Rather than sit around again, I piled into a boat with Razak and Annie and headed to the village to help with the shopping for the week.
We zoomed around the big island in a speedboat and ran some errands on the small island. We talked to some guys on boats then went into the village and shopped, had tea with the locals and zipped back to the island. I feel honoured to have had the opportunity to hangout with the locals. It was an amazing experience, and it was amazing to watch Annie shop and barter!
For the rest of the evening I sat and watched the bats fly around the trees. Bats are really freaky looking creatures. I am in awe of their behaviour. They fly and grab onto a branch on a tree then crawl upside down with long arms from branch to branch until they decide to go to the next tree. The bats on this island are huge. They must have a wingspan of at least 3 feet. They swoop through the forest at amazing speeds and manage not to hit a thing. The crawling upside-down thing freaks me out a bit.
At the end of my stay here is my list of fish I’ve eaten while on the island: mackerel, ray, scat, snapper, sweetlips, barracuda, squid, and parrotfish, which looks better than it tastes.
The locals have different methods of catching fish: a line method, net fishing and spear fishing, which is a great way to get yourself killed by a shark. Blast fishing occurs mainly at night and is illegal; no one on the island uses this method of fishing.