There is No Train Today, Maybe, Kangra, India (Aug 2008)

I am trying one last time to snap a photo of the monkeys playing on the roof, to no avail; they are uncooperative in the extreme, coming within five feet of me and staring until I fumble for the camera and then merrily scampering over the roofline. I have a lot of pictures of the roof, or a monkey tail vanishing over the edge, but no monkey pictures and I am leaving McLeod Ganj in an hour so I suppose the monkeys will just remain undocumented, lost to posterity. I’ve been in this town for less than 24 hours and have been waiting to leave for half of that, the monsoon rains are the most intense I’ve seen and the Dalai Lama is out on tour, the rock star of religion, and there is not much to see or do here other than fail to take pictures of monkeys.

The up side of leaving earlier than planned is that I will have time to ride the Kangra Valley toy train. The famous one is in Darjeeling, but that is on the other side of the Himalayas and not on my itinerary. The Kangra train is the little known, poor cousin version, but it is nearby and Darjeeling is not. Information on the train is scant, as its not a tourism highlight, but I have assiduously scoured the Rail System website and determined that if I can get there by 10am I can catch one that will get to Pathankot in time to connect to the main rail system and head on to Amritsar by the end of the day. Getting to Kangra by 10am on public transportation was going to be a hell of a trip, it’s not that far from McLeod Ganj but it is not really the distance that determines the difficulty, it was going to be a 5am bus down to Dharamsala and then waiting for another bus to Kangra and then a rickshaw out to the train station, I wussed out and went the non-shoestring route and booked a cab to take me directly to the train. I am losing shoestring backpacker points, but I will also probably get there on time and not get stuck in Kangra.

I pack up the last few items in my room and lock the door behind me, I am going to the café to wait for my cab to arrive. While I am sipping coffee on the veranda, overlooking the mist obscuring the mountains and keeping an eye out for a glimpse of monkey tail, a monk joins me. This is not uncommon in McLeod Ganj, seat of the Tibetan government in exile, and as we talk he tells me he is actually from Delhi. I comment that I haven’t gone there yet, but will be there in a week or two, and in the liltingly accented English that is common here he says, “Oh but Delhi is terrible, terrible! It is full of murder and rape and death, all the time people being murdered and robbed. Terrible, terrible, not even safe for tourists, nowhere is safe, there is rape and killing and murder…” This is not comforting.

The man at reception waves at me, my taxi has arrived. I bid farewell to the monk who is convinced that within a week my body will be found in a dumpster somewhere in Delhi and duck outside in the rain, not worth popping my umbrella for the two seconds it will take me to climb in, I haven’t bothered snugging the rain cover over my pack either. We careen down twisty rutted paths in the pouring rain and I am grateful that I have eschewed the bus, I have had enough of lumbering vehicles wheezing around curves on glorified goat paths, I am looking forward to trains, trains, trains. A monkey! But he is gone too fast or I am, and I have a picture of a blurry roadside.

We don’t talk very much, my driver and I, and I prefer it that way. We get to Kangra and wend our way through town and out of it, over a bridge and then he pulls over. There’s no train station here. He explains that there is no road to the train station, I will need to follow a cobbled footpath through this little hamlet, then over a bridge, and up the hill. I am not sure I trust him, my guidebook said nothing about this, and why the hell have a rail station that is inaccessible? This is India, I have given up expecting things to make sense, so I shoulder my pack and pull the hood of my sweatshirt over my head. Not worth popping my umbrella, not in this crowded alley, and it can’t be that far anyway.

I am the only farang in sight. I orient one more time from the taxi, confirming that I am headed up the correct alley, and feel a little abandoned as I watch my driver turn around and drive off. He was supposed to make sure this went smoothly, that was the point. I walk up the path, it’s steep and the rude steps are slick with streams of water running off from the monsoon rains. I’m a little hungry and there are a couple of street meat stalls, but there is supposedly food available on the train and I will trust that a little more than this. I’m wearing sandals, and they slip off my feet once or twice, I almost want to kick them off and go barefoot.

A few minutes and I have emerged by a riverbank, the same one we crossed earlier. Sure enough there is a bridge, for foot traffic only. I walk out from under the close eaves of the shacks that have been shielding me from the rain onto the bridge, and stop to take a couple of pictures. There are life size statues of Shiva or maybe Vishnu, on the riverbank, or I suppose human size since they don’t exist in life really. I have been mostly up in the high mountains, where there is some Hinduism but mostly Buddhism, so this is a change and I am still having trouble really getting the idea that the people here make sacrifices to these statues by the river, and worship here.

Over the bridge and another twisty pathway leading up into the thickly wooded forest and there had better be a train here after all but the path must go somewhere and I am going wherever this path is going. I pass a group of Indian businessmen cowering from the rain, they are headed the same direction in their damp, ill-fitting suits, yes the train must be this way.

It is 9:15am when I turn the corner and arrive at the station, dank and dirty as it is. There are some people waiting here already, this is a good sign. The ticket window is closed, there is a sign explaining that it will be open 15 minutes prior to the train’s scheduled arrival so I sit down to wait, trying to be unobtrusive.

I am failing spectacularly at being unobtrusive. The women are staring at me with eyes shielded by saris, and the children are not even trying to shield their curious eyes. A man eating something fried out of a paper envelope walks up to me and offers to share, I shake my head and smile and try to pull myself in, I am waiting on the station agent and scribbling in my travel journal, notes about the monkeys and the annoying Belgian who was stalking me in McLeod. A younger man, actually quite handsome, walks over to me and says, “There is no train today, you must not wait here,” but I don’t trust him. He says, “Where do you want to go, I will help you, come with me,” but he is too smooth, his English is too good and there are people here waiting for a train and I will wait with them. He writes his phone number on a scrap of paper and presses it into my hand, says “Call me if you need help,” and leaves. I didn’t think he would actually leave, if this is a bluff it’s not too shabby but I will wait, the station agent hasn’t arrived yet and these people must be waiting for something.

One of the little girls has been slowly sidling closer to me, sneaking up on the tall pale stranger. She tugs on one of the straps of my back and smiles at me, says hello in Hindi, “Namaste,” and I smile and say hello back. Then she asks me if she can have my pen. This is pretty common here, for some reason the kids always ask for pens, and I say no, it’s the only one I have. She pouts. If I thought kids were cute I might think this were cute, but even then I wouldn’t give her my pen and I don’t think kids are cute anyway. I am trying not to growl, though, I am foreign enough without violating the social precept that anyone with a womb must love children, so I smile as I wave her off.

She does not wave off. Oh, a few feet but then she sidles back and starts tugging on the straps again. Her mother is watching her, and by the time I am seriously considering nudging this child with my foot in a way that is probably going to be more like a kick mom calls her back over, giving me a complicit smile over the child’s head. Oh, aren’t they so cute. Not really, but the brat is gone so I can smile about that and I do.

At last, the station agent has arrived, a figure of authority. The other group of Indian businessmen has left as well, they too approached me to say that there were no trains today and offered to take me where I needed to go, but I didn’t trust them either, and these families are still waiting so I will wait with them. I hover as the middle-aged man in a smart suit opens up the office, but he doesn’t open the ticket window. I stand outside the door that says “No Entrance” and peer through the screen, knocking at last. Can I buy a ticket for the train to Pathankot?

“No, there is no train today, the tracks are washed out.” But I saw a train go in the other direction! “Yes that is a different train on a different track.” Now I know that can’t be right, there’s barely one track out here much less two, there’s not even a road to this station for Chrissake. Was there a train yesterday? “Yes, there were trains yesterday, but not today,” and he gestures at the rain pouring down all around us. What about tomorrow, will there be a train tomorrow? “Yes, there will be a train tomorrow,” really? For sure? “Yes, they will fix the tracks today,” well does that mean there might be trains later today?

