Charlotte: Greetings muggles.
Anna: ...What?
Charlotte: Sssssh, go along with it
Anna: But, why muggles? I thought we were just gonna do a normal 'hey, friends and family, welcome to our next blog post' kinda thang? Also.. Greetings? We're not aliens who've just landed on another planet and are requesting to meet the leader. Dude you need to clue me in once in a while!?
Charlotte: Sigh. Is it not obvious!? It's quite simply a verbal illustration of our immortality.
Anna: Charlotte! Please! No one else understands your verbosity.
Charlotte: *whispered* ....Impressive word!?
Anna: *whispered/ in a normal person's speaking voice* Thanks, you've taught me well!
Charlotte: Ahem. Well, I'm just saying, we must be invincible or SOMETHING considering we're STILL ALIVE!
Anna: Aaah yes, we are survivors. Congratulations, us!
Charlotte: indeed. To all of you who are (understandably) scratching your heads in confusion and wondering whether we've gone completely balmy and finally lost the plot entirely... You would be correct. Said plot is probably buried at the bottom of the Everglades. Two girls, one kayak, and a whole lot of bugs. That was our reality for the last couple of days.. Grim and gruelling BUT considering you guys aren't having to perform a seance in order to communicate with us, I'm prepared to label it somewhat successful.
Anna: 'successful' might be pushing it... I feel physically dead... but we have our lives and that's all that matters, right? Anyway, we managed (Mmm.. not quite sure if 'managed' is the right word... more like struggled) to get through a two day, one night, self guided kayak tour, armed with nothing but a flimsy A4 map (more like a picture of a bunch of rivers) and a whole lot of nerves!
Charlotte: call us mad (cue, my father - 'you're mad' - yep thanks Daddy, it was rhetorical) BUT yep. We somehow decided it was a good idea to sign up to - what ended up being -quite simply the most disastrous camping experience of our lives. Aaaaand... I think it's safe to say, we are changed women as a result. As in literally. My primary souvenir is a veritable beard of mosquito bites.. I resemble a less attractive, less biblical in appearance, conchita wurst. Shoutout to the big guy in the clouds, just helping me on my quest to find the Australian man of my dreams. This is a great aid. Real brill, ta! Unfairly, Anna, on the other hand, has escaped looking remarkably in tact and well groomed, although perhaps the majority of her damage is naked to the human eye... You see, we were pushed to both our physical and mental limitations, and it is extremely likely she might just have snapped.
Anna: Charlotte has carefully failed to mention that not only did she acquire a beard of bites, but her eye also managed to swell up to the size of a ping pong ball. Don't worry guys, I managed to get some pics of this girl in all her glory. Char I think we may need to provide an explanation..we both know if this was me reading it I'd be pretty lost.
Charlotte: Yeh but let's be frank, your mental capacity is fairly handicapped...
Anna: Mmm what are best friends for? Love a good compliment... ANYWAY. Let's start from the very beginning.
Julie Andrews: A very good place to start!
Charlotte: Shut up Julie, we're trying to write our blog.
It all started when Anna, the more rational of the two of us, left me to fend for myself against an extremely persuasive, somewhat attractive (my bad, I'm a sucker for a pretty face..) and most definitely promotion-worthy salesman. He was evidently aware of my true colours, seeing me for who I really am - a bit of an airhead who's very easy to take advantage of, and lives up to her hair colour all too well. Damn the accuracy of stereotypes....
In the path of this advertising predator, I quite simply lost control of my brain. I was reduced to an overly complacent state, just shy of 'zombie' - in short, I was a hopeless case. I sat on the other side of this man's desk, placidly agreeing to everything he suggested, captivated... Nay, brainwashed, by this man's sheer enthusiasm and (overly-rehearsed but nonetheless talented) spiel. I was one step away from signing away my soul, I swear. Therefore, when Mr Let-me-drain-your-bank-account [disclaimer - not his real name. Even I would have smelt a rat at that] suggested we fork out a couple hundred dollars for the 'Noosa 2 day 1 night kayak tour', I leapt at the opportunity, signing all the paper work and completing the transaction before Anna could utter the words 'ripped off'. Whoopsy. Upon learning how we would be handed a tent, a kayak, and a few scribbled directions before being sent off on our merry way, she seemed appropriately concerned.
"Wait, so we have to paddle down the Everglades by ourselves, find somewhere to camp, and then set up a tent, make our food, survive the night, before waking up and paddling home again?"
