Strange happenings in Varela

Well after that epic walk in we slept like logs. It was the beginning of the tourist season (coinciding with the end of the rainy season) and so Franco had made up two rooms for us. We weren't too bothered - it wasn't that expensive and we had breakfast included. The previous night we had met Franco, a seventy-odd Italian ex-Navy officer. He spoke Italian, French, English and Portuguese and lived with his two daughters in the compound at Chez Helene. His wife was in Italy (for how long we did not ask). He was a pretty good chef as well and cooked us a great meal every night we stayed. The breakfast was just tea, coffee and some bread with homemade jams, but it was just nice to have a breakfast for the first time in a while. Oh and they had a dog called Kaka.

The first day was pretty overcast, but we walked to the beach regardless. There were two beaches we could go to - a fisherman's working beach and the quieter, (according to Franco) nicer beach slightly further around the coast. We headed for the nicer one and were pretty weirded out by what we found. After going through a small forest unlike Thetford, we ended up on the shore where erosion had eaten away at the shoreline, dragging derelict houses and trees onto the beach. It was like something from Lost ("The Others") or Half Life! Dozens of empty buildings, overgrown with plants and some marked with graffiti. A rusted water tank had also fallen onto the sand and a digger was covered in vines slightly further inland. So strange - another thing you won't believe until I get some pics up.

Further around the shoreline was pretty inaccessible, due to the lack of sand and tonnes of iron ore. We took a trek over it (in flip flops mind) under the careful supervision of Surefoot Like-a-mountain-goat Webb, who took everything at speed! Did go quite a way around the coast, but were worried that the tide would cut us off. In Guinea Bissau the tide is four times the world average and comes in pretty quick. Headed back to Chez Helena where Barney discovered that he'd dropped his key somewhere along the coast... New lock time.