Right about then a train pulls up, heading in the direction I want to go. I start to scramble for it, the families are all packing up their things and squeezing aboard, but my oily, unctuous station manager smiles beatifically and says, “That is not your train.” I almost get on board anyway, it is at least going in the right direction but I hesitate, I am kind of stranded here in Kangra but at least it is listed in my guidebook and I have some resources here, if this train in fact does not proceed on the only track out here to my destination I may well end up stranded somewhere in between.

I watch the train pull out of the station, mouth slightly open in disbelief. Obviously the track is not completely washed out, and I ask him again if there will be a train later today, even if there is not one at 10am. “Yes, it is possible,” Really? I am questioning him closely, because if there is going to be a train I can wait here, it will mean a later train at Pathankot and getting Amritsar later at night but I will still get there and I will have gotten my toy train ride so it is worth considering, the other options are pretty grim, he reverses, “No there will be no trains today. …Maybe.”

I want to strangle him. At this point I know I can’t believe anything he says, he is now just casting about for the right platitude to make this tall blonde farang with the light eyes stop glaring at him. He wants to tell me what I want to hear, whether or not it is true. I sit down again to wait for a little while. Another family comes into the station, and there is a reprise of the Small Child Being Fucking Annoying act, and then another train! I get up, look around for the station manager, that oily smile again as the families climb on board, if he is not actually waggling a forefinger at me he is thinking about it so hard that he might as well be, “That is not your train.” Will my train come later? “Yes, it will come later.” Really?! “…Maybe.”

I retreat to my bench, light a cigarette, and flop open my guidebook again to study options. He approaches me, “You would not see anything today anyway, bad weather,” he’s trying to mollify me. I ask again if the train will come later, he firmly says, “No.” Are you sure? No words, just that smile again. Ok. This isn’t working. I can wait here for a train that probably won’t come. I can retreat to Kangra, spend the night there and then try again tomorrow, or I can backtrack all the way to McLeod Ganj and take the direct bus from there to Amritsar the following morning and chalk up the past two days to a waste of travel time. But I want trains, trains, trains, I am so sick of buses I want a train.

My guide says that there are local buses from Kangra to Pathankot. If I leave now, I can probably get there in time for the train to Amritsar, but it going to mean admitting defeat here. The Indian trains have defeated many a lesser mortal, and they seem to have conquered me as well, so after two hours sitting in the dank station I sigh and stand up, buckling my pack back around my waist, and head out into the rain towards Kangra proper. Back down the trail, across the river and I’m not bothering to take pictures now, through the cobbled path and down the wet stairs and back out to where the taxi dropped me off hours ago. I have a new problem, I don’t know where the main town is. I know I need to get there to reach the central bus station, but should I go back the way the taxi came down from McLeod, or further on down the main road? There are bus stops on both sides of the road, I just need to figure out which one I need.

I approach a group of women standing on the near side of the road, I am trying to talk to women rather than men because I have been so thoroughly warned about devious rapacious men in this country. Unfortunately, the women are far less likely to be educated, they don’t speak English at all, just shyly shake their heads and avert their eyes. In frustration I turn to a man standing alone, ask him if he speaks English. “A little,” he says cautiously. Where is the bus to Kangra? “Yes, yes.” Kangra. The town, where is it? “Yes, yes.” Kangra! Which way? I point one way and then the other, hoping he will give an affirmative to one and not the other, but again “Yes, yes.” These people do not know how to say no. The bus? To Kangra?

We have been doing this little “who’s on first” routine for a few minutes when a crowded bus pulls up on the other side of the street. I point at the bus and say, “Kangra??” and he says, “Yes, yes.” I wish he’d said no to at least one thing so I could feel confident that he differentiates between yes and no. I cross the street and squeeze onto the bus. I ask the driver, “Kangra?” and he nods. Off we go, shuddering and shaking and we are crossing the bridge again and turning into a town, we reach what seems to be a central stop and the bus driver gestures to me, this is where I want to get off. How can he know that? But I guess where else would I be going but out of this place. I step off the bus onto the corner and look around. I ask someone where the bus station is, they tell me I will need a rickshaw. How far? Too far, you must take a rickshaw. Really, if it’s less than a mile I’d rather walk, if I get lost on my own two feet at least I know how I got there but nobody will give me directions they just say “rickshaw” and “yes, yes.”

There is a rickshaw waiting on the corner, I run over and say “Bus station” and he nods, I squeeze in with a couple of others. Off we go, wheezing and rattling up the road, and a few minutes later I get out at the bus station, it was less than a mile away. This place is actually pretty big, a columned hall with many windows and a couple of snack bars. I grab a couple of bags of potato chips and some crackers and wander around until I find the inquiry window. Where is the bus to Pathankot? He tells me it is in berth 37, and it leaves in 20 minutes. I can buy my ticket on the bus. I walk outside and look up, there are numbers on all of the columns, I just need to find 37.

I circle the building twice, the numbers stop at 35.

I go back in to the inquiry window--where is 37? He points. I shake my head. He points again. I shake my head again, and if this dude starts saying “yes, yes” I probably am going to try to kill him. He rolls his eyes and steps outside the booth, walks me over to the door and points to the next building. Ah. There’s a 37 painted on a small stand there with a bus in front of it, empty. I walk across and find the driver standing beside the bus, I ask him, “Pathankot?” He nods and I climb on board. I’m the first one on the bus and I sit up front, squeezing my bag above me into the luggage rack I am glad I got here early, otherwise there might not be room. I lean into the window and open my book, waiting for our departure as the bus fills up.

Ten minutes later everyone starts to move, I look up in confusion. We are all getting off the bus, it seems, a man stops to tap my shoulder and point at another bus, it seems that is the bus to Pathankot after all not this one. I pull down my bag and scurry over, but now I am the last one on the bus instead of the first and end up teetering precariously on the edge of a seat in the middle with my bag finally crammed in overhead. Shortly after we rumble off.

I have no idea where we are, this road, whatever it is, isn’t marked on my map. I am trying to stay alert, wary about all the strange Indian men around me, ready to fend off lewd advances on a crowded bus if necessary. We stop frequently, people get on and off and the Punjabi conductor, or whatever the appropriate term is, squeezes up and down the aisle and over bags to collect fares at irregular intervals. There are no lewd advances, but man I wish I could feel confident that everyone had showered within the last week but it certainly doesn’t smell like it. I zone out, a little, not even reading just hunching into myself on this sweaty, humid bus.

A beautiful young girl boards the bus in a fuschia sari. She’s with her mother, and they crowd onto the edge of whatever seat they can find. She’s gorgeous, and fully decorated with henna in her hair and a bindi on her forehead and intricate patterns dyed onto her hands and feet. She is also apparently carsick. Every ten minutes or so she rushes to the door of the bus and vomits on the side of the road. The bus doesn’t stop moving. I am alert now, because this gal is actually pretty close to me and of the many ways that this day could probably get worse, being covered in vomit is one of them and I am preparing to fling myself out of the way if called upon to do so.

That doesn’t happen. What happens instead is that the bus stops. There’s a incomprehensible negotiation between the bus driver and the conductor, and suddenly everyone is getting off the bus again, but this is clearly not Pathankot. I follow, what else am I going to do? As we disembark the problem becomes clear. The road has washed out here, the bus can’t get over the bridge its too unstable. There’s a bus on the other side in the same predicament, so we are applying a typical Indian solution: we are switching buses. My busload of people trudges over the bridge, the opposing busload of people pass over to our bus, and all aboard… again.

This time there’s no room overhead for my bag, so I have it crammed onto my lap. We are degenerating slowly here, taxi to train to bus to bus to bus and I am not sure where the bottom is but I’m pretty sure I’ll find out by the end of the day. At least the vomiting girl is further away from me now. We continue on, and on, some interminable time of rain-streaked windows, and then we stop. I look up, peer out the window, this doesn’t look promising, but everyone is getting off the bus. Again.