I digested this information. Pulse rapidly increasing, face flushing, I swear I could physically feel my empty purse begin to (paradoxically) weigh me down, a burdening symbol of what the future held in store for us.
Bollocks. There was no going back now.
Anna: So, off we went. And hey, the first couple of hours weren't too bad!
Charlotte: Mmmm, well we managed to keep spirits high by chanting 'no *pant* more *pant* bingo wings, no *pant* more *pant* bingo wings', under our breath, with each excruciating push-and-pull of our paddles. A relaxing underscore to accompany our journey.
Anna: Our 50 year old selves will thank us one day! Anyway...
The kayak up the Everglades themselves was absolutely beautiful.. sun shining, blue skies, very little wind (weather we would become to envy extremely the next day). We glided down the rivers, through amazingly calm waters so dark they looked like treacle, under canopies of dark green trees (and yes we did have a few close shaves with these low hanging branches..it took us a while to master the steering technique despite the fact that the kayak had pedals for easy manoeuvring). We had been told these waters were akin to mirrors and that's no lie; they reflected everything around from the sun and the sky to trees and dragon flies...so much so that Charlotte, whilst gazing into these waters, cried "oohh it's so beautiful". Now, if we know Charlotte, we can be pretty confident that she was referring to the fact that she could see her face... not vain at all is she? (Shame she couldn't say the same about her appearance the next day).
Charlotte: Oi, behave. I was totally referring to our breathtaking surroundings. It's not my fault that the addition of my reflection, gazing whimsically into the lake as it was, just happened to enhance the ethereal beauty of the place. (Naturally, the whole experience was completely ruined when Anna came to join me. Ugh, no one wants to see THAT face...)
Anna: Stop interrupting.
Charlotte: Just because you ruined the view -
Anna: WE ARRIVED at the campsite having travelled up and down a 10m stretch of the river around 4 times trying to work out exactly where we were to leave the kayak and how in gods name two 5"4 girls were going to carry a 5m kayak (that weighed about the same as two baby elephants) out of the water, down the jetty and onto the boat racks. The kayaking may have increased our upper arm muscle but we're weren't quite body builders.
Charlotte: It took us a good 30 minutes to actually haul this beast out of the water and on to land. Despite my tendency to exaggerate, I swear, it was an extremely lengthy process. The struggle was real. It was quite a sight, I'll give you that. Me, up on dry land, clutching this bloody glorified giant banana at one end whilst trying my darnedest to utilise the entirety of my (minimal) body strength to yank it backwards, and Anna, pushing with all her might against the other end whilst still in the water, both having adopted facial expressions best described as ones of excruciating constipation.... Eeeeesh. Comedy gold for all passers by; we got many comments and 'helpful' tips (e.g 'wow there guys! Did you ever think of hiring a smaller kayak..?') but alas, no knights in shining armour came rushing to our rescue. Damsels in distress or not, this was our battle to fight.
Anna: Despite eventually winning at mooring the kayak - and when I say winning, we actually abandoned it on the side of the river... not even our arms of steel could lift the damn thing onto the racks - we had to face our next Everest.
Charlotte: The tent.
Anna: Oh god, the tent.
Charlotte: DofE evidently was not training enough for the likes of us. In our defence, we were exhausted, and this was our reward!? Putting up a tent, armed with a severe lack of instructions, aching muscles and... Well.. not much else. Fabulous. Just dandy.
We took out the tent...
"Wait why are there two bits?"
"Does this thingy go here or like this?"
"There's a mosquito on your face"
"Is this the outside or the inside?"
"Is this even a tent?"
"Abort mission. I wanna go home. ABORT MISSION"
"I fucking hate tents"
"This is an " in tents " work out ey?"
"Char shut up"
"Ta da! Let's peg it!"
"Wait. That's inside out"
"Why are there three poles. We only have holes for two."
"Meh ones spare." (It was not a spare pole. We had just mangled the tent up to such a great degree, it appeared that way.. Good one Anna... Uttered with so much conviction, but full of so little truth)
"Wait.. Eureka! We've got it!! HOORAY."
"Can we have a nap now."
Mr Luttick... We hang our heads in shame.
