Volunteers have weekends off at Damali, but I asked Alison if she wanted to put me to work since I was already there. She told me to just take the weekend off like everyone else: I could work on the fields on Monday.
So I joined Matteo, Chiara, Andrea, and Karolyne on an outing on Dave and Marsha’s boat. Two volunteers from Cherry Point, Amore (pronounced ah-MO-reh, but I probably spelled his name incorrectly here) and Hugues (pronounced OO-go), came along as well.
The boat was docked at Cowichan Bay, which is about 15 minutes away from Damali by car.
On the boat, we caught a lot of wind as we made our way through the waters. We dropped some buoys filled with bait along the way to catch some crabs, and then went on to Tent Island.
For lunch we had some quinoa salad, among other dishes. We also had some homemade sangrias and some white wine from Cherry Point in some cool blue plastic glasses.
On the way back we grabbed the buoys and managed to salvage a few crabs.
We also ran into this view of sun rays piercing through the clouds (which was way better in person than in these shots):
We had the crabs for dinner that evening, and the meat was so deliciously fresh.
The next day, Chiara, Matteo and I rode bikes to the beach.
Riding through the country was liberating: There weren’t too many cars on the road, there was green everywhere, and it was nice to feel the wind against my skin. In LA, you can’t just take a bike to the beach and get there in 10 minutes unless you live closer to the coast.
The sun was shining but there was a cool breeze that made the temperature just right. The beach wasn’t white and sandy, but it was soothing to just sit there and soak up the sun.
I actually never ate crabs in my whole life so far… looks delicious