A Midsummer Night's Tale

We got out of Beppu with our minds set for scuba-diving, unlikely to have a clue of what lay ahead of us for the two days to come…

White sand, palm trees, sunbathing n surfing, blue skies and crystal clear water – that’s the kind of beach we all expect to see and want to visit. But for unknown reasons, the beach that we went to in Saiki - a lil town out in the wilderness on the state borders of Oita and Miyazaki - had black sand, clear green water and perfect blue skies.

On reaching Saiki@4in the afternoon we realized our chances of going for scuba were zilch. But our minds were set to go out in 'the wild', so we took a bus to the nearest beach - Kamae. Now, when you hear 'near' you think it would take you 15-20mins to get there. In our case, the bus drive took 45mins, taking us the farthest away from civilization.

At the black beach, we swam to the setting sun. Fisherman ankur showed off his skills by catching a one-fin fugu fish with a stick! At a shack in the corner of the beach we found a bunch of boats, oars and lifejackets, thus concluding on going dark-water-sailing around midnight.

As nightfall came, we enjoyed beer n yummy food in the resort's Beer Garden. Since we were already high *with adventure spirit* and had nothing to hold us back, we decided to spend the night jumping in and out of the premises of the resorts swimming pool side, occasionally swimming in the sea and coming back to the pool to wash away the black sand that stuck to us.
This carried on for awhile until two of us were noticed (quite audibly) by the security guards as a can of coke fell from the vending-machine to quench the thirst of a man. After that, it was bub-bye too the swimming pool and hello to the steps on the black beach.

The night was cold, dark and beautiful. We pushed one of the rowing boats to the shore and decided to go for a bit of a row. Since the boat was meant for two, the Mighties got out for their first encounter with the sea. They came back concluding that we couldn’t be out for a long time cuz there was a hole in the boat that kept filling in water. Nevertheless, we took as many as five trips!

Florescent green plankton shone every time the oars hit the water. With the dazzling sky above our head n glittering plankton surrounding us, you can imagine the kick we were getting in our minds. How much ever I hate to say this word, it suits the situation perfectly - it was all ‘mindblowing’! The boys went as far as where they were left at the mercy of the sea, which was quite alarming cuz the water was almost half way up the boat!

Tired from all the rowing and fighting against the darkwater, we put evth back in its place, and slept for a bit. The wind blew its coldest around 3am, when we were woken up with ankur n isha getting a bottle of wine from a parked caravan nearby. Its believed that the dude who owned it had left the door open as (so it seemed by the manner in which his bag was left at the door) he'd ran out after forgetting smth.

So we popped it again again, only to wake up with the morning sun on our faces, eagles soaring up above us and people around us doing their morning walks.

to be continued...