Saturday 16th Jan

We got up early to go on a dolphin watching trip on a fishing boat. Unfortunately, our boat’s engine packed in after just ten minutes. The driver spent a further ten minutes trying to revive it, at the end of which it finally spluttered back into life in a cloud of diesel. By this point it had got rather busy out on the water, and whenever we found dolphins and I was poised to jump in with them, five other boats came rushing up and frightened the poor buggers off. The next section of the tour was to Honeymoon Beach, which was strewn with rubbish. In spite of this there was lots of wildlife rustling in the bushes. I saw the giant squirrel’s smaller counterpart, as well as plenty of crabs. After a quick swim the boat whisked us away to Butterfly Island, which they let us glimpse from afar without time to see a butterfly.

The rest of the morning and early afternoon were dedicated tanning time. I’m pleased to say that not one person commented on my skin colour today so I must be improving. Or perhaps no one can detect the original colour as I have so many insect bites that they’ve more or less joined to form a red continuum.

In the evening we went to see some live music, enticed by a flier from a ropey old Yorkshireman. We arrived to find him tunelessly massacring Big Yellow Taxi. Little did we know that the best was yet to come! The next act was a stocky German with beads woven into his beard. “Hallo, mein name ist Franz,” he declared in an accent so strong that I assumed he must be joking. But apparently not, as he proceeded to sing Mad World in a style reminiscent of Martha reading Roy Orbison in Clingfilm with the voice of Ulrich Haarburste, for those of you whom have had the pleasure of experiencing this, only a touch grittier. Everybody else on the beach nodded and swayed along, apparently oblivious to the sheer awfulness of Franz’s singing.

There were some surprisingly good acts, including an English man, a Swedish family and a fusion of Irish concertina with sitar. Another notably horrifying one however was an overweight leathery 50 year old English woman wearing a leopard print top, leggings and a fanny pack, gyrating grotesquely to her own rendition of Fever whilst the hapless Franz accompanied her on the bongo. That’s going to provide subject matter for some serious chloroquine nightmares.