Anna: A couple of hours later we woke up, arms aching and incredibly hungry (we had only eaten a ham and lettuce sandwich that day... for two Olympic athletes this was not enough sustenance #protein). 20 minutes on, we were plunged into total darkness (but only because night had come.. no one was trying to kidnap us don't worry). With only the light of the stars and our one torch, we began to prepare our feast. Only problem was as soon as we turned on the torch all the Mosquitos flocked to the light, which was either in too close a proximity to Char's face or the food (have to say Char's face was their preferred option).
Now, earlier that day we'd had a recap on how to use a trangea, but despite this neither that nor DofE helped us to work out how to put the thing together, let alone how to light the lighter (I'm really starting to question the purpose of DofE, things learnt from those days of torture: 0). 4 burnt fingers down, we abandoned trying (and failing spectacularly) to make pasta with tomato sauce and began to eat our water-logged courgette... It hadn't cooked cause we couldn't make the water boil, so we ate it raw. We didn't even bother to drain it, we just spooned it out of its special little swimming pool of a pan, making sure we didn't get a spoonful of mozzy with each mouthful. With heavy hearts, we made our way back to our tent to consume our 2nd ham and lettuce sandwich of the day.
(Top tip for all you campers in the rainforest: make dinner at 4.30 so it is ready at 5 before night and before the night terrors - aka Mosquitos -invade.. Don't want you suffering the same miserable fate as we did)
Charlotte: You know, I've actually heard crunchy courgette with a side of squished vampiric bug is a delicacy in some countries.
Anna: Really!?
Charlotte: Yuhuh. There's also the word gullible written on the ceiling.
Now where were we? Ah yes. Having finished our positively delectable feast, we snuggled under our sleeping bag (Singular. We could only afford to hire one... Got to love that budget life...) and shivered ourselves to sleep, drifting off to the tuneful lullaby of the two whining mosquitos we accidentally trapped in our tent. Time: approx. 7pm. You know what they say about teenagers, can't be tamed hmmm?
We woke, roughly 12 hours later, to a strange scuffling sound. Peering out from the opening of our tent, we clamped bleary eyes on a foot long, fat, lizardy-type monstrosity. (We later learnt it was a 'goanna', thanks to the excitable shrieks of a nearby child as they pointed in the direction of our new found buddy. Anna, slightly disorientated from lack of food/ the worst nights sleep ever, mistook this as 'go, Anna!', and began looking wildly about for the source of such admiration)
Anna: I thought maybe we were finally getting the support we deserved... You know. 'Go on! You can do it! You can take down this tent! Woo!' No?
Charlotte: No.
Anna: Whatever. After battling the tent down, we turned our attention to getting the kayak into the water which involved a lot of see-saw motions to edge it down the steps, onto the jetty and into the lakes. The next half an hour was spent packing up the kayak because Lord knows we couldn't have pushed it, fully laden, into the water.
Our journey home was... Char, how would you describe it in three words..?
Charlotte: Err.. choppy, treacherous, the-most-hellish-painful-soul-destroying-experience-of-my-life?
Anna: Cheat.
But it's safe to say it was a pretty rough ride. We were paddling into wind the whole way..which I'm telling you, is not an easy thing to do. Just as we thought it couldn't get any worse -
Charlotte: Naive fools are we...
Anna: - we reached open water..it was like being stuck in the middle of the Atlantic - waves as high as us, the wind knocking the paddles out of our hands and into our faces.
Charlotte: Yeh, I have a great spattering of bruises to complement the scabby bites dotting my chin....
Anna: You got that right, Charles.
All the time we were silently praying to God to save us, and as another wave hit the kayak, sending water into our eyes and supposedly dry storage sections, we would cry "shit the waters coming into the boat".
Charlotte: Don't be fooled by Anna's dramatic tone, however. It was not our lives we were fearful for, but indeed the safety of our precious phones that lay in the aforementioned 'dry storage sections'.
Anna: oh God yeh, who cares about death? I hadn't checked Instagram in a whole two days!!
Charlotte: Priorities.
Anna: On point.
Charlotte: In the end, however, we actually made it! We glided victoriously into our meeting point, hardly daring to believe we hadn't drowned, and triumphantly proceeded to clamber out of the boat.
Anna: Whereupon we collapsed. In a heap.
Charlotte: Mere shells of our former selves.
Anna: Come to think of it, it's been a couple of days now. We should probably get up?
Charlotte: Can't.
RIP
ANNA AND CHARLOTTE
DIED OF FATIGUE
GONE BUT NEVER FORGOTTEN
Anna: ...What?