We all get off, and half of the crowd disperses, we are in some kind of town but I have no idea where. I turn around a couple of times, I am about to ask my eternal question, “Pathankot?” and wait for the inevitable “yes, yes,” when a skinny middle-aged man takes pity on me in my evident confusion, touches my arm gently and points me to yet another bus. How does he know where I’m going? Where else would I be going, I am not waiting for Godot per se but it is pretty similar.

Another bus and we are coming out of the mountains now, the rain is clearing up so it is less humid but still hot, hot, hot. We turn onto a smooth, paved highway. There are road signs here, they say “Pathankot 22 km.” I am counting down kilometers, and we are still on the outskirts of the city and I’m not sure that this bus goes all the way to the train station, we stop and everybody is getting off again, this must be Pathankot, I turn a quizzical look to my helper from earlier in the day and he nods, this is Pathankot.

Now I have to find the train.

Bus Go Crash, Antigua, Guatemala (Jul 2007)

It’s starting to rain as I cross the main square to meet Dana and Assaf. Not hard, but it will get worse and I don’t have a raincoat or an umbrella, at least not with me now, and there’s no time to go back to the hostel to get gear so I guess I will just get wet. Assaf and Dana are waiting for me, a bit anxiously, and when I arrive Assaf gives a dubious look at my footwear and distinct lack of weather-appropriate clothing. A tone of disbelief, tinged with the kind of concern you’d hear about a mentally challenged child, “You’re not wearing those shoes, are you?”

“There the only ones I have, so I guess so.” I had ultimately decided not to pack my heavy-duty boots for this trip, it wasn’t going to be worth the weight and it’s steamy and tropical here. My runaround shoes are slip-on Mary Janes, not really qualified for hiking but the hike is supposed to be fairly easy, then again all the hikes here are supposedly easy and almost never are, they have a different definition of an easy hike than I do. Mainly my definition involves wide, smooth paths that incline gently. The hike is not the point of this little excursion, however, the point is the caldera of Volcan Pecaya, a spectacularly scenic active volcano just a few miles from Antigua. We are anticipating explosions of lava showering up into the sky, and as we confer we are disappointed that no one remembered to bring marshmallows, someone told us that you can toast marshmallows over the lava flows up there and that would have been awesome, if we had remembered it.

We are all here and accounted for, a group of around ten tourists from all over the world, there’s a Spanish couple and an Italian couple, a Canadian guy and someone from Germany, the Israelis Dana and Assaf, and of course me representing for the U.S. I met Dana on the flight from New York yesterday, and that has turned out to be quite a fortuitous meeting as we got delayed in El Salvador and ended up traveling to Antigua from Guatemala City late at night, since we had both independently made reservations at the same hostel. She has come here to meet her brother, Assaf, who is rounding out his year in Latin America, and he met us at the hostel last night. He’s been in Antigua for a while and knows his way around, and he took care of making arrangements for all three of us to join this tour, he is one of those guys that gets things done even for strangers that aren’t his sister.

We clamber into the van, or minibus, or “tourist bus” as they are called here, Dana and Assaf first in the back row and I end up teetering on the edge of the second row, odd man out and the only tourist not paired off in some way or another. We pull out of the square and head up the road out of the city, and its raining harder now as conversations spring up awkwardly amongst the group of disparate strangers who share only an origin that is Not Here. We chat about where we’re from, where we’ve been, how long we’ve been in Guatemala, the things that travellers always talk about with each other, getting cozy in this sweaty little vehicle where we’re practically sitting on top of each other and the idea of a seat belt is laughable.

One of our number ended up in the shotgun seat next the driver, necessary to fit everyone in, and breaking through the rising babble of cross-conversations is a crisply accented “Watch out!,” there’s such urgency in it that it grabs everyone’s attention and look forward and see the wall of the cliff sliding towards us, or we are sliding towards it and its looming so close so fast it shouldn’t be that close and

Impact

The van stopped moving but we moving within it are still going, I am flung forward and end up in the console area between the driver’s seat and the passenger seat in the front and thunk something is on top of me and we are moving for a long time even though it’s only a couple of seconds at most and everything is shuddering to a halt and it’s silent now it was so loud a moment ago I guess everyone was screaming but I didn’t scream or at least I don’t think I did but I probably was. The weight on top of me shifts, Dana has landed on me from behind where she was flung over the seat, everyone move up one peg, like musical chairs but not really and we are collectively struggling to move back one peg, we have to get out of this van because we are on the shoulder of a road that doesn’t really have a shoulder and I can’t really think yet but what if another car slams into us while we’re trapped here we have to get out, someone next to the door is trying to slide it open and it’s jammed and he shouts “It won’t open” and we’re trapped here, but before I can even begin to panic Assaf has levered himself out of the broken window and climbed around to the door and is prying it open from outside, we tumble out into the pouring rain and traffic veering around us and my feet hit the ground, wobbly, I have a vague notion that I shouldn’t move because I might be injured and in shock and I could injure myself even more but we had to get out of that van and my knees are shaking my whole body is shaking and quaking and I step to the side of the road, Assaf is making sure everyone gets out safely and I am so glad he’s here to do this, that he hasn’t even paused to panic or think about it he just did it, I feel my muscles turn to water and sit down abruptly and I shouldn’t be moving or at least not this fast I should be moving slowly and carefully and testing and examining everything but I sit down fast before I fall down and just barely manage to lift my feet above the rill of water in the gutter and Assaf sees me and immediately steps towards me, “Are you hurt?” “Shock,” I yell back over the noise of the traffic and the rain and the buzz of the world that is receding and advancing in distorted waves, I am cogent enough to let him know that he can triage others before he gets to me, I drop my head between my knees and I shouldn’t move my back probably but fields of gray geometric triangles are swarming in on the edges of vision narrowing down to a tunnel and if I don’t get blood to my head I am going to faint here and that is not going to do anyone any good.

I breathe deeply for a few minutes, or maybe less than that or maybe more I have no sense of the passage of time right now and in part of my awareness my body is still accelerating forward towards the window and the wall in front of me looming closer than it should be and so final in its proximity. By the time I look up everyone is gathered around the back of the van, the hatch is open and the driver is sitting there, nobody is sure how badly they are injured, we are shaken but moving and huddling out of the rain and waiting for someone to come, surely someone has to come.

Someone does come, because Assaf got a cell phone from the driver and called it in. A police car arrives, and two policeman swagger warily over to the group of first world tourists with ashen faces and shocked open eyes. They talk to the driver, and then there’s a long conversation with the Spanish tourist about what happened, and then he talks to Assaf for a while. The policeman steps back and looks at the van, and the wall, and us. His eyes run that circuit a couple of times, settling back on the wet huddle of tourists who are all waiting for him to do something, we come from places where once the cavalry has arrived they take over and do things.

He comes over to us and flips open a little notebook, holding a very small pen awkwardly in a rather dirty hand. He asks us what countries we are from, and laboriously records that we are Americans, and Spaniards, and Italians, and Germans, and Israelis, and Canadians. Then he closes his notebook and asks if anyone is hurt. We are all hurt, we clamor, but we are all moving and functioning or so it seems. I can feel that something is wrong in my left thigh, but I don’t know how wrong and I’m scared to look. I tried rolling my pants leg up to get a look at it, I could see the bruise coming up already and it’s enormous and if it’s already starting to come up mere minutes after the impact it is going to be really bad, but maybe it is just a big bruise, it will hurt but is that enough reason to subject myself to a Guatemalan hospital on the first day of my trip?

