Arriving at Isle of the Pelicans was glorious. Drunky tumbled over the top of the boat. I hopped out onto sharp shells and then stumbled into the surf. But we had made it! We were there but there were Others on the island waiting for us.

Apparently, they had been waiting for 30 hours. One guy should have been picked up in the early morning of the day before, but no one showed. And cellphones stopped working because of the crazy winds and fierce weather.

"Three days. Rain rain rain, all day," one of them said in a thick Australian accent. She was older and smoking Mat's cigarettes like it was her last one ever. She thought they were going to die there. They had erected flags and poles and were considering making a swim for other islands in the distance. "It was crazy," the other guy said, a slightly wild look in his eye. "We didn't know, so what were we supposed to do? Swim, I thought. I can swim and get us help!" he told me, stubbing out another bummed butt.

I just wanted them to get the fuck off my island! I walked away laughing and found the bathroom a few steps away from our perfect little hut. The bathroom was a regular old toilet seat, a currogated metal door and bamboo walls lashed tight to a square concrete foundation. A white PVC pipe extended from the back of the tiny structure over some coral and vanished into the depths of the nearby ocean.

Our hut was spacious with the same walls of tightly lashed bamboo that we saw on the other islands. A large bedframe with a slightly grungy mattress stood in the center of the hut. The roof was corrugated metal and made quite a stir when the lashing rains and winds attacked it, late in the night. They gave us nice clean sheets, though, and we brought sleeping bag inserts with us so it was all good.

I dropped our shit and then strolled back to the beach. Some guys were there fixing the solar panel, as that had stopped working, too. And the other people on their way out were finally getting gone. I grabbed a book and hit the hammock. The hammock grotto was divine.

The Others were gone, the beers were slightly cool. The rain held off until we were fast asleep hours later and all morning and afternoon it got slightly lighter and slightly brighter. There were huge conch shells all over the beach and as the sun set on our first day stranded, pelicans arrived and started dive bombing the ocean, searching for food.

By the way, I'm not sure if you know this, but there's a funny thing about a pelican. You see, its beak it can hold more than it's belly can. How about that?