Charlotte: Sssssh, go along with it
Anna: But, why muggles? I thought we were just gonna do a normal 'hey, friends and family, welcome to our next blog post' kinda thang? Also.. Greetings? We're not aliens who've just landed on another planet and are requesting to meet the leader. Dude you need to clue me in once in a while!?
Charlotte: Sigh. Is it not obvious!? It's quite simply a verbal illustration of our immortality.
Anna: Charlotte! Please! No one else understands your verbosity.
Charlotte: *whispered* ....Impressive word!?
Anna: *whispered/ in a normal person's speaking voice* Thanks, you've taught me well!
Charlotte: Ahem. Well, I'm just saying, we must be invincible or SOMETHING considering we're STILL ALIVE!
Anna: Aaah yes, we are survivors. Congratulations, us!
Charlotte: indeed. To all of you who are (understandably) scratching your heads in confusion and wondering whether we've gone completely balmy and finally lost the plot entirely... You would be correct. Said plot is probably buried at the bottom of the Everglades. Two girls, one kayak, and a whole lot of bugs. That was our reality for the last couple of days.. Grim and gruelling BUT considering you guys aren't having to perform a seance in order to communicate with us, I'm prepared to label it somewhat successful.
Anna: 'successful' might be pushing it... I feel physically dead... but we have our lives and that's all that matters, right? Anyway, we managed (Mmm.. not quite sure if 'managed' is the right word... more like struggled) to get through a two day, one night, self guided kayak tour, armed with nothing but a flimsy A4 map (more like a picture of a bunch of rivers) and a whole lot of nerves!
Charlotte: call us mad (cue, my father - 'you're mad' - yep thanks Daddy, it was rhetorical) BUT yep. We somehow decided it was a good idea to sign up to - what ended up being -quite simply the most disastrous camping experience of our lives. Aaaaand... I think it's safe to say, we are changed women as a result. As in literally. My primary souvenir is a veritable beard of mosquito bites.. I resemble a less attractive, less biblical in appearance, conchita wurst. Shoutout to the big guy in the clouds, just helping me on my quest to find the Australian man of my dreams. This is a great aid. Real brill, ta! Unfairly, Anna, on the other hand, has escaped looking remarkably in tact and well groomed, although perhaps the majority of her damage is naked to the human eye... You see, we were pushed to both our physical and mental limitations, and it is extremely likely she might just have snapped.
Anna: Charlotte has carefully failed to mention that not only did she acquire a beard of bites, but her eye also managed to swell up to the size of a ping pong ball. Don't worry guys, I managed to get some pics of this girl in all her glory. Char I think we may need to provide an explanation..we both know if this was me reading it I'd be pretty lost.
Charlotte: Yeh but let's be frank, your mental capacity is fairly handicapped...
Anna: Mmm what are best friends for? Love a good compliment... ANYWAY. Let's start from the very beginning.
Julie Andrews: A very good place to start!
Charlotte: Shut up Julie, we're trying to write our blog.
It all started when Anna, the more rational of the two of us, left me to fend for myself against an extremely persuasive, somewhat attractive (my bad, I'm a sucker for a pretty face..) and most definitely promotion-worthy salesman. He was evidently aware of my true colours, seeing me for who I really am - a bit of an airhead who's very easy to take advantage of, and lives up to her hair colour all too well. Damn the accuracy of stereotypes....
In the path of this advertising predator, I quite simply lost control of my brain. I was reduced to an overly complacent state, just shy of 'zombie' - in short, I was a hopeless case. I sat on the other side of this man's desk, placidly agreeing to everything he suggested, captivated... Nay, brainwashed, by this man's sheer enthusiasm and (overly-rehearsed but nonetheless talented) spiel. I was one step away from signing away my soul, I swear. Therefore, when Mr Let-me-drain-your-bank-account [disclaimer - not his real name. Even I would have smelt a rat at that] suggested we fork out a couple hundred dollars for the 'Noosa 2 day 1 night kayak tour', I leapt at the opportunity, signing all the paper work and completing the transaction before Anna could utter the words 'ripped off'. Whoopsy. Upon learning how we would be handed a tent, a kayak, and a few scribbled directions before being sent off on our merry way, she seemed appropriately concerned.
"Wait, so we have to paddle down the Everglades by ourselves, find somewhere to camp, and then set up a tent, make our food, survive the night, before waking up and paddling home again?"
