Príncipe, São Tomé and Príncipe

We woke up slowly, probably going to the pool bar before dinner wasn't such a great idea.

Anyways breakfast was great. Had a fresh coconut to restore my electrolytes and also eggs florentine. I had asked for tea but should have stuck to coffee in a coffee place.

Feeling better, we checked out the snorkelling. The water temperature was perfect, unfortunately most of the coral is bleached and there wasn't much to see. So we switched to stand-up paddle boarding instead. It was the first time either of us had tried paddle boarding, it was good exercise. We spent over an hour going back and forth in the little bay.

We then took a quick walk down the beach. There's a rock outcropping (which wasn't too difficult to cross) and on the other side was a perfect beach. The forest grows right up to the sand, so it was possible to walk in the shade on the beach. There were no other footprints at all except for ours.

Showered and cleaned up before lunch. We thought we had some time before our bird watching excursion but it turned out the clocks changed in the country on Jan 1 to align with Portugal. We had ordered a 'São Tomé' coffee from the bar. They brew it using a siphon coffee maker so it takes about 15 minutes. We only had time for a small coffee before rushing off to see the birds.

The bird watching excursion was excellent. We first drove to our starting point, near Roca Sundy. It's close to the Praia Sundy, except all roads lead through the airport so it took about 45 minutes. We parked at the Roca Sundy and then walked a 90 minute circuit along a dirt path. Our guide was excellent and very passionate about birds, especially the small little fellows. He also pointed out a bunch of food ingredients, such as cacao, coffee, jack fruit, papaya, a local pepper-like seed, and a coriander-tasting leaf. We tried a few of them, the pepper one was my favourite.

We did see a bunch of birds too. Heather saw parrots (which was on her list to see in the wild).

On the drive back home it was getting to dusk, which is when land crabs come out and cross the road. At one spot there were dozens of crabs, about hand-sized. Our guide tried to avoid them but we unfortunately ran over one.

Dinner was excellent again. We both had the banana-leaf wrapped fish, although I think there are no wrong choices here.