PIRATES!

We escaped Jakarta for a long weekend to our favorite getaway The Tanjung Lesung Sailing Club. Usually the view is of fish traps, endless seas, and on a really clear day volcanoes.This time the fish traps were missing due to a rainy season storm, but that doesn't mean the view was all empty seas. Far from it! This time we got to see pirates! Lots and lots of pirates!

Click on the picture to better see the pirate fleet.

OK so maybe they weren't really pirates, maybe they were really fisherman driven into the cove by bad weather conditions, but the boats looked like something straight out of a pirate story. The kids were convinced they were pirates and really that was all that mattered.

The fishing fleet was stuck in the cove with nothing to do, so basically they had an unscheduled vacation. When ever the winds would die down a bit you could hear music drifting from the boats. Sometimes I would see a big splash next to one of the boats. Then a few minutes later I would see someone scramble up the anchor line on a nearby boat. After a bit they began to swim to shore. They used anything on board as a float to make it to shore: inner tubes were the most popular but also life jackets and what looked like lids from ice chests and an orange boogie board. Two or three guys would hang onto a float and they would all kick until they reached shore. It took them as long as 30 minutes to make the swim.

Here Cody and some friends watch the "pirates" jump ship to swim ashore.

Once they reached the beach they were doing pretty much they same thing as us. Running in the waves, picking up shells, sitting in the sand enjoying the day, walking on the beach and building sand castles. Oh, and they spent a lot of time sitting around watching the "bule" (boo-leh = westerner) and of course we were sitting around watching them. I am guessing we appeared as strange and exotic to them as they did to us.