Drenched

It's been pouring in Costa Rica and everything is wet
the clothes won't dry, pages from the books are limpidly damp
I too am damp and honestly pretty yucky at the moment
Not to mention smelly, for as much as one tries to shower here
inevitable rainspells and high humidity often mean you smell
less than lucious within minutes of your hard earned shower.

It is exciting to find things that you need here,
it is like finding prized needles in haystacks...
so far the hunt has involved,
The Bolivian and Brasilian Embassies for my visas,
- all done with every ounce of 5 days of Spanish classes
Mosquito netting, neosporin in powder form,
electrical tape and a 4GB memory card -
all testimonies to an ill-planned trip and
unexpected travel needs.

Looking back, I barely believe where I've been
and where I'm going. To think I was in Cuba 2 weeks ago,
desperately finding my way around in a Spanish speaking world.
and that now I've been surfing for a week and a half,
and chatting to my neighbour about her day and her family in a newly adopted language.
still blows my mind.

This is all rather surreal and I struggle for words or photos to capture the spirit of this trip. Except I know I never will be able to, because travels of this magnitude are a very personal education of the mind and soul, a horrible meeting of yourself for the longest stretches of time, and beautiful meetings with other kindred travelers who too, have left home, braving cold showers and bunk beds and manic mosquitoes, to see a world beyond their own,
beyond the sterile tour buses and immaculately planned intinaries.

It is all quite fascinating - meeting other crazies from all over the world, who for brief moments in time, share tables, rooms and stories, and the select few who will share their stories with us for the rest of our lives.

Time without consequence

Missing Mirrors

If Maui was about feeling at home in my skin,
Then Andros Island was about the beauty of inconvenience

I had the luxury of riding in many cars
