Leaving Utila, pt. 2 (Dec 2008)

We are pleasantly tired from the first dive, it is more strenuous than one would think to fin slowly through deep, cold waters, and this warmth the perfect follow up, my muscles all more relaxed than I thought possible. Dozing, but not really asleep just slowed… all… the… way… down. Our captain points at a spot about 15 meters in front of the boat, he’s identified the second group’s location underwater by the bubbles breaking on the surface of the waves, I can’t even see what’s he’s pointing at but then again I usually can’t, the other day he pointed out tiny jellyfishes by the boat and I couldn’t see those either. A few minutes later the more experienced divers emerge and climb aboard. It’s only mid-morning but we discuss whether we’d like our lunch break now or after the second dive, I am firmly voting for now but only inside my head, I’m enough of a drag on this group as it is and if the majority wills a second dive right away then I will suit up and get back in the water. It’s strange, actually, because I learned all about pressure groups and surface intervals and I thought we had to do the break in between dives rather than after but I guess we’re not really going deep enough for it to matter.

They are wriggling out of their gear and switching tanks, and I exult inside we have decided to break for lunch now and who cares that its so early. Kerry unties the boat from the buoy and we motor off across the shining water heading for the Cayes, two of the many small islands in satellite around Utila and the only two that are populated. I have been hearing about “burgers on the Cayes” for weeks, and also am eagerly anticipating the absence of those pernicious sand flies that taint every beach experience on Utila, any relaxation spiced with the tension of looking for those tiny dots on skin harbinging welts that will stay for weeks. Also, this means I can stay lolled out on the deck for a bit longer.

Ellie comes around to each of us and asks what we’re having, the options it seems are burger vs. cheeseburger with optional fries. I’m not quite clear on why she is so concerned about this while we’re still underway, and ask her if she is going to be our waitress, or if we are anticipating service from a roller skated girl at the dock. No, she is radioing our order in so that it will be ready when we arrive, a clever circumvention of island time, manana time when everyone is slowed… all… the… way… down.

We dock the boat and climb off, Kim and I following Ellie and Etienne they know where they’re going on a narrow concrete footpath between shoulder to shoulder clapboard houses which are adorned with the most garish of Christmas ornaments possible, cheap shiny garlands draped over tropical bushes as we pass by in our bikinis and swim trunks. We turn into a shack on the right, just before the bright yellow bridge that connects the two Cayes, this is the home of the famed burgers. We get our drinks, water or soda, and sit down as a long picnic table to await our pre-ordered burgers or cheeseburgers with optional fries. The table is a little too high, I could easily rest my head on the forearms without bending my back, and we make awkward small talk, Barry is holding forth on something or other, about some travel experience he had in Mexico, he is doing that traveler thing of one-upmanship although no one else is competing.

Our burgers arrive and they are not the juicy grilled piles of beef I have been anticipating, there are burgers everywhere on this island but not any good ones, at least it’s not charred and the fries aren’t drowning in grease, I will definitely not miss the food on the island I want to get back to New York where I can eat something other than bad hamburgers, greasy fries, and the occasional taco. Paying for our food takes another interminable interlude and I am newly glad that I decided to take the plane tomorrow morning rather than trying to rush back for the afternoon ferry, otherwise I would be anxiously tapping my bare heel on the concrete floor and watching the clock like the impatient New Yorker I have come here to stop being for a little while.

We thread our way back to the boat on the ribbon of concrete through the village, or hamlet, or whatever word is appropriate for a tiny island covered in shacks, back on the boat and on the Sting Ray Point. I am sunning myself on the aft dock again and considering skipping the second dive to stay here basking, I am not sure I want to fall back into the cold dark water when I could be up here but I am leaving tomorrow, this is my last chance, there are no more mananas left for me here so I suit up with everyone else, one by one we roll back off the boat and slowly sink below the surface.

I am more comfortable this time, breathing deeply and evenly, and there is less coral here too which makes me glad. Divers usually go to the coral because that is where the interesting reef fish live, your best chance to see something cool, but I am happier over the sand patches where I am not swimming in constant terror of bumping into the delicate, ancient organism and destroying it and everything is distorted and looks closer and bigger and I can’t see anything other than what’s directly in front of me and can’t feel what the fins are doing and when we’re in the reef I am convinced that I am killing the fish rather than observing them in some ecologically friendly way. Down to the sand patch then, slowly equalizing and adjusting the pressure in my ears, eyes wide open and aware, aware, trying to be aware of everything around me and also every miniscule adjustment in my body to being here underwater where this mammalian body has no business being. We are looking for rays in the sand but no luck again this time, we see a flounder and I like the flounders, they are so awkward and ungainly, like large amoebas on the ocean floor propelling themselves along with cilia just like things I looked at through a microscope in high school biology classes. Again, though, they’re common and therefore we swim on, seeking the rare fishes or rays and there are rumors that whale sharks have been sighted here before.