Danna and Assaf go with the cop, Dana’s wrist is hurt and Assaf is going with her to get it checked out, he asks me if I need to go too and I say no. If he were my brother he would probably make me go anyway, the way he’s making Dana go, but he’s not my brother and I’m not his sister and his sister is hurt, and everyone here has been triaged. I tell him how grateful I am that he’s here, that he’s a good person to have around in an emergency, and he shrugs it off, says “I’ve been through worse.” “What’s worse than a third world car crash?” I ask, he stops for a second to see if it’s a real question and then says “People shooting at you.”

Oh.

I forgot, he’s Israeli, not only does he live in Jerusalem itself but he has of course had to serve his compulsory term in the army.

So they’re gone with the cop now to the hospital, and soon after an ambulance shows up to pick up two other people, the driver who probably has some broken ribs and another woman who thinks her back may be injured, they strap her to a backboard and load her in, we are a diminishing quantity here waiting in the rain, the only ride out so far has been with serious injury. We were told that the tour company was sending another bus to pick us up, raising the new question of whether we want to get in another vehicle by this company because in the hours that we’ve been waiting here I took a look at the van and found to my horror that tires were completely bald, no tread whatsoever to grip the slick asphalt and hold it on the tight mountain curves.
It is about three hours from impact until when our ride shows up. We climb gingerly into this new potential vehicle of death, and my leg is talking to me now and louder but it’s not disabling, I just suspect that it will be once the shock wears off. I feel sick, now, and increasingly uncomfortable as all the water I drank is sloshing back and forth in my body, still moving towards the window and the wall beyond the window so close closer than it should be.

The driver gets lost.

It takes us twice as long to get back to Antigua, and we want to get back as fast as possible to put some distance between the helpless group cowering in the shelter of a crashed van but we also tell him over and over to go slow, go slow, be careful, take his time, any illusion we had of safety has been shattered along with any further illusion that anyone here cares if we are safe.

It’s fully night when we arrive back, I am helped out of the car by the Spanish guy and rush for the bathroom first before doing anything, I shouldn’t be rushing anywhere because I still don’t know how badly I’m hurt. When I come back the remaining members of our group are arguing heatedly with the tour operator official representative. She is blatantly uninterested in our complaints and our pain, she blandly offers to refund our tour fee of $5 each. We protest, we are first worlders and we can protest like nobody’s business, I am fully prepared to go all kinds of Ugly American on this woman, we will sue, we were injured, gross negligence, bad driver, unmentioned vehicle, but she knows our threats are empty here. She gives us all business cards with a number we can call tomorrow to file our complaints, and then informs us that she is shutting down the office for the night.

I am not limping, exactly, as I navigate back to my hostel, but I probably should be. The Spanish couple is escorting me, they are a little concerned that I am more badly hurt than they or I at first realized, but I assure them that I am ok and they accept my assurance without too much convincing required, I wish they hadn’t swallowed it so easily because I probably do need help but I don’t want to ask for it, I don’t want to need help here I am traveling alone because I can handle whatever happens all by myself I don’t need the security blanket of others to get through these adventures and misadventures, I am brave and resourceful and competent and strong and if Assaf hadn’t climbed out that window maybe it would’ve been me instead.

I let myself into the Black Cat hostel and go to reception. I ask if Assaf and Dana have returned, explain the crash and that they went to the hospital. I ask her if she has a private room available, that I’d like to switch out of the dorm if possible because I hurt my leg, but they are all booked up. She suggests I ask the other girls in the dorm to switch and let me use the bottom bunk, no way I can climb that ladder tonight or maybe I could but I shouldn’t be moving so much, I am still moving towards that window and the wall beyond.

I thank her, and slowly climb the stairs to my room. There’s a group of British girls in there now, they just arrived today, and I tell my story again and of course someone will swap bunks with me, is there anything they can do to help am I sure I’m ok? Oh yes, I’m fine, laugh it off, what a story and at least my laugh isn’t shaky and hysterical anymore. I finally have a chance to take off my pants and see how bad it is. A bruise the size of a serving platter is stamped on the outside of my left thigh, a bubble of purple blood rising to the surface of the skin with vessels not just ruptured in there but likely flat out obliterated. Everyone gasps in sympathy, I lean over to pull a dress out of my bag and suddenly scream I didn’t even know I was going to scream didn’t pull in extra air for it but oh my god the pain is radiating and knifing out from deep, deep inside the muscles of hip and oh god its not stopping I’m not moving anymore I’ll never move again I promise I swear and I am still screaming and tears are exploding from my eyes my tear ducts violently and suddenly evacuated and it is subsiding a little its not gone but I’m not screaming anymore but I can’t move either, I have finally stopped moving towards that window with the wall looming too close closer than it should be and I am not going to move again I will be still and solid like the rock wall and never move again because moving hurts it hurts so much and how did it not hurt in the hours before this, climbing in and out of cars and sitting on a toilet and up stairs and bending and sitting and rising because I will still moving then I was ahead of it and I have crashed through that window and into that wall at last after all these hours in motion, the shock-induced adrenaline has drained out and left agony in its wake.

One of the British women is a nurse, she tells me I have torn at least one muscle maybe more, and rummages through her med kit to dose me with heavy duty codeine. It’s altruistic for sure, but also the only way anyone will be able to sleep tonight otherwise I will scream I can’t help it, I have no control over it my body dictates that screaming is the only possible response.

I still don’t go to the hospital.

Club Korsakoff, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (Jul 2005)

Urban pathways become so familiar so quickly, and I am threading my way along canals and down alleys through my favorite neighborhood in picturesque Amsterdam, the Jordaan. I’ve whiled away many an afternoon meandering through the junk shops and cafes of this district, scurrying from sudden showers and basking in alternate sunlight, but tonight my mission is different. I’m going out, to be social and around people, not going out to be out in the city but in my own head. Club Korsakoff, I was here last week and I haven’t been going out much really, have been in my own head more than out of it but I am winding down my little sabbatical here, my brief meditation on writing, I am frankly sick of the sound of my own voice echoing in my head and pouring onto my computer telling me stories about myself, in some ways I feel like I’ve been talking nonstop for three weeks except mostly it doesn’t get outside of the closed loop of my mind and the laptop, and I would like to hear someone else’s stories for a change or at least make a new one.

Along the canal and the walkway is narrow, I am piloting a monster of a bicycle alongside the rilling yet doubtlessly filthy water. I haven’t ridden the bike very much, trusting my feet more in the patchworked web of pedestrian, bicycle, tram, and car traffic and the bikes are by far the most terrifying, the Dutch are masters of pedal-powered locomotion and traffic rules are suggestions only, and weak ones at that. There are fewer people out tonight though, and it is about time I added my tributary to the delta of bikes flowing concurrent with the canals. I find the size of this one almost comforting, a heavyweight hunk of metal that is slow to start but once rolling near unstoppable, something that maybe shouldn’t be comforting but is, I like the massiness of it. Right down the last narrow cobblestoned corridor, and I reel to a halt and lock up my banana-colored bike, adjust my skirt and walk through the battered door painted flat black.

Inside I’m immediately engulfed in a cloud of chemical fog and a textured wall of sound, a sensory shock after the quiet of the night outside. I nod to the bouncer with the uncertain smile of one who can’t respond in Dutch if he chooses to question me, I wouldn’t even be able to understand the question. He nods back slightly, stoic, and I’ve passed the gatekeeper and push into the wall of hazy smoke to the bar. It’s not particularly crowded, and that’s a relief, there is room to move and breathe, if you can pretend the thick combination of artificial fog and cigarette smoke is beneficial to breathe. I give my uncertain smile to the bartender, he asks me something and I just point to one of the taps, I don’t even know what it is but with the twin barriers of language and noise I am just going to have to trust him. He turns out to be trustworthy, and I turn and lean my back gently against the bar rail, almost cuddling my drink, a prop to hide behind if necessary, and look around for the first time, I find I prefer to give everyone else a chance to ‘see’ me first if that’s what they want to do before I turn my attention to the constantly mutating social constellation, that way nobody has to get busted checking someone out, giving them the initial two second evaluation.

