New bed and the Trip To The Beach

The main event for Saturday was ordering a bed at a local furniture workshoppy place, to go with our mattress. Beds here are gorgeous carved wooden things with lovely designs (I took pictures of the one in Vila Bemori, it was so pretty, yes I am a little strange). I can already tell that although I’m highly likely to leave a lot of stuff behind in Timor at the end of the year, parting with our bed will be a wrench and I will waste a lot of time trying to think of cheap ways to get it back to Canberra. I was so insistent that we keep at least one bed in Canberra... and now I love this one that doesn’t even exist yet soooo much. Oh dear.

Sunday showed that I am a big sook. We were riding our bikes out to the Cristo Rei (the Christ Statue) so we could climb up the steps and then go down the goat track on the other side to the reputedly much-nicer beach. Now I was pretty keen and willing, although, as we all know, I am not used to riding bikes very far and definitely not in traffic.
I was just thinking how well I was doing at not being scared of traffic when a little silver car slowed down, almost ran into me and forced me off the road. Matters were not helped by the sudden fleeing of my language skills, due to fright. Also the occupants of the car, in trying to establish that I was ok, seemed more like they were angry with me – ahhhh miscommunication.

Anyway, I should’ve rested before we climbed up the hill, but it ended with me in tears halfway down the other side – the hill’s goat track was just too steep and scary, particularly with legs shaky from riding the bike so far and the shock of being run off the road. I’m not really a scared-of-heights person, heights are fine when you have, say, a nice fence or platform in between you and the drop, it’s more that I’m not very daring and am scared-of-heights-when-on-death-defying-narrow-goat-track. I like to think of it this way anyway.

I was still glad I went because the beach was great – white sands, blue water, actual surf. I didn’t feel like swimming, so I just paddled, but there were some really lovely shells. I am a dreadful collector of shells, I just can’t help myself.

Actually, perhaps Sunday showed that I am a big unfit sook, but also that I keep going even when I am scared. I didn’t freeze on the stupid cliff and I didn’t refuse to keep riding along the beach road (which is full of blind corners and turns that jut out into the water with no safety rail or proper bike track). Also I’d go back again (and next time I will have a rest before going up and over the hill).

I try, damn it!