sides so that it feels wonderfully private and secluded. In the middle, falling from the cliff above there are two freshwater waterfalls that land in the middle of the beach. There’s no way to walk there so you have to swim to get to the beach after jumping off the rock outcropping in the middle. The water there seems even clearer than usual; standing several feet above water that was maybe four or five feet deep I could still see everything crystal clear on the sea floor. It’s an incredibly idyllic spot, easily one of my favorite places on the island so far. There’s also a rope swing tied to a tree on the top of the cliff that hangs all the way down to the water and requires some probably inadvisable climbing to get to. We used it a little bit closer to the water, but it doesn’t work anywhere near as well as it probably would higher up. I made my way around to higher ground, but after contemplating just how far away I was from the water as well as the fact that it was low tide, I decided to wait until another time to actually give it a shot.

We swam past this beach to find another one just around a bend in the island, this one almost entirely rocky. The water is so clear that every swimming expedition turns into chasing after fish, and there were a few rock and coral formations that had huge numbers of colorful fish I could see from above the water. There was even a ray that Silvia spotted, then lost track of, just before I realized we were basically standing on top of it and sprinted away (or whatever the swimming equivalent of sprinting is) because the ray seemed agitated by our proximity and neither of us particularly wanted to be on top of an agitated stingray.

Other updates:

• I had an actual dialogue in Spanish with someone! And they didn’t even look at me like I was an idiot. Admittedly, it was mostly because all I said was “Bien,” “Si,” and “Mas o menos,” but it was still a big moment for me.
• Our channel lineup changes randomly and inexplicably, but the one constant is the local Providencia channel, whose sole purpose seems to be showing b-roll montages of the island set to reggae. We did get to watch most of Aladdin in Spanish the other day (or should I say Aladdín), during which I got to enjoy the classics “Tienes un amigo fiel en mi” and “Un mundo ideal.” (Thankfully, melody transcends the language barrier.) Unfortunately the cable decided to go out just as it was about to show Kill Bill, which I had been looking forward to for days (it was basically my Friday night out), but from what I could see it was in Spanish anyway, and that is one movie that really should not be dubbed. The Queen of the Crime Council speech, which is one of my favorite things in that movie, is just not the same when Lucy Liu is standing on the table holding that guy’s head and mouthing words while somebody else screams curses in Spanish on the soundtrack.
• Having automotive transportation is great.
• One of the things I love about Providencia is how chill everyone is. On multiple occasions, when we have not had exact change and the vendor couldn’t make change, they just give us the food or whatever and we promise to come back and pay them later. That just seems kind of great to me.
• I just got La Traviata from Silvia and am listening to it now, and man, I am not always the hugest fan of opera, but Verdi knew what he was doing.