The fishing club lunch stop while I was on the bike. I'm taking a bit of time to adapt to the tropics. On the first day here, I think the most dangerous set of words I’m learning (in hindsight) I can ever say to myself: "I'm doing really well...perhaps I can start to get fit now?"
And... I don't know what I was really thinking. Except that I can't have been feeling too bad physically because it didn’t even cross my mind to think of a different way of travelling such a short distance to the beach (about 2K). This doesn’t feel like the moment to become a first time scooter user; accidents are infamous here. I jumped on a rusty bike and got peddling towards Muri beach. I’ve missed cycling so much. But this is in the tropical heat. It took me a little bit too long to notice that the heat has been zapping all the energy I’ve got. And it's not enough that I did it one day. I cycled two days in a row. By the second day, still peddling a relatively short distance, my body started telling me I had pushed it way, way too far. I had to leave my bike parked by the museum. I rested on the beach (in a hammock with a coconut - let’s keep the self-pity in check!!). I caught a taxi home and explained what had happened to the bike. Odette headed back to rescue it later, though I ended up preying it hadn’t been stolen. I've managed to exercise my way into that cut out, "broken" feeling. Calling it tiredness or exhaustion doesn't really do the feeling of CFS justice. What I didn’t really notice was quite how much all the travelling to get here was such a push. I notice a little too late that perhaps I’ve been running on adrenaline since the day I left the Anahata mountain-top in New Zealand. Something can’t quite click in Rarotonga. I’m finding the place quite hard work... and I feel as if I shouldn’t be feeling this way given that it’s exactly the sort of tropical island paradise I have always dreamed of. But this is just another reminder of the impact our internal state can have on us, regardless of where we’re placed geographically. I know I am in a wonderful place. And today it is really, really hard. I’m staying on the farm now, resting. Recovering. It is a crash - I now have a little bungalow on the farm to myself and I do manage to stand up and cook something to eat, but it’s a struggle. I was doing so well. I don’t expect this crash to take the 2-3 months the last one took to recover from. But today I suddenly feel very, very far from home and wonder what I’m really doing here.
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