Spot X

'Hey let's stay the night in the cave' suggested Mandrake. And against my better judgement I agreed.

So a plan was hatched, permission gained from DW's and the preparation began. We packed our rods, tackle, warm clothes, sleeping bags, water, gas burner, fry pan, cell phones and sunblock and hit the road. 'Nah, we won't need food...we'll catch all we need' Mandrake again.

A thirty minute drive, followed by a 25 minute walk and we were there. (Check out the photo at the half way stage)

Mandrake always gets his line in the water 1st, and today was no exception. I was just about in the water when the heavens opened and it pelted down. 'Oh no! My sleeping bag' - i like to be comfortable. If we're going to stay in a cave overnight the least I want is a dry sleeping bag. So I stash my pack in a little cleft about 3 metres up the rock face. It'll never get wet there...heh heh back to fishing.

Crash!! My pack had tumbled down the 3 metre drop - oops! I hope nothing's broken. A quick check revealed that something had in fact broken...my frying pan...my pyrex frying pan. I know, who would take a glass frying pan to the rocks!!! 'We'll be alright, we'll cook the fish on sticks' Mandrake again.

Hmmm, back to fishing.

We ended up with 5 nice sized Kahawai and a good sized Trevally.

Cooking fish on sticks?? Hey lets ring Tim, he's just crazy enough to want to come out at short notice and stay the night in a cave.

'Hey Tim, watcha doing? Ahh, waka ama practice...whatcha doing after that? Nothing? Sweet, wanna come out and spend the night in the cave with us? Yeah, awesome. Oh, hey, can you bring a frying pan? Shot bro, later.'

Long story short...we met Tim and his frying pan and made our way to the Cave.

We hastily set up our sleeping spots and then proceeded to clean and fillet the fish...all the fish (5 kahawai and a large Trev). We were absolutely starving. Out came the gas burner and the New frying pan (on ya Tim) and the cooking began. Mandrake had a secret ingredient...Lemon pepper! Oh yeah. Fresh fillets lightly sprinkled with Lemon pepper and fried in oil...deeeeeelicious.

3 blokes ate the whole lot...all gone in one sitting. Yep, undo the belt a notch and lay back looking at the stars. Mandrakes ADHD qualities wouldn't let him lie back. He prefered to chase a sting ray around the encroaching tide...good times.

Despite myself bringing a blow up Lilo matress to sleep on and the boys pulling up a few rocks for theirs, I had the worst sleep listening to a couple of logs snoring all night. Such is life in the Cave.

We fished the next morning with not much success, but we were still full of the previous nights glory to let that bother us. We trooped home feeling blessed to be able to have had an adventure such as the Cave provided. Nice one Mandrake.

As a finishing comment I might add that the photo heading this blog ended up in our local paper. I sent it in with a little blurb about the Cave mish unable to keep such a wonder to myself. Low and behold if the next time we went out to our Spot X it had decidedly more people there, with one of them yelling out, 'Hey weren't you the bloke in the paper? Where's this cave you talked about?'

Oops, sorry Mandrake. We might have to find another 'secret' location.