Twenty degrees

Twenty degrees.  That's the secret I'm told.  Keep your room at twenty degrees or cooler, air con on full, and you'll have no problems with the mozzies.   I just went through the customer's base safety brief. They told me about the twenty degrees, but I'm now concerned about all sorts of stuff I didn't have the common sense to be worried about.  Those safety briefs are meant to enlighten and inform, but they just scare me.  Sounds like the locals still light people on fire from time to time, so travel in convoys and don't leave the hotel and eat at the company kitchen.....don't think so mate, I'm walking by my lonesome to the beach.  It's hard to believe these happy smiling people can be dangerous, but those that know Africa will tell you, it can turn on you in a heartbeat.  I don't watch the news for the same reason, better to be ignorant and happy than informed and stressed. 

Caught a Mtwara cab back to the hotel this evening....

I had ran into the pirate hunters again, or as I've been corrected, Counter-Piracy Dudes.  After snorkelling, I found they were up at the resort seaside, and well into the Kilamanjaros.  The snorkelling was amazing once again, I have to get my hands on an underwater camera!  I found this huge anemone way out in the channel with a pair of the biggest clownfish I had ever seen nestled into it's tentacles.  Brave little guys.  As I approached their home, they darted at me and stared me down, not backing down for an instant.  Pugnacious little buggers.  I hope to pay them another visit tomorrow.  Then I plunk down with the pirate hunters, or counter-piracy dudes, and with the beer flowing, the stories just keep getting better.  There was a big shoot out with pirates in the harbour here just before Christmas.  These guys live for the action.  We've got a big base BBQ planned for tonight, I think I'll extend an invitation.  Everyone appreciates a fresh perspective.

It's nice to get out swimming regularly once again.  I was on this job for a mapping company, subcontracting to Hydro-Quebec, for one of their major dam project in the North.  We were staying in this camp of Arco trailers, airborne everyday at dawn and just getting back for a late supper.  As we were mapping the rivers, most of the time I'd plop my Longranger helo down on the side somewhere, and as they went about their business, I'd strip down and jump in.  Then after I'd given the fish all a good fright, I'd get out the fishing rod.  They'd bite whatever I offered nevertheless.  I liked to think that alot of these trout had never been fished before, but once in a remote corner of Northern Quebec, far inland from Hudson Bay, feeling like Doctor Livingtone himself (wrong continent I know, but heh, it's my imagination), I was quite disenchanted to come across a number of picnic tables on the shore of this stream.  Not quite as exclusive as my imagination had led me to believe.  What a world it would be if your imagination and reality coincided more often! .......Nah, it'd probally mess everything up.

I've swam in rivers and lakes all over Northern Ontario and Quebec, and I surf in the Atlantic quite regularly.  I used to live for surfing but aging moved it farther back in the priorities list, but I still get out from time to time.  It's quite relaxing to sit on the ocean, waiting for the next swell, there's something meditative about it that is quite addictive.  I've swam in the Caspian Sea, and I swam in the Black Sea almost daily while in Turkey, as the beach was right outside my hotel balcony.  If I'm not in the water myself, I'm flying guys over it, out to their rigs far offshore.  The romantic in me likes to think that the sea calls.  Even the hardiest souls will admit that there is an inexplicable draw.  As Captain Jack says...."Bring me that horizon". 

No flying tomorrow, snorkelling kit by the door, ready to go.  Room freezing, but no mozzies!  Life is good.