11.40-12.10 AM; inside our room, Hideaway Guesthouse, Funafuti

• toasts with peanut butter
• oranges
• tea

Yesterday, on the way to Funafala, we saw a strip of sandy beach almost in the center of Funafuti town, so hidden behind the houses that you could not notice it from the street, unless you knew where to look.

We had been searching for a good place to go swimming ever since we arrived to Tuvalu. In the administrative center of the town – where our first guesthouse was – you could see the sea on your left and on your right, but at the shoreline it didn't seem too attractive for swimming. Up north, where we stay now, the shore is all coral, and littered with all kinds of garbage you could think of: from rags to soft drink cans and splinters of glass to bike frames, parts of engines and machines, beached ships and a slowly decaying Indian-style school bus. (Once you get past the shoreline it gets better – the water is crystal clear and the corals boast with countless small, colorful fish – it's just getting safely past the litter zone that's the problem.) So, seeing this pocket of white sand from the boat, we thought “Finally”: an easy access to the water and a nice soft spot to lay on.

And how wrong we were.