Day 5 – Butterfly Valley

In the morning after introducing ourselves to the Nanine’s friends and apologizing for crashing the villa we headed down to the beach. The 5 of us strolled up and down the walkway of restaurants looking for a breakfast destination. We chose a place that turned out to be the worst pick of the lot with oily omelets that took two attempts to get right, soggy muesli and a greasy waiter who was insistent on showing us his latest magic tricks to our many protests.

We walked along the beach to enquire about the boat to Butterfly Valley. It was to leave at 2pm so we relaxed on the beach for a while. Ellen and I purchased a snorkel set and lilo each.

The boat came up to the shore and a crew of very brown and beachy guys passed our thing between them to load up the boat. It was an art to get onto the ladder as the waves made it rock all over the place. There were some very reggae tunes on the way over from which Ellen and I set the ‘song’ of the trip, Bob Marley!!

Getting off the boat was just as hard and getting on it but we all managed to reach the shore without hazard in some kind awkward fashion. Ellen and I went straight for the lilos but we ended up heading for the beach as we were getting sea sick as they bobbed in the waves.

The 5 of us went for a walk to find the waterfall. We saw about 2 butterflies on the way there. Very disappointing as butterfly valley sort of puts pictures in your mind of thousands! The landscape looked like that on the movie The Beach and we walked along thinking at anytime we would come across a field of marijuana. The place was full of lots of hippies and tree houses. The waterfall left much to the imagination as you couldn’t stand completely under it.

Upon return from our stroll we were brutally confronted with the realization that the boat about to leave was the last one of the day! They had told us the last one was at 6pm, it was only 5pm. They did not add however that 6pm was the last boat BACK to butterfly island. Needless to say we rounded our stuff up in a flurry and sprinted over the stones to the boat. They held the boat for us practically threw us on to it and left. There were 60 others all piled in and with almost nowhere to sit we huddled in a corner feeling like naughty school children.

On the way back to the villa we did some research for the next day’s activity and collected some snacks for a pool side evening. We decided on and then booked a 12 island boat cruise.