Rainy Days

Dry season... what?

We've been getting quite a bit of rain here in Ton Sai in the last few days. Last night it started around 7 and threatened to beat down our roof all night long. Then it rained on and off all morning until about 2 when it has become a constant drizzle.

I'm not really complaining; I rather enjoy the rain because we don't get a lot in Colorado, so it's a bit of a novelty to me... and it's so pretty here when it rains, and it's warm. But I guess I was expecting a bit more sun!

The nice thing about the rain is that it keeps things pretty cool. It's much easier to do stuff when it's not a million degrees outside. This morning we got up and went kayaking after breakfast. We rented a sea kayak for 5 hours for the grand total of 300 baht (about $9 USD). Not bad. We explored the seaside cliffs of the peninsula and some of the smaller outlying islands. Most of them had caves that we were able to kayak inside since it was low tide. It was so incredible, there are stalactites hanging everywhere inside the cave, and they are all dripping, and white... they sort of glowed in the darkness of the cave. There was a rumbling sound like thunder inside the mountain as the waves crashed through some of the smaller cavelets. It was a bit spooky inside there, as I remembered hearing stories somewhere of people exploring caves and getting stuck inside as the tide comes in. Maybe I just made those up in my head, I don't know. It felt adventurous nonetheless.

There are these little crablike creatures everywhere... I mean everywhere, on the cliffs and rocks right as they come out of the water. They crawl around very quickly and do not like when the kayak comes near one. I was sort of afraid one might jump on our kayak and then there would be chaos in the cave, but they scuttled quickly away.

We were on a mission, really, not just kayaking around but on a recon mission for deep water soloing spots. And we found them... ropes dangling from low-hanging stalactites hiding around many of the corners. We realized we would have to learn the tides as most of the spots were too shallow to fall into from high up on the cliff at the time we were there. Also we will see if we will be strong enough to climb the ropes! I could see how the hardest part might be getting up the rope to actually get on the rock! We found lots of great spots though and can't wait to try them out.

Now we're sitting here waiting out the rain so we can try to go climbing again. We're going to stay away from the pumpy overhanging caves for now and try to climb some faces... maybe we will have better luck with those. =)