While in Russian Bay, we (the boys) were tasked with, again, refilling the water supply. We had to carry empty 30L jugs inland to a spring. We were warned before leaving Nosy Komba that this was going to be the hardest place to refill the water. The spring was ~ 1km away from the beach, easy with the empty jugs, but a bit more challenging when they are full and weighing ~ 60lbs. Still that wouldn’t be too… bad, so here is what made things more interesting.

It was spring tides, which means that the highs are higher than normal, and we had to walk through some low lying areas. Our first trip to the spring was over solid ground, but as we made our way back to the boat the seawater was filling in the mangroves quickly. The ground crabs were starting to scurry as their burrows were flooding. The snakes were doing the same. One of the brits, Tom, was not a big fan of snakes and on the second trip into the spring we saw the first one slithering for higher ground. By this time half of our path was under a foot of seawater. This made carrying the 60lb water jugs quite fun. Our feet were sinking into the mucky bottoms and crabs were everywhere. I got pinched twice as crabs moved through the muck avoiding our feet. Everyone faced a similar fate.

By the fourth trip (we had to fill 600 liters) the water was a little over 2 feet and covered 3/4 of the path to the spring. It was quite the adventurous water gathering trip. All of us joked about it continuously throughout the remainder of the trip. Quite fun when it was all said and done.