They are here, the gaggle of younger club kids I met last week, they’ve seen me and they are so happy to see me again, their exotic foreign friend, although I can’t imagine I’m that exotic I’m only an American. They are all younger than me, late teens or twenty-young, and it’s ridiculous probably but I do feel older, wiser, more experienced and cosmopolitan, all this despite my constant self-awareness as really nothing more than a small town girl from rural North Carolina who has somehow managed to stumble her way across the ocean to get here.

We greet each other with exaggerated joy, overdone hugs and a fake kiss on the cheek as if we think for a moment that we’re French and can get away with that without being pretentious. We talk, and laugh, and giggle, half the conversation lost in a swirl of sound and abrupt entrances and exits from the conversation as people hit the dance floor and then return, sweaty and smiling, it doesn’t actually matter if we can understand each other that’s not the point really. I slide into back into my social persona, a bit rusty since I haven’t been doing this regularly for a while, it’s a face that started to fit all too well when I was being aggressively outgoing in Seattle every night of the week. It’s a frivolous place, and it is appropriate to be frivolous people here, and I am smiling and laughing easily, my face mobile and expressive with ironic amusement, every gesture and expression slightly outsized to push through the sound and the dimness and let’s not forget the tequila, there is round after round of tequila and I participate in the first one but then try to demur, the impeccably gothed out girl who seems to be the social alpha won’t let me, she insists, I explain that I rode my bike here this time and I will have to get it back, and what she doesn’t understand is that if I keep drinking like this I will ride it straight into the canal, “We will pull you out,” she laughs back at me, we are friends at least for tonight, for tonight I have been fully embraced as part of their community, a mascot almost.

I didn’t mean to stay this long, but somehow the night has slid away and it is 4am and the music is fading out and the lights are coming up, you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here, and we spill out of the battered black door and scatter to unlock our bikes. I am privately planning to walk this bike home, I go to say goodbye but it’s not time for goodbyes yet this night isn’t over quite yet, there’s a bakery a few blocks away that will open at 5am and I am dragooned into the joining the cavalcade, I say dragooned but it’s not as if I’m resisting too much I don’t really want to go home yet either if we can keep this groove going a little longer.

I am walking my bike and they are all walking theirs as well, a silent concession to the drunk American gal, over the next few blocks different members of this group of five or so people drop back to talk with me, a rotation almost, and now here we are at the bakery but it’s not open yet, it’s not 5 am quite yet so we drop our bikes or lean them against the wall, not bothering to lock them up we’re the only people out here anyway. We sit down on the sidewalk and never mind the elaborate club outfits, who cares it’s the end of the night and the judgment is over. I lean over and rest my head on Yuri’s shoulder, the goth girl strokes my hair and we are still chatting but slowly, lazily, energy oozing into this odd cuddle puddle on a Dutch sidewalk in the Jordaan.

The light comes on inside and the ovens are firing up, we rouse ourselves and knock on the window, not yet, they need a few minutes to get the croissants going. I don’t stand up yet, Thomas is taking point on this transaction and I am going to lounge here on the sidewalk until my fresh croissant magically appears. It doesn’t take too long, and maybe time is elastic too, I’m not in a hurry or waiting for anything, this night has already been lovely beyond my expectations and anything further is a bonus, extra credit, and there is a warm, flaky, perfect pastry in my hands, butter still moist in the dough as the sun starts struggling up in the east.

Volcano Surfing at Cerro Negro, Nicaragua (Nov 2007)

“Maybe we should have stayed at this hostel instead,” I mutter as we walk into the Bigfoot Hostel. It’s a bit grubbier than our newfound homebase in Leon, but has a much compensatory social vibe that is definitely lacking in our Hostel of Silence, the Lazybones on the other side of the old town. Too late now and we’re only staying one night in this town, Leia left the beach yesterday and established our bulkhead in this city while Melissa and I stayed to soak up hammock-y sunshine and take surfing lessons, an endeavor which as usual ended with me spat out on the beach coughing up saltwater. It was good that Leia left a day early though, good I think for all of us, this trip has involved a lot of tension amongst travelers and it was nice for Melissa and I to have a day when we weren’t worried about somehow offending Leia, and good too for Leia to have a day when she navigated herself around Nicaragua all alone, building some confidence as a third world backpacker. It’s always frightening the first time you’re on your own with nothing but a backpack on a dirty bus, heading to a town you’ve never set foot in where you don’t speak the language, but she seems to have done just fine, booked us into the agreed-upon hostel and has also reserved our spots on the volcano surfing tour. We didn’t know it but if she hadn’t been here the day before we wouldn’t have been able to go today and today is the only day available, so victory all around and we have arrived at the appointed time in the lobby of the Bigfoot Hostel.

Melissa has bowed out, she is feeling too sunburnt and tired from our surfing endeavors to tackle the mountain, so it is just Leia and I and the tension has simmered down, that day of space really helped and I am hopeful that maybe we can end this trip as friends after all. The lobby is crowded, a milling group of tourists from a variety of first world countries, we’ve got Aussies and Americans and Germans and Brits, all lined up and ready to go do something exquisitely dumb. There’s a placard on an easel with a few pictures of the mountain and a description of what we are about to do, “after an easy 40 minute walk up the mountain” as the placard describes it, we will “surf down the slope of volcanic shale at speeds up to 75 kilometers per hour.” We are advised to bring at least two liters of water each, and that we have, maybe this will be the one freakin’ time I don’t end up dehydrated and panting on the side of a Latin American mountain and out of water.

Our guides are Australians, they are the ones who pioneered this activity. We are subject to a brief orientation prior to climbing into the truck, Cerro Negro is the youngest volcano in the world, appearing in the middle of a cornfield about a hundred years ago, erupting out of fertile farmland and growing quickly to a height of about a kilometer before settling in to smolder menacingly. Australians being the second-craziest group of travelers in the world (the first being the Kiwis), they naturally saw the mountain and thought, “I must surf that pile of geologically unstable rock and ash! How fast can we go??” It is actually more like sledding than surfing, but surfing sounds cooler so we are going with that.

Into the back of the truck, ten or twelve of us crammed onto hard benches and we rumble out of town, a pickup with a payload of multinational gringos. We will drive for about an hour, we were told, and the weather is perfect despite being in the tail end of the rainy season, the air is warm and soft and we are traversing through increasingly rural roads, turning off the highway onto dirt track branching off of dirt track through lush, verdant countryside and crop fields. Little kids run out of things that I can’t really call houses, more shacks or hovels, waving and shouting as they chase the truck and we are all smiling back, big grins you kind of can’t help it. We all laugh, what must the locals think of this truckload of tourists going up to the mountain to do their damnedest to kill themselves in new and creative ways? Life isn’t challenging enough for us, waking and working and caring for land and children and relatives day after day, we are jaded and spoiled and we seek the thrills of life in ever more outlandish fashion.

We stop at the entrance to the park, or conservation station, it is a little unclear whether we are paying an official fee or an unofficial bribe, the line is always blurry down here, one thing is certain though we are going to pay somebody for the privilege of our suicidal adventure. We are waiting for a while there, the reasons again not exactly clear, this also something to be expected in this part of the world, and we can see the mountain now looming sternly above us, a cone of black rock harsh and devoid of any gentling vegetation, it looks like something out of the Lord of the Rings, we are entering Mordor. We can see the storm clouds coming across as well, not impeding the blazing sun yet but we are worried because we need to beat the rain, we can’t do this in the rain.

Back in the truck with still no explanation of our pause there, explanations are things you learn to let go of. We approach the mountain, curving around it’s flanks, and our guide points out the steep slope that we will be going down, good god that’s intimidating, I know the angle looks much more intense than it actually probably is, magnified and distorted by my disbelief that I am actually going to throw myself down it towards the rocks below.

