Sometimes you arrive somewhere and you can really see the thought processes that followed in order to name that area. Isle of Pines in one such place. After anchoring and peering over the sides of the ship you are greeted with an island that appears to be littered with Pine trees. Seems to make sense.
Turns out there’s a few more bits hidden away. A couple of us jumped on the tender after clinic and headed to shore to have a mooch about. Beautiful beaches as expected…
… but as you can see they were a little spoilt by all these humans running about that had also left the ship. We carried on walking though and managed to find somewhere more deserted.
This did me proud for about 5 minutes before I realised the others were not going to move anywhere else apart from the beach so I headed off on my own for a little explore. I’d heard rumours of a mountain so was quite excited and off I trotted.
I found a road and I found the mountain. Unfortunately they didn’t appear to be linked in any way.
The road seemed to just go on forever. In the end due to having no water and limited time I decided to head to somewhere else I’d heard off which was an old cemetery in the other direction.
So yet again I trotted off. After walking for about 20 minutes I then came across a sign pointing to the right. Now not being very well versed in the French language I assumed this sign must surely mean picnic site. I figured I may as well have a look seeing as I was passing…
Dressed properly in jeans and basically plimsoles in pretty sweaty weather with no water I was looking forward to a nice easy stroll to a picnic table. Well. This better be a great picnic site because the path is certainly telling a different story to the one I have in my head.
I’m thinking this really isn’t a family picnic site. Well it turns out that mountain I so wanted to climb a few moments earlier was it. After rummaging through the jungle for a while I broke out into a pretty steep climb to the summit.
Pretty deserted place really. But it did at least give a few photo opportunities…
I did have to descend eventually though via the slippery stones and near misses with my bum and ground and managed a pic (at a distance since I heard they’re quite bitey) of a local dog enjoying a well deserved nap.
By this point I was quite dry. My t-shirt was surprisingly wet. As was my head and arms and legs. But inside I was dry. So I decided to hot foot it (literally) back to the ship and drink a couple of pints of water followed by a bowl of soup. Next time I’ll be better prepared.
Cruising in a Tub 