I digested this information. Pulse rapidly increasing, face flushing, I swear I could physically feel my empty purse begin to (paradoxically) weigh me down, a burdening symbol of what the future held in store for us.
Bollocks. There was no going back now.
Anna: So, off we went. And hey, the first couple of hours weren't too bad!
Charlotte: Mmmm, well we managed to keep spirits high by chanting 'no *pant* more *pant* bingo wings, no *pant* more *pant* bingo wings', under our breath, with each excruciating push-and-pull of our paddles. A relaxing underscore to accompany our journey.
Anna: Our 50 year old selves will thank us one day! Anyway...
The kayak up the Everglades themselves was absolutely beautiful.. sun shining, blue skies, very little wind (weather we would become to envy extremely the next day). We glided down the rivers, through amazingly calm waters so dark they looked like treacle, under canopies of dark green trees (and yes we did have a few close shaves with these low hanging branches..it took us a while to master the steering technique despite the fact that the kayak had pedals for easy manoeuvring). We had been told these waters were akin to mirrors and that's no lie; they reflected everything around from the sun and the sky to trees and dragon flies...so much so that Charlotte, whilst gazing into these waters, cried "oohh it's so beautiful". Now, if we know Charlotte, we can be pretty confident that she was referring to the fact that she could see her face... not vain at all is she? (Shame she couldn't say the same about her appearance the next day).
Charlotte: Oi, behave. I was totally referring to our breathtaking surroundings. It's not my fault that the addition of my reflection, gazing whimsically into the lake as it was, just happened to enhance the ethereal beauty of the place. (Naturally, the whole experience was completely ruined when Anna came to join me. Ugh, no one wants to see THAT face...)
Anna: Stop interrupting.
Charlotte: Just because you ruined the view -
Anna: WE ARRIVED at the campsite having travelled up and down a 10m stretch of the river around 4 times trying to work out exactly where we were to leave the kayak and how in gods name two 5"4 girls were going to carry a 5m kayak (that weighed about the same as two baby elephants) out of the water, down the jetty and onto the boat racks. The kayaking may have increased our upper arm muscle but we're weren't quite body builders.
Charlotte: It took us a good 30 minutes to actually haul this beast out of the water and on to land. Despite my tendency to exaggerate, I swear, it was an extremely lengthy process. The struggle was real. It was quite a sight, I'll give you that. Me, up on dry land, clutching this bloody glorified giant banana at one end whilst trying my darnedest to utilise the entirety of my (minimal) body strength to yank it backwards, and Anna, pushing with all her might against the other end whilst still in the water, both having adopted facial expressions best described as ones of excruciating constipation.... Eeeeesh. Comedy gold for all passers by; we got many comments and 'helpful' tips (e.g 'wow there guys! Did you ever think of hiring a smaller kayak..?') but alas, no knights in shining armour came rushing to our rescue. Damsels in distress or not, this was our battle to fight.
Anna: Despite eventually winning at mooring the kayak - and when I say winning, we actually abandoned it on the side of the river... not even our arms of steel could lift the damn thing onto the racks - we had to face our next Everest.
Charlotte: The tent.
Anna: Oh god, the tent.
Charlotte: DofE evidently was not training enough for the likes of us. In our defence, we were exhausted, and this was our reward!? Putting up a tent, armed with a severe lack of instructions, aching muscles and... Well.. not much else. Fabulous. Just dandy.
We took out the tent...
"Wait why are there two bits?"
"Does this thingy go here or like this?"
"There's a mosquito on your face"
"Is this the outside or the inside?"
"Is this even a tent?"
"Abort mission. I wanna go home. ABORT MISSION"
"I fucking hate tents"
"This is an " in tents " work out ey?"
"Char shut up"
"Ta da! Let's peg it!"
"Wait. That's inside out"
"Why are there three poles. We only have holes for two."
"Meh ones spare." (It was not a spare pole. We had just mangled the tent up to such a great degree, it appeared that way.. Good one Anna... Uttered with so much conviction, but full of so little truth)
"Wait.. Eureka! We've got it!! HOORAY."
"Can we have a nap now."
Mr Luttick... We hang our heads in shame.
