Beach Day!

Saturday, a day off work, and SO needed to go somewhere different and refreshing! Carol 2 planned an outing to Aberdeen beach and a couple of local Aberdeen shops. A local on board the ship set up a boda boda driver and vehicle. A boda boda is a (was) a van will all the normal seats taken out and replaced with 1x4s screwed onto old metal pipes to make bench seats for way too many people than a van that size was ever made to carry. The boda boda driver, Mamoud, turned out to not know where anything we wanted was actually located even though he had told the local on board that he did know where these things were located. We finally found Aberdeen beach and one of the shops. The beach didn’t seem that special so we continued onto another beach that we believed was near Aberdeen.  Photos are of a sign for the (Princess) Diana Hotel, the Aberdeen beach, a condo being built on the beach where I wouldn’t mind if I otherwise had to live here, and 15 people stuffed into a boda boda.

After Mamoud argued and tried to demand more money, which Carol 2 handled very well, he drove past the entrance to the next beach, Lakka Beach, twice before finding it. It was well worth the hassle after all the drama. It was weird driving there because we drove down a succession of dirt alleyways which were actually driveways to peoples’ huts and businesses. When we exited the van several business people emerged and tried to convince us to come to their location. One guy was practically throwing a giant, still living lobster at us to show us what his restaurant had to offer. It was a tad confusing but it turned out that each of these businesses controlled a small section of beach and their huts made money off of cooking for, cleaning up after and basically providing a nice, safe haven for groups of beach goers, and the beach goers paid them for their hospitality. We chose a buffet lunch selection and took up the chairs and lounges in front of that particular hut; we could leave our stuff there with relative safety and swim, walk, soak up sun or whatever we wanted while they took care of us or left us alone, whichever we chose to do.

Even on the beach we couldn’t escape the vendors who constantly wandered down the beach trying to sell their wares. Later in the afternoon, a group of dancers/musicians and a voodoo medicine man dancer slowly traveled along the beach, entertaining the groups. The main guy would do a crazy dance with somewhat impressive gymnastics, then writhe on the sand, eat the sand in handfuls, make weird noises and seem to think this was worth donations. His cohorts had their legs wrapped up in material and then surrounded with chains of little metal dangling pieces which made lots of tingling noises when they danced, while the rest of the traveling show play hand-made instruments. That part was kind of interesting, I thought.

The water was quite warm, especially compared to the SoCal Pacific beaches, very salty, and WONDERFUL. The food was a buffet of fried chicken, shrimps on skewers, barracuda on skewers, some rice, cottage fries and cold sodas. Even though it was created in a very simple “kitchen” environment, it was very clean, plentiful, very reasonably priced, and very good! We even made plans with them to come again in a couple of weeks for another outing, this time later in the day. The next trip will have lobster, crab and more food AND a bonfire. I can’t wait. (No seriously, I can’t wait – the plan is keeping me going for the next 2 weeks while I slave in the galley.)

The drive back to the ship was rough because of traffic but as we went through Aberdeen again we stopped for ice cream at a little shop. The beach area had picked up somewhat and didn’t look to bad after all. I numerous spots a restaurant would be on one side of the street and then that business would have a platform area directly across the street, on the beach, with tables and chairs and some other amendments, maybe a small band area or something like that. The ice cream shop was actually a restaurant in and of itself, very clean inside, a pool table, and a whole corner section devoted to frozen treats. It also had its own platform area across the street. Since the whole beach scene had picked up a bit since we had first driven through it was definitely more interesting looking and worth coming back to on another trip sometime…

Man, did I need that day!