Final disembarkation. Out of the truck and our guide, the absurdly athletic blonde woman, distributes a bundled plastic grocery bag to each of us, this contains our protective jumpsuit and goggles. She starts pulling sleds off the top of the truck and we each get one of these as well, it’s about four feet long by two feet wide, with metal sheeting on the bottom. It’s not terribly heavy, probably just a few kilos, but its awkward as hell to manage, there’s no good way to carry this thing, and the fact that we are carrying our gear up the mountain is news to me although there’s no reason that it should be, perhaps in the back of my mind I temporarily forgot that I was doing Something Unsafe in Nicaragua rather than visiting a sanitized ski resort type of place, somewhere with a lodge at the bottom of the mountain and little gondolas to take me to the top, I had vaguely thought that maybe they kept the sleds stashed on the mountain but as it’s volcanically active and could erupt at any moment that wouldn’t make much sense now would it?

We start off towards the trail, picking our way through boulders of pumice. No tree cover and the sun is hot on our skin, the heat absorbing too into the black rock surrounding us and radiating back from all sides. We are moving fairly quickly and the slope isn’t steep yet, we are winding our way around the base first to access the trailhead, this is the easy part of the hike but it’s a lot less easy in the glaring heat, awkwardly toting my sled and bag of gear while concentrating on placing my feet on a relatively solid surface, this is less of a path and more of a goat trail really, the faintest of indications that this route may actually get you up to the top without confronting a sheer cliff face. Leia and I fall behind quickly, we are panting and sweating and taking water breaks after ten minutes. There’s a German girl back at our pace too, we are letting the testosterone-filled guys rush ahead with the crazy Australian guide and we all agree that we will not be pressured to meet an unreasonable pace, we will not feel judged we will get up this mountain all in good time and never mind the clouds coming in, I actually kind of want the clouds to come because some shade would be nice. We continue up and I can’t help but think of that Biblical quote that I am paraphrasing in my head, something about not finding shelter under the tree nor the rock, wherever that sinner was it probably looked something like this.

We catch up to the rest of the group, they’re waiting for us. Our guide explains that we have completed the easy part and the next portion of our ascent is the steepest, probably on ten or fifteen minutes but to be careful, they haven’t done as much maintenance on the path as they should have since the last time the volcano rumbled its rocks into redistributed patterns. She sets off again, disturbingly muscled thighs pumping in quick rhythm up and around the shoulder of the mountain and we trail after, coming around the corner to see a steep drop off to the right and how did we get so high already, Leia and I are leapfrogging each other as we take frequent breaks and the even the German girl has pulled ahead of us, I am going very slowly I will not be rushed and I am incredibly grateful that I packed my heavy boots after all, the leather strapped and laced around my ankles all the way up my calves is probably the only thing that has prevented two sprained ankles so far because these rocks are unstable, and there isn’t even anything pretending to be a path anymore just a pile of rubble to climb over with a menacing slope of horse sized boulders to the right and this stupid sled under my arm or the best way to carry it really to balance the weight is to sling it on my back and use both arms up over my head and down again to hold it center but then I can’t use my hands to balance or catch myself if I trip and I’m not sure I can do this, I’m not sure I can make it up this mountain the group is far ahead now so much higher so quickly and my foot comes down on a rock and it shifts and I stagger sideways a step and there is just barely even a steps worth of stagger room before I’d go off the edge here, tumbling down and over and there are no bushes or trees to soften the slope I don’t go over but I cry out, I am shaking now trembling and I can’t go on I can’t go up but I can’t go back down either I sink down to the ground I want to lay down and press my body to the most stable surface I can find and grip every point of contact possible, the grit is digging into my knees and I am all the way down now and still clutching my sled for some reason and I can’t do this, I can’t do this.

Leia is several feet above me, she turns and sees me crouched down on the path, I’m crying now and I hate crying and I especially hate anyone else seeing me cry, especially Leia who I haven’t been getting along with and especially that group of strangers further up the mountain who are just starting to realize that something has gone very wrong back here but we are down a lot closer to the bone that any pretense of toughness or competence because I’M SCARED and I’M CLUMSY ANYWAY and WHAT THE HELL I AM DOING SCRAMBLING UP A MOUNTAIN WITH A SLED and I am not moving from here I am not, I’m safe here right now with my hands clenched into the gravel holding onto this mountain as if there is some centripetal force trying to fling me off the globe spinning faster and faster but I am holding on here.

Leia puts her sled down and begins carefully picking her way down the path, this path was never meant for descent because everyone goes up this way and goes down on the other side on the sled, there is a part of my brain that is still coherent, a small place very small indeed that is separate from the wordless scream of panic that has taken over my mind and body and that part is amazed that she is coming back, it’s not like Leia’s much more physically competent than I am in fact she’s actually in much worse shape and has even less experience with this kind of thing, isn’t she afraid that she’ll teeter and topple over the edge? Her arms are out for careful balance, that helps this sled is a huge part of the problem but that’s all academic anyway because I am never moving again, sled or no.

She stumbles a little as she reaches me, rights herself and crouches down and only now that there are ears to hear it close by do I realize that strange sound I’ve been ignoring is me, nononononononononoicanticantiwontnonononononocantcantcantcantcantwontNO, that is all buzzing out of my mouth without punctuation or breath through the hitching sobs spasming through my core. She pulls my face up to meet her eyes, tells me to breathe and I do, I take my first breath that I can remember since this began but I guess I must have been breathing thank god for instincts. “Another one,” she commands, she’s holding my gaze and won’t let me hide, won’t let me bury my face back into the ground, and I take another breath, deeper this time, and now I’m breathing so I can’t make that sound anymore, I am still shaking but it’s subsiding a little bit. The first thing I say on purpose, “I’m not going up,” and she asks me if I want her to come back down with me, “I ca-ca-can’t go down,” the sobs stuttering through my words and “Keep breathing,” she’s not going to let me slide back down into panic. Each breath is a like a solid brick of air that I am forcing down past my teeth and tongue, scraping raw and solid against my throat, choking me but I know I need it. Our guide appears behind Leia, she has left the group up at the top and come back down here to see if she can help. She’s going to take the sleds, both of them in all of her freakish fitness but to be a little bit fair to us she built this path, some path but she climbs this mountain twice a day. She checks with Leia, will she be able to get me up the path, it’s only a little further up the rough patch and then we’re at the top. Leia says yes, I want to say no way, uh uh, but my input has not been requested.

“We’ll do it together,” she grips my hand firmly and I’m not entirely sure how she got me to let go of the ground but I am holding her hand now just as hard as I was holding the mountain. “We’ll go as slow as we need to, they can wait for us.” She pulls me up to a crouch, I put my hands out and slowly rise on trembling legs. We take the first step and my foot wobbles, I immediately sink back down on my heels. “It’s okay, that was our first step. Now we’ll take the next one.” And we do.

Time has warped and stretched with the elasticity that panic gives it, so I don’t know how long it takes us to get to the top. When we do, I’m surprised to see it only took us about 45 minutes to climb from the base to the caldera, “easy walk” my ass and I am angry now, so angry why weren’t they honest who could call this easy? I’ve stopped crying and everyone is looking at me with nervous smiles, I nod with embarrassment that I am fine, really. The group is going down into the caldera to check out the smoking vents of sulphur, a steep path down and then back up and you know what I’m gonna pass on that one, Leia stays with me while I keep breathing, sitting on a rock and looking out finally, looking beyond the next step and the landscape beneath us is absolutely stunning, a breathtaking expanse of rolling fields with occasional trees dotting it, it looks exactly like I imagine the African veldt looks like from the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, we are here on the highest ground for miles and miles and far off in the distance we can see other volcanic peaks rising in the clouds. I halfway expect to see a great herd of gnus crossing the plains but we are not in Africa we are in Nicaragua, and looking at something else has made me forget for a few minutes how scared I am. The group comes back, apparently we missed out the caldera was “so cool” but I am entirely comfortable with missing the “so cool” caldera if it means I have avoided another panic attack.

