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So our tropical part of the trip is coming to an end now, and weve had a really good 2-3 weeks. We headed off to a small island 30km from Okinawa called Zamami, to camp for 10 days and experience a true tropical island…. and that it was! The population of Zamami is 500 so its pretty small. The campsite was basic but nice, with cold showers, toilets, and so close to the beach you could here the waves breaking at night. For 300 yen (£2) it was nice and cheap too, so we set up camp in the forest area to get some shade from the sun. The first night we both got bitten so bad from mosquitoes, I had 30 bites on one leg and holly had swelled up all over her body in a reaction to the bites. Oh well, cant have everything.
The campsite was very quiet but we still managed to bump into a couple of welsh girls that were there, and a welsh guy. So much for laying off the alcohol for a bit. We had a great few bbqs on the beach and they showed us to a really good snorkelling spot. Me and hol had never been snorkelling before and it was soo dam amazing! Like fish everywhere! All sorts of fish - angel fish,, nemo fish, bright blue, stripy, big fish, little fish etc etc, like swimming in an aquarium. I even came across a sea snake, which at the time I though was cool, but then found out that if it bit me then I would have died in 3 hours. Eek!
After the welsh group left we thought wede have a chilled night and head into "town" to grab some food at a local "restaurant", which does some nice cheap dishes. We were just about to set off after the meal, and 3 locals walked in and sat down nearby. Before we knew it conversation had started up and I had a full glass off awamori (an Okinawa spirit) in front of me. They kept on handing us food and drinks all night and even called up the local English teacher (an American guy called David) to come down and say hi. We all talked for a while, picked up a few tips about where to hike/snorkel and when the night came to an end, David ran off, and came back with some freshly baked bread he'd made. That was awesome! …we hadn't had fresh bread in months and months!!
The next day another couple turned up, Adam from Hong Kong, and his friend Brooke from new Zealand. We had a great laugh with them and went hiking and snorkelling too. On the last day me and adam sett off on a search for a sea turtle, as we heard they had a lot of sightings recently near the beach we were camped on. After half an hour of looking we gave up and headed back to shore. But, just after we got out I looked back and saw a turtle popping its head out just by! AMAZING! Check out the video and you can see how nice it was to swim with it for a while. Perfect end to the trip!
This week Mike and Zoe, who we met woofing, came to Okinawa and we all hired a car for the week to explore mainland Okinawa! The plan was to rough it and camp anywhere we could all week, but rainy season decideed to kick in so we had to spend the first night in a hostel. The next day we heard of a campsite with a lot of cover called beach rock, so headed there. It was soo cool, like a kind of hippy commune thing. It was about £5 a night including 2 meals cooked from all the produce they produced. There were loads of hand made houses, tepee's, rope swings, tree houses etc etc. We didn't think anywhere like that would exist in Japan. Finally by the 3rd night we managed to rough it properly and camped on a small secluded beach in the middle of nowhere. That was really nice, even after having to move our tents at 4am in the morning after misjudging the tide line (oops).
So yeah. That's about it. Were flying out to San Francisco on Monday, for our 4 week all american experience. I think it will be a bit of a culture shock. Im gonna eat soo much cheese and sausages. Yum.
Bye bye for now
Chris
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