Anna: A couple of hours later we woke up, arms aching and incredibly hungry (we had only eaten a ham and lettuce sandwich that day... for two Olympic athletes this was not enough sustenance #protein). 20 minutes on, we were plunged into total darkness (but only because night had come.. no one was trying to kidnap us don't worry). With only the light of the stars and our one torch, we began to prepare our feast. Only problem was as soon as we turned on the torch all the Mosquitos flocked to the light, which was either in too close a proximity to Char's face or the food (have to say Char's face was their preferred option).
Now, earlier that day we'd had a recap on how to use a trangea, but despite this neither that nor DofE helped us to work out how to put the thing together, let alone how to light the lighter (I'm really starting to question the purpose of DofE, things learnt from those days of torture: 0). 4 burnt fingers down, we abandoned trying (and failing spectacularly) to make pasta with tomato sauce and began to eat our water-logged courgette... It hadn't cooked cause we couldn't make the water boil, so we ate it raw. We didn't even bother to drain it, we just spooned it out of its special little swimming pool of a pan, making sure we didn't get a spoonful of mozzy with each mouthful. With heavy hearts, we made our way back to our tent to consume our 2nd ham and lettuce sandwich of the day.
(Top tip for all you campers in the rainforest: make dinner at 4.30 so it is ready at 5 before night and before the night terrors - aka Mosquitos -invade.. Don't want you suffering the same miserable fate as we did)
Charlotte: You know, I've actually heard crunchy courgette with a side of squished vampiric bug is a delicacy in some countries.
Anna: Really!?
Charlotte: Yuhuh. There's also the word gullible written on the ceiling.
Now where were we? Ah yes. Having finished our positively delectable feast, we snuggled under our sleeping bag (Singular. We could only afford to hire one... Got to love that budget life...) and shivered ourselves to sleep, drifting off to the tuneful lullaby of the two whining mosquitos we accidentally trapped in our tent. Time: approx. 7pm. You know what they say about teenagers, can't be tamed hmmm?
We woke, roughly 12 hours later, to a strange scuffling sound. Peering out from the opening of our tent, we clamped bleary eyes on a foot long, fat, lizardy-type monstrosity. (We later learnt it was a 'goanna', thanks to the excitable shrieks of a nearby child as they pointed in the direction of our new found buddy. Anna, slightly disorientated from lack of food/ the worst nights sleep ever, mistook this as 'go, Anna!', and began looking wildly about for the source of such admiration)
Anna: I thought maybe we were finally getting the support we deserved... You know. 'Go on! You can do it! You can take down this tent! Woo!' No?
Charlotte: No.
Anna: Whatever. After battling the tent down, we turned our attention to getting the kayak into the water which involved a lot of see-saw motions to edge it down the steps, onto the jetty and into the lakes. The next half an hour was spent packing up the kayak because Lord knows we couldn't have pushed it, fully laden, into the water.
Our journey home was... Char, how would you describe it in three words..?
Charlotte: Err.. choppy, treacherous, the-most-hellish-painful-soul-destroying-experience-of-my-life?
Anna: Cheat.
But it's safe to say it was a pretty rough ride. We were paddling into wind the whole way..which I'm telling you, is not an easy thing to do. Just as we thought it couldn't get any worse -
Charlotte: Naive fools are we...
Anna: - we reached open water..it was like being stuck in the middle of the Atlantic - waves as high as us, the wind knocking the paddles out of our hands and into our faces.
Charlotte: Yeh, I have a great spattering of bruises to complement the scabby bites dotting my chin....
Anna: You got that right, Charles.
All the time we were silently praying to God to save us, and as another wave hit the kayak, sending water into our eyes and supposedly dry storage sections, we would cry "shit the waters coming into the boat".
Charlotte: Don't be fooled by Anna's dramatic tone, however. It was not our lives we were fearful for, but indeed the safety of our precious phones that lay in the aforementioned 'dry storage sections'.
Anna: oh God yeh, who cares about death? I hadn't checked Instagram in a whole two days!!
Charlotte: Priorities.
Anna: On point.
Charlotte: In the end, however, we actually made it! We glided victoriously into our meeting point, hardly daring to believe we hadn't drowned, and triumphantly proceeded to clamber out of the boat.
Anna: Whereupon we collapsed. In a heap.
Charlotte: Mere shells of our former selves.
Anna: Come to think of it, it's been a couple of days now. We should probably get up?
Charlotte: Can't.
RIP
ANNA AND CHARLOTTE
DIED OF FATIGUE
GONE BUT NEVER FORGOTTEN