With a need to keep the heart rates up and build some leg muscle for the Camino, I do my best Phineas Fogg impression and propose a race around the island between Alissa and myself.
Because of the need to watch the three amigos we always travel with, it’s a split timed race with Alissa shooting off first at early bird o’clock while I laze in bed and prepare myself. She fangs around and clocks in at 1:28:40 for the 32-kilometer loop. I hide my impression at the time and casually start preparing to waste her.
Now, I’d like to put in at this point it was windy. Tons of headwinds on the way home. Surely more than Alissa’s run.
It’s a tough loop. I go too hard too early and my hamstrings are starting to complain a third of the way around. The entire northern leg through Avarua is into a howling gale. I finish with the timer at 1:30 ish. I am not impressed with any of it. Alissa is a generous victor. I am a poor loser.
Lunch is in desperate need, so we head down to The Mooring Fish Café. It’s phenomenal, we order some incredible seared tuna sandwiches (I know, doesn’t sound like much) but I am blown away. Super fresh fish and local produce on local soft Turkish bread. Its criminally good. Nate rates it an 8/10 which in Nate’s world is effectively a 12/10 and he is 100% correct (a somewhat rare occurrence).
We spend the rest of the day at Muri (with the wind hammering in) but Tom has been keen for a swim for the last couple of days and the boys are soon into it happily. I’ve not felt it before but there was a mean current pushing up the beach, we must have just got there on the turn of the tide. They older kids bury Tom up to his neck and create volcanoes, all the old classics. We slide back home tired, but we all have one of those “good” days.