We set off now around the rim, the path is about two meters wide maybe with a drop off the mountain on the left and a drop into the cone on the right. I’ve been dragging my sled but I can’t do that here because if it slips off to one side it will start to drop and pull me with it. The guide is worried about me, will I make it and I think so, I’m carrying the sled under one arm and then the wind comes up, making a sail out of the plywood and metal that I’m holding and without even a moments pause I sink to the ground. She thinks I’m panicking again but I’m not, or at least not yet, I have a little more control now and simply tell her that she needs to take the sled, maybe this makes me a total wuss but I don’t care anymore, there is really no coming back from that screaming crying bit so I am just going to do whatever it takes to get all the way through this experience and be damned proud of myself for doing it at all. I crawl a few feet further on the path before I have the courage to stand up, it’s just so frightening with my center of gravity that high and the wind and the narrow path but I make it around the edge.

There’s a wide flat space here, yards and yards of level ground and I unclench for real for the first time since we set out. We suit up, coveralls and heavy gloves and goggles to protect us from the abrasive flying gravel. The guide shows us the ‘surfing’ technique, it’s rather counterintuitive with one hand on the rope, body crouched on the board, and the other hand held up in front of your face, they’re experimented with different postures and determined that this odd configuration allows for the most speed and the fewest crashes. Technically our hands shouldn’t touch the ground at all, we are to use our feet for braking but they have also learned through experience that there’s no overcoming the instinct that kicks in when you start flying down the mountain to fling your free hand behind you to stop, thus the gloves. She says, “New rule today, the girls are going first,” she’s afraid that if we see the guys flying down the mountain we’ll never get on the boards, she is particularly convinced that I am going to be the problem and who can blame her, but I am strangely sanguine about this part of the experience. It’s like skiing, really, and I ski sometimes, not well but I do it, and even easier because I will be sitting down it is all about getting my center of gravity as low as possible and there are no cliff edges to fly off or trees to run into so I’m pretty comfortable with this.

Leia, on the other hand, while fine going up the mountain is terrified of going down. We do some practice runs, baby steps, and we decide that instead of one of us going first we will go down together, I wish we could ride together or I could hold her hand on the way down but that’s not possible on these sleds, I have some strength to give back here but no method to share it, she’s going to have to do it alone.

We push off and head down the slope simultaneously, and it’s actually both easy and underwhelming, I start slow and then try to build up some speed but as soon as I start moving with any kind of quickness I shift my weight, or something, the whole caboodle goes awry and I get dumped on the gravel, pick myself up and start down again trying to build momentum for that final sharp drop but damn butt in gravel again, I get down the mountain just fine but it wasn’t terribly thrilling, just sort of thrilling. Leia is still slowly winding her way down the slope, going slow slow slow on purpose and I can hear the occasional yelp of frightened delight, she eventually slides to a halt at the bottom and we regroup to watch the boys bullet down, crash landing with whoops of adrenaline. Last of all our guide comes down, she’s not on a sled but runs down the slope, just barely keeping her heels before her head. We have surfed the volcano and successfully outrun the clouds, the sun is setting now and we are all laughing together now and anticipating the mojitos that await us back at the hostel, clamber out of our jumpsuits and back into the truck and back through the bucolic landscape that we just saw from the top of the mountain, and a full moon is rising between the trees overhanging the road and the air is warm and soft and it is a perfect, perfect, beautiful night.

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.

Leaving Utila, Honduras (Dec 2008)

Today is the culmination of the month that I have been on this island. I was meant to leave a week ago, I had planned to finish my dive course and then head back to the mainland to visit Copan for a couple of days before flying back to New York, but my dive course took longer than expected, and a few folks advised me that Copan was definitely missable if I’d already seen Tikal, which I have, and it is easy to stay here on this relaxed tropical island paradise microcosm. That was a few days ago, and then I was going to leave yesterday, I had sorted out all the ferry and bus schedules and determined that I would absolutely have to leave no later than yesterday on the afternoon ferry in order to catch the bus in La Ceiba to San Pedro Sula and then find some hostel to spend the night at before my flight leaves the day after, it is cutting it too close otherwise and I know Central American buses aren’t that reliable.

But then there are two dives scheduled tomorrow for the North Side and I’ve been wanting to dive the North Side since I arrived, if I’d managed to finish my class earlier then I would have gone last week but I didn’t, so we pull out the ferry schedules again and determine that if everything goes perfectly and the boat gets back on time that I can catch the afternoon ferry today but it will be one hell of a hustle but I should get to San Pedro Sula in time. So that is the plan, and I will have my last day of diving and then begin the re-entry with public bus transit across the chaotic mainland to a dangerous major city where I will arrive at night, that is the new plan I have bought myself a few more hours on the island but then when I add up all the costs of ferry, taxi, bus, taxi, hostel, taxi to airport it is only a few dollars shy of the plane fare if I take the morning plane tomorrow at six, but sometimes the flight gets cancelled and if it is I am really stuck and there is no way I’d make my flight but the weather is clear, and the island is idyllic and I don’t want to leave. I book my seat on the morning plane for tomorrow and voila I have bought myself a whole day longer here.

The boat is leaving early, at 7am. I pack up my backpack and leave the key to my apartment on the table, I won’t be coming back here tonight, and walk down the main street to my dive shop, I’ll leave the bag there and then move over to the dorm this afternoon. There’s no one here, I’m the early bird and I sit down on the porch swing to wait, I want this day to be perfect, it has to be perfect it is the last day of paradise for me and I have made a lot of possibly stupid choices to gain this experience for myself and today is the payload. The divemaster, Etienne, arrives, he is shaking sleep out as he unlocks the shop and a little concerned, too, because nobody is back by the dock, and most of the staff of Utila Water Sports signed up for this so if they are not here what does that say about the dive?

We can only go to the North Side if the weather is clear and there was an intense rain shower at around 6am, I am worried that maybe Kate rolled over in bed, opened an eye to the weather and made the call to cancel the boat. More divers show up but no staff, and Etienne can’t reach anyone so we are all waiting at the dock, we assemble our gear in optimism and all agree that the weather is definitely clear enough now and the captain will come, the captain will come, the captain has to come I need today.

Kerry, our captain for today, putt putts into the lagoon dock on a dinghy, ties up and steps onto the dock. We are on, we are going, we are not going to settle for some lesser dive today and maybe we will even see a whale shark, a dive boat saw one two days ago even though it’s not the season and maybe we will too, after all it is my last day here and the cosmos should definitely be aware of that and reward me with a whale shark.

Etienne has finally heard from the staff, they are all viciously hung over, they just stopped drinking an hour or two ago so the boat has a little more room on it than we expected although still a respectable group, enough to make it worthwhile to burn the gas necessary to get around the island. There are a couple of middle-aged guys I haven’t met before, Barry who seems to be pretty obnoxious actually and the others are making quiet snide remarks about him behind his back, apparently he burns his air really quickly and tends to shove his mask up on his forehead, the hallmark of a snorkeler which is to say the hallmark of a non-diver which is to say the hallmark of someone who doesn’t belong on this boat. I try not to be uncomfortable with the quiet snideness, even though he is kind of grating, because I know that I am equally vulnerable to such mockery, I am the girl who tried to quit her Open Water class three different times, I have been having a lot of trouble with this and am a rank beginner to boot.

