Friday, 9 September 2011 @ about 1pm - I published Part III a couple days ago, but it looks like Blogger didn’t follow through with its job. In that post I had mentioned that we had a fun-filled day on a “mystery tour” instead of a day out at sea (What better place to go on an adventure named after a Beatles song than in the UK?). On that tour, transported by the organization’s Land Rover and led by the director, we stopped at a cemetery that contained various symbols all over its walls and tombs, such as the skull and cross bones. I wish I could tell you the age of the place; however, I did see a tombstone with a year from the late-nineteenth century inscribed on it.
We then visited a “rich people” harbor with a closed-up lighthouse, a cave connecting two bays, a grocery store called “Tesco’s,” and then on the way back saw a sheep that somehow figured out how to jump an (electric?) fence but couldn’t figure out how to get back in. We heard, “Baa-a-a-aahh,” but what I think it was really trying to say was, “Shii-i-i-iit, how did I do that agaa-a-a-aain?”
Yesterday we went out to sea and were cursed with another dolphin-less day. We stopped at a random bay to have lunch and then started back. Both ways had rough seas, minus rain, and the director came up with this “brilliant” idea of stopping in the middle of the return route to fish for mackerel.
This is when I learned again that seasickness doesn’t come from sitting on a boat moving at 15 mph; it comes from sitting idle with three- to four-foot waves rocking the boat towards shore.
I thought I was over seasickness, but perhaps my body wanted revenge for not getting the job done on the bus to Banff. Here we were, in a rocking boat with two people standing up fishing and the rest of us sitting. Three fish were caught and then one of the rods was offered to me. I was excited by this opportunity, having gone fishing only once in my life (When I was like, I dunno, six?) and never caught anything. But every time I tried grabbing the rod, a wave rocked the boat and my stomach felt more and more like an active volcano.
“Um, that’s alright. You can keep fishing.”
I turned and stared out at the horizon for a while, and one of the staff members asked me, “Holly, are you okay?”
I shook my head. “No.”
So, the next thing I knew I was driving the boat home again. This was to help me concentrate elsewhere other than on the Mount St. Helens growing in mi estomago. I was so tired and bleh when we returned, that I slept in this morning and asked one of the other volunteers to tell the director that I was going to take a “personal day off to sleep” while everyone else went out to sea again. I needed it to get used to the time difference.