Down and around and back over to the coral wall, and I check my depth gauge and look up I can’t believe I’m 60 feet underwater and feeling totally fine with that. Etienne thinks he sees something and swims ahead and deeper than we are supposed to go, we follow equalizing every few feet keeping the pressure inside our bodies and ears in sync with the water pressing in on us. It was nothing and onwards, and barrel rolling again to see the water around me, the visibility is better here than on the last dive, the water a lighter blue, aquamarine which literally means “water blue” and no imagination required there, sometimes we have to use the obvious word because it is the only one that fits.

We play with the garden eels on the ocean floor for a little while, they look like strings floating up from the sand but they recede down into their holes when we approach, and then slowly seek their way back up when we back off. We watch for a little while and then flipper a wave through the water back at them and down they go again, it’s a little bit like playing with those roly-poly bugs, I don’t think I ever knew what they are really called they were always just roly-polys to me. No rays, no whale sharks, and we slowly ascend once again and that is the end of my last dive here on Utila, and it is bittersweet as I lay back in the sunshine on the aft deck for the last time trying to squeeze every second of bliss out of this possible, I am stocking up on sunshine to carry me through the cold winter I return to tomorrow. They guy whose name I forgot teases me about going home tomorrow, he just arrived and is looking forward to weeks of sunshine that I am already looking back on. He suggests that I stay longer, so do Ellie and Kim, it’s a suggestion I’ve bowed to over and over for the past week but no more, I have to go home I am out of time here.

Back into the lagoon and to the dive shop dock, we unload the boat and rinse our gear out with freshwater and put it all back neatly. Kim has something she wants to do this afternoon I’m not sure what, so we part ways, I grab my pack out of the office and head across the street to the dorms where I’ll be staying tonight, no hot water but then again the water heater in the apartment I left this morning had broken anyway, a suicide shower with electrified knobs that has given me a couple of unpleasant shocks in the past couple of days. I dump my bag on the only available bed and decide I will wait on my shower, I will soak up the heat of the day until the cold water feels good. I grab my book, not that I will really read it, it’s more of a prop than anything, make sure I have my cigarettes and stake my claim on the hammock on the porch overlooking the water. I have my iPhone as well so I put it on shuffle and relax back into the sunshine, sweat sheening my body, my book falling from my listless fingers.

There are new people in the dorm today, new arrivals just beginning their stay here, replacing the divers I met last week, Haley and Jes and Jay and Gareth are already gone as if they were never here and now there is a talkative German guy and Chris, a Finnish guy who joins me on the porch. He browses through my iPhone while we smoke, he asks me what I’m doing and I gesture languidly at the hammock and myself in it, “Nice,” he approves, this is what he has to look forward to. Within the first few minutes of conversation he is urging me to stay longer, he just met me and I’m leaving tomorrow morning, but that is the way these things go ships that pass in the night or travelers who pass in the sunshine, no point chatting or bonding with new people now I am leaving tomorrow.

The sun sinks through the clear sky and I sweating more but it is moving towards being a gorgeous sunset and I don’t want to abandon this tropical sun for even a few minutes to take a shower so I stay in the hammock, sweat cooling on my brow as we take pictures of the sun painting the clouds pink and red and of the local kids jumping off the dock, stunningly silhouetted against the blazing orange sky. There’s a sailboat out there on the horizon as well, it does not get more picture postcard than this and I stay on the porch until darkness descends entirely and the evening cool is coming in and it is time for that cold water shower now, I am going out for my last dinner tonight with Kim and Laura and maybe the German dude and his friend will join us.

