I now know what it feels like to be a smorgasbord for a hungry hoard of mosquitoes and sand flies. They kept me up all night munching away on my flesh while I slapped at a variety of body parts, much too late.

The morning showed the damage. Large welts which I had continued to scratch in my sleep (worst thing you can do especially with sand fly bites) and now I had marks all over me, even my wrists!

Ray had a few bites of his own so sympathy was lacking and he was up early and off for a fish. We both must have been bitten when we arrived here yesterday and took Henry to the beach for a bit of off lead time. He met a couple of other dogs from the park and had an absolute ball just running after them while they chased the tennis ball. He could not keep up with them. They were Border collies cross kelpies but he wore himself out until he had to flop in the sand to rest in between bursts of energy.

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He didn’t want to leave and we literally had to drag him home. He woke up this morning limping a little on his leg that he had his pins taken out of from his healed luxating patella. I think we overdid it. A bit of rest was on the agenda today.

There was a pier a few kilometers down the road and it was known by the locals as the pier “where everyone could catch something or you are seriously doing something wrong.”

Ray had scoped it out yesterday afternoon and set his plan to be at the fishing shop at 8:00am to buy bait and a bucket (he’s always believed you can’t catch fish without a bucket and whenever he sees someone fishing who hasn’t caught anything who also doesn’t have a bucket, he will say, “well, of course they won’t catch anything, they don’t have a bucket!”), and then fish from the pier until 10:00am. Henry and I were going to have a lazy morning, stay in bed and snuggle a bit, perhaps go for a gentle walk until Ray returned with fish for lunch.

The morning didn’t quite work out like that. I needed to spend some time on Google trying to find out how to stop the itch from sand fly bites. I didn’t have any of the recommended lotions (vinegar, Voltarin gel, vaporub) so I mixed peppermint and eucalyptus oil into my moisturizer. This seemed to work for a while but the peppermint was so intense that it gave me goosebumps and the chills.

Ray sent me updates on his fish catches throughout the morning. Two hours turned into three…turned into four…turned into five. Five hours. These five hours could have been lovely relaxing hours for Henry and I except that for four of them it rained on and off. We managed to get a walk in between the rain, a nap with snuggles and lots of scratching (both of us). It was nice to relax and know that Ray was having lots of fun fishing. (I did get some frozen fish out of the freezer for dinner though because his catches weren’t looking promising).

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Ray returned and after lunch we went for a drive to see the Perry Harvey Jetty where he had spent half the day fishing. The rain started again so we couldn’t walk along it. We drove towards the small township of Mission Beach to get a coffee. Some of the homes here are actually on plantations so they sell farm fresh fruit. We pulled up at a honesty stall and bought some bananas. At $2 a kilogram we thought they were cheap, especially when we knew just how good they were good to taste straight from the farm with no cold storage in sight! They were absolutely scrumptious and we had to stop ourselves eating just one.

Before having coffee we ventured to the beach where parachuters were landing on the beach after taking off from the local airport. There was a small crowd gathered watching and plenty of clapping when all of them landed safely on the sand. Ray said we should have a go so we walked to the office. I didnt know if he was serious or not (I certainly wasn’t going to do it) until I heard him say, “it’s only canvas between you and death.” I knew then he was staying on the ground.

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We found a coffee shop and Ray’s excitement level went up a notch. He was grinning from ear to ear. I was looking at him quizzically because I couldn’t work out what all the excitement was about. Then he started pointing to a sandwich board that the coffee shop had outside. It said, “Hotdogs Sold Here”.

If you know Ray, then you know he is one of the worlds biggest connoisseurs of hot dogs. Ray loves hotdogs almost as much as he loves pink donuts. Oh, he probably loves them both equally. Since leaving Melbourne, we haven’t come across anywhere that sells hotdogs. this could be attributed to the fact that we aren’t able to go into Shopping Centres and that’s probably where we would find hot dogs being sold. But Cafe’s and Bakery‘s and eateries that we are able to eat it with Henry don’t sell hotdogs and Ray has been on an eternal search for his most favorite delicacy. So as soon as I saw him pointing at the sandwich board, I could see why he was so excited. The only problem was, before we left the van about 15 minutes earlier we had lunch and he also just scoffed down a banana. He said he most certainly couldn’t fit in a hot dog.

He made the decision then and there we would come past the café in the morning and get a hotdog before we left town. The café didn’t open till 10 AM, but the owner assured us she would be there around about 9:30am and she would be happy to open up early just to serve Ray his hotdog. That man is unbelievably convincing when he needs to be and the owner of the cafe was really friendly.

Further down the street there was a fresh fruit bar so I was consoled with a smoothie and we had a quick look around Mission Beach. There were a few stores that had closed down so there wasn’t a lot to look at, and we returned to the caravan for a relaxing evening. I bet Ray had visions of hot dogs dancing in his head as he went to sleep.