Saturday, August 13, 2005

Part 3 - The saga continues XD

We took several runs to manage to get all our stuff under the shelter, but even being under the shelter didn't help very much as the wind continued to pound us. I couldn't take it anymore and decided to wear back my shirt. And then, it poured heavily. The lashing of the sand turned into lashing of rain onto us.
Max tried the best as he could to help arrange all of our stuff, and packing at the same time. We also pushed our stuff as far back into the corner as possible to avoid or stuff from getting wet. NCH was at one corner holding down his 5 whales from being blown away by the strong winds. While I was continuing to get the all the remaining air out of the last 3 remaining whales.
Minutes passed, Max didn't find the weather too promising and decided to leave, since he had to rush off and do some packing at home. And boy did he run, under the pounding rain and wind. Now, only NCH and I were left.
NCH was trying his best to deflate 3 of his whales at once, which was a very slow process. I was starting to soak in all the strong wind and rain blowing into our shelter, so I decided to take off my shirt again. This wasn't really a good idea as I soon found out. It was awfully cold from the wet weather and it affected NCH badly. He was shivering and was starting to get numb from the rain. I could see little progress from the inflated size of his whales. I asked him to hang on and hoped the rain would stop soon. Then I thought of an idea to rinse/fold my whales in the rainwater that blew into our shelter, doing my best to hide my shivering from NCH.
After 10 minutes or so, I noticed that NCH had curled up into a ball with his almost deflated whales, and it looked like he wasn't moving. I asked him again if he was alright, and he was complaining feeling very cold. Then I decided, it was time to go. We couldn't stay in the shelter any longer as I also couldn't take it, otherwise the next day sure fall sick. I told NCH that it was time to go to the nearest toilet where we could finish off packing, but NCH just wanted to stay there. After much encouragement, he finally budged. I wrapped 2 whales around me to shield me from the rain and helped NCH to carry some of his stuff. (To be continued again)

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