We are all puttering around the beamed dorm room at various cross purposes, showering or unpacking or some people are studying their SCUBA course books that was me a week or two ago, and we trickle back out to the porch to decide where to go for dinner. I am running low on lempiras and refuse to go back to the bank, but I want a good seafood dinner tonight dammit, no more bad burgers or tacos. Kim doesn’t eat seafood though so she’s not inclined to follow my suggestion out to Chepes Beach and the Champas Bar, where a weathered French man cooks the most delicious seafood I’ve ever had in my life. We decide to walk towards Chepes, there’s an Indian restaurant that might be open tonight, and maybe Dave’s is open but we’re not sure, most restaurants are only open a few nights of the week and not in a way that makes much logical sense. Laura has joined us, she’s a British girl who’s staying over at the Iguana Center, I can’t remember now if I met her through Kim, or AJ, or Haley and Jes who have left already. The German guy is interested in coming with us, but he and his friend need to stop off and check email first, we tell him “Dave’s, or the Indian place, or maybe Champas if neither of those is open,” and of course we end up at La Piccolo which is none of those places but not to worry, it is a small island, we can all be reasonably confident that we’ll end up at TreeTanic.

La Piccolo is an Italian restaurant, but they have kingfish on the menu and it’s delicious. I don’t even know what kingfish is, I think it’s a local word for some other kind of fish that I might recognize, but whatever it is it’s really good. AJ has joined us as well, she’s the gal from Minnesota or Montana or somewhere Midwestern or Western that’s really cold right now, she was working at Coco Loco bar for two days and then quit, she met Kim traveling a few weeks ago and they’ve been hanging out since. Or maybe they met through Nif, the New Zealander who is on a two year backpacking tour of Central America, the purveyor of the pot brownies that have been decimating everyone nightly, but Nif left yesterday or maybe the day before and has left this fragile friendship as her legacy.

Leaving the restaurant, and we wander further up the road away from the dock, we are walking AJ home she has decided to pass on TreeTanic tonight. There’s some discussion amongst this group of girls whether or not we’re going out at all tonight, I am trying to be easy and laid-back and not insist but it is my last night here. We meander back, stopping to talk to the hippies selling jewelry across from Evelyn’s Grill, Kim is talking to the guy for a while so Laura and I grab a section of makeshift concrete curb and wait, trying to ignore the smell coming from the ditch, it wasn’t noticeable until we sat down but there’s nowhere else to sit and we’re rather tired. Kim’s done now, we are back at the crossroads and yes, we have finally determined that we are going to TreeTanic after all, all the discussion was a moot point really. We turn away from the ocean and walk up Cola de Mico road, turning in at the Jade Seahorse on the left just before the next intersection, after that the road goes onward up the hill towards the airport to Bar in the Bush which is the really rowdy late night bar, the one I’ve never been to because I am here on this island alone and it has a reputation for being unsafe for women alone.

TreeTanic is a different story though, and I’m not alone tonight. The bar is packed as we push up the narrow staircase after walking through the mosaiced garden, the bar is built in a treehouse to look like the prow of a ship wrecked amongst the boughs. This place is a fantasy of found art, every surface decorate with mosaic glass and encrusted with seahorses or maybe rubber toys found washed up on the beach and blown glass marbles, you could spend hours looking at a tiny part of this complex and its not tiny, with garden paths winding up to the cabanas and bridges flung over fountains. It’s a clear night, not raining at last, and we get beers at the bar and then find a bench to sit on. Kim’s not drinking, she has a deck of cards and proffers that as conversation falters. Laura asks me quietly if “Kim is always quiet like this,” I say no, she hasn’t seemed so, but I’ve only known her a few days so what do I know and is it so bad to be a little quiet some nights, really the social pace of making new acquaintance is somewhat exhausting from time to time. I am feeling social tonight for sure though, I am going to make the most of this because I have been often alone the previous weeks and I am ready to soak up this wild otherwordly ambience for the last time. I see Ellie and her husband, wave and squeeze over to their side of the bar, we dove together for two days there is some sort of bond. I chat with them for awhile, and with the other guy they’re talking to, Dave I think his name is. He introduces himself to me, not remembering that he has introduced himself to me three different times on a previous night, a night when he was much drunker than he is now. We tease him about that for a little while, and then I drift off, there is Etienne so I talk to him for a while, he shares the joke about using the SCUBA hand signals applied to drinking, left fist to right shoulder means “low on alcohol,” left hand making cross motion across throat means “out of alcohol,” pointing to your buddy’s bicep means “you are alcohol donor, we will share alcohol.”

