Greg's Journal - August 7th, 2003 - Day 4

We all piled into the dinghy and went to look for Dawn's sandals that MADELINE left on the beach. Found one. :( Cruised around Hog I., saw mangroves growing along the shore, saw some old rotting boats made of concrete. Went near a private island that had armed guards and signs that said DO NOT ENTER. Saw a beach on Hog I. that looked pretty good so went there. That beach was WAY cooler than the first one. LOTS of conch shells, coconuts and other shells. 3 guys came up in a boat and started unloading their catch - conch, urchins and an octopus. They got the conchs and urchins out of the shells, started a fire, then one of them climbed a pretty tall coconut tree and started picking coconuts & dropping them, about 25 feet high. They hacked open the green coconuts with a machete just enough to put a hole in the hard inner shell & gave us one to drink the milk out of. Pretty good stuff. They hacked it the rest of the way open and made a spoon out of the outer skin of the coconut so we could scoop the soft meat out of the coconut. Pretty good, too. Those guys were really nice and cool, so we brought them beers later. We stayed there (bay by Hog Island) again that night. We all were skinny dipping there for a little while - fun! Oh yeah, at that beach we found out why it's called Hog Island. There is a rock formation that, when you stand on that beach, looks just like a hog's head sticking out. Dave didn't even know that was there. Also, Dave & I went and lined up an island tour for tomorrow with a nice taxi driver named Winston. He had a '98 Toyota van.