Another guy who’s name I forget, he’s much more pleasant to speak with and we chat a bit, about where we’re from and where we’re going and where we’ve been and what we did there, this is the conversation I have over and over and over it is the baseline conversation amongst backpackers and travelers. Kim has joined us, whose name is not actually Kim but she is using it as her travel name since people have trouble pronouncing her given name, Maayan. I am lucky that way, there are versions of my name in almost every language so sometimes I am Kate and sometimes I am Katerina and on occasion Katya.

So me, and Kim, and Etienne and Barry and the guy who’s name I can’t remember, and then Elly and her husband whose name I also can’t remember, they are an older British couple and both of their kids are divemasters here on Utila so they come down to visit, and dive, they are both divemasters too, and party of course, both of them are at least 30 years older than I am and they party harder than I do by a long shot. And Kerry, of course, the captain, also middle-aged and a local, he’s from here and has the lush accented English to show it. It was a welcome surprise to me, that English is the dominant language on this island rather than Spanish, and one of the reasons I was so reluctant to head for the mainland and travel alone with my crappy Spanish.

The boat is loaded, all of our equipment and air tanks and wetsuits and fins and masks and weights are in and we motor out of the lagoon, under the bridge and around to the north. The clouds have cleared almost entirely and I am leaning around the side of the boat to get the wind in my face and smell the salt spray, the air is the temperature of warm bathwater which is to say perfectly perfect, and look! Kim has spotted a rainbow, Kim is fantastic at spotting things, she is the one who saw the turtle the other day and the moray eel, too. This is going to be a perfect day.

At our first dive site and we suit up, Etienne is going to dive with Kim and I since we are only rated to 60 feet, the others will go in a separate group. I’ve assembled all my equipment on the tank already, I did that at the dock, buckling the vest onto the tank and then attaching the regulator and testing the air and making sure I have 3000 psi in the tank. I sit down in front of my tank, strap on the vest and then slowly stand up, have to go straight and lift all the weight of the tank and gear with thighs and knees and this is a little dicey because I banged the crap out of my knee a couple of days ago but it is fine now. I am moving very carefully on the boat now, because I’m top heavy and not that there are lots of waves or anything but I’m really good at falling down and with all the weight settled oddly on my back it will be even easier, I should almost just throw myself down on the deck of the boat and get it over with. I sit down on the center bench, my tank slamming down behind me, so that I can put on my fins and mask. It is poor etiquette to do so, which I know, and would certainly be worthy of a snide remark or two. Proper dive boat etiquette is that I should sit on the edge of the boat, with the tank hanging over into the air, and put on my fins and mask there just before rolling off backwards, but I just know that if I do that I will go flailing into the water before I’m ready, pulled over by the tank, and I’d rather knowingly breach boat etiquette. Yes, I am a rank beginner and I barely made it through my dive class and everyone on this boat knows it so I really don’t see the point in pretending otherwise.

Fins are on, mask is on, and I hate this part when my mask is on but I’m not yet in the water, I automatically try to breathe through my nose and it sucks all the air out of the mask and I feel like I’m suffocating, it comes naturally when I’m in the water but not out here in the air and I really want to just shove the mask up on my forehead but snorkelers do that not divers. I put the regulator in my mouth and begin the Vader-esque breathing, deep deep breaths and I use my air really fast because of it but this is such a strange thing to me that it’s more important that I take these deep, calming breaths, reassuring myself with every blast of oxygen that I am breathing, that’s more important than a longer dive. I cross my legs below the knees, make sure my vest is inflated, left hand on my weight belt, right hand pressed against my mask and reg to make sure I don’t lose them as a I tumble backwards into the water letting the weight of the tank carry me backwards.

I somersault completely in the water under the boat and then rise to the surface again, signal the captain that I’m ok with a fist touching the top of my head. Etienne is in the water already, and so is Kim, the other dive group is off and away in a different direction. We give the ok signal and then Etienne turns his thumb down, I hold up the air valve on the vest and slowly, very slowly release air. I’m wearing 12 pounds of weights on my belt to counter my buoyancy, Etienne wanted to weight me a little more because I descend slowly but that is on purpose, the first training dive that went so badly started off so badly because I dropped like a rock and I need to stay in control of this. The water is rising over my face, over the regulator and I’m officially breathing underwater now, rising up over my mask and inevitable that a little water leaks in before I get all the way under, once I’m in the pressure of the water around me keeps the seal intact but I will have a little saltwater sloshing around inside the whole time. Going down, slowly, and Etienne is watching me carefully to make sure I’m ok, I’m officially certified but he is aware that I have panicked underwater before. A few feet down and then hold my nose, blow air out to pop my ears and equalize the pressure. About twenty feet down and then he turns to lead us on our dive, and swims to the left. We follow, Kim and I, we are buddies which means we need to stay always in sight of each other which is more difficult than you might imagine with more than half of your peripheral vision cut off by the sides of the mask, she could be right next to me and I couldn’t see her and vice versa. They are a little ahead of me and suddenly it happens, I start choking my throat has seized up and I can’t breathe.

I grab Kim’s fin so that she knows I’m having a problem, she turns and sees and then grabs Etienne. I am pushing the purge button on my reg, this shoots air into my lungs with no cooperation on my part and this is the solution we found and the only reason I am diving now, that I can just dispense air when my body refuses to breathe. Etienne is worried, he is gesturing to make sure I don’t forget the purge button and shoot to the surface, I know and I’m fine, I stopped them just because in case I couldn’t solve the problem they should be there and they are. I’m breathing again, my airways are open, and I take a few more of those deep, calming breaths to make sure my body is no longer rejecting this air and we go on.

It’s dark, down here; we can see, but not very well, and we are swimming along a black coral wall dropping off endlessly, swimming along looking for interesting marine life there among the coral and I barrel roll to look the other way, that little bit of saltwater sloshes in my eyes and tries to go up my nose stinging a little, lazily looking up to the surface and seeing my air bubbles over me and then out into the darkening deepness where the reef falls off. That’s where we’d see a whale shark, if we saw one, and I wonder what it would be like to look into that endless water and see a fish the size of a building looming out of it. Anything could be out there, anything at all, and frankly if it were more than 20 feet away I wouldn’t be able to see it, wouldn’t know it was there but I am pretty sure it would know that I am here.

Deep breaths and we haven’t seen anything particularly amazing, some coral and parrot fish and a huge grouper and a school of snapper, and the wrasses which are incredibly common and so no one really cares about them but I love them, schools of bright blue fish the length of my hand swirling in the dappled underwater sunlight. I am not sure that I enjoy diving, the whole time I am kind of waiting for the dive to be over, for the moment I surface and breathe in the open air again, I am hoping we see something that makes it worthwhile and the north side is supposed to have much better marine life, it hasn’t been as fished out and damaged by divers and snorkellers as the more accessible areas around the south side of the island but we are not in luck today on this dive.

I am down to half a tank of air, it is time to turn back so we turn and swim back along the wall, I barrel roll again looking out at trackless, depthless ocean where things can come from any direction and the up/down orientation of gravity that reigns with an iron fist above the water is meaningless here. Water changes depth perception too, everything looks bigger and closer and I have to keep checking my peripherals that I don’t have anymore.

We ascend through a school of wrasses, break surface a few feet from the boat and swim back. I take my fins off and hand them to the captain so I can climb up the ladder, place my foot firmly, grip the rails with both hands and then that first step of the tank breaking free of the water and suddenly gravity is back, up is up and down is down and I step very carefully back into the boat, clinging to poles and railings and swaying my way back to the air tank holders to thunk my tank down. I shrug out of my equipment, and then move it all over to a new tank for the second dive, put my weight belt on the floor and shimmy out of my wetsuit, I’m shivering a little from our dive it’s much colder underwater too. We are still waiting on the other group to come back, Kim, Etienne and I sprawl out on the aft deck in the blazing sunshine. “Life is hard,” Etienne sighs. We solemnly agree.

(to be continued)