The bar is filling up even more and I wend back over to Laura and Kim, they don’t look like they’re having a very good time. Kim is drinking with us now at least which is good, I am on my last drink based on the lempiras I have left in my pocket. We chat a bit and then Laura’s stalker shows up, she’s told us about this guy and we ran into him at Coco Loco the other night. He’s the other volunteer at the Iguana Center, a tallish chubby nondescript man with no social skills and he has been clinging barnacle-like to lovely, socially adept Laura, and it’s a small island its hard to avoid people. He hovers nearby, turns for a second and we quickly make a break for another table, squeezing our way into a corner with Chris our Finn friend, there is a little more room to breathe back in this corner and we are hidden from the stalker dude. Chris is talking to a couple who recently arrived, we are laughing and trading travel stories about different places, this girl talking about stocking up on illicit pharmaceuticals in Korea. Chris is flirting with me, or trying to I think, and keeps saying that he wishes I were staying longer, “Stay” this is what you say to people who are leaving the island, “stay” as if it matters, as if there won’t be someone new tomorrow, “stay” as if you won’t be leaving too and sooner rather than later, nobody stays forever.

I see Kim through the crowd, my dive instructor who managed to get me certified through sheer force of will, hers not mine, I was wondering if I would see her tonight to say goodbye, a goodbye obviously more meaningful to me than to her, she sees her students leave every day. I squeeze through and say hello, she is drinking from a plastic tumbler not a paper cup and I comment that it looks like the ones in my apartment, the apartment that isn’t mine anymore. She tells me that it’s a bar thing, tourists get the paper cups and residents get their drinks in these plastic tumblers. The residents being those who stay for months or maybe even a year, I wonder where the line is between tourist and resident because its not as if anyone is really going to stay here, and stay here, nobody stays forever but whichever way it slices there’s no doubt that I’m a tourist with my paper cup.

Lizzie, the bartender, rings the bell to get everyone’s attention—there’s a snorkel test tonight. Ahhh, that’s why its so crowded here, that and the beautiful skies here in the rainy season. Someone has completed their divemaster training, and after months of diving and practicing skills underwater and completing all the other tests and training tasks, the snorkel test is the last. The new divemaster, a girl I didn’t catch her name but she’s been diving with Cross Creek, is seated on a bar stool and fitted with her mask and snorkel. Lizzie takes a two liter Pepsi bottle which has been filled with some vile concoction of various liquors, shakes it up to uproarious cheers, and then funnels it into the snorkel. I can see the divemaster’s eyes wide open, she is swallowing as fast as she can and remember she can’t breathe through her nose it’s in the mask, Lizzie keeps pouring and about a minute later the girl spits out her snorkel, there is a groan of disapproval and she puts the mouthpiece back in and starts again, Lizzie keeps pouring and then the girl has had enough again, that bottle is still half-full but apparently this is sufficient alcohol guzzling to be considered as passing the snorkel test, another round of cheers and she takes off her mask, she is a Divemaster now. Lizzie is pouring from the bottle into open mouths around the bar, she offers it to me but I demur.

With no warning rain starts pouring out of the sky, tropical rain pounding down. It’s a treehouse bar, an open air bar, there’s little shelter to be had and this place is packed tonight, I cram under an eave with a huddle of strangers not sure what happened to Laura and Kim, or Etienne or Chris or the other Kim or Ellie or Dave. I am on the outer edge of the huddle and still getting somewhat wet, which is bad because this is my last set of vaguely clean clothes and I need to wear this on the plane tomorrow, I can’t get soaked I don’t have time to dry out again. The rain slackens after a few minutes, not stopping entirely but enough that I leave the safety of the eave to say goodnight to everyone, I have to get back while I still have some hope of staying dry enough to fly tomorrow.

I wave, and hug, and we all make awkward noises about staying in touch, and how of course I’ll come back to Utila but if I came back in a few months these people wouldn’t be here, not even the residents like Kim drinking out of her plastic cup because she’ll be gone by March, it will be new people arriving and leaving daily and we won’t keep in touch, we won’t see each other again, I won’t come back and we know it, people leaving every day and not coming back and so the hugs are perfunctory, each turning their attention back to the new people that are here today, new acquaintances with whom they’ll roll off the boat, and have dinner, and go to the beach, and watch snorkel tests at TreeTanic and I am leaving tomorrow morning. “Stay,” they say one more time, but their eyes are already looking past me and that’s fine, it is, I have done the same thing myself time and time again in different places around the world and I push carefully down the staircase and out into the road, walking under the bright moonlight back to the dorm, the rain is still holding back for my walk so I am successful. I stop at a tienda on the way back and have just enough lempira to grab one more beer, when I get back I sit on the porch, climb into the hammock one last time looking at the moon over the water and the skies cleared again like the rain never happened except my hair is still damp, my bag is packed and ready to go before dawn tomorrow, I am leaving Utila and its like I was never here at all but I had today, I had the sunshine and the water and the bliss and I will take that back with me, it will stay here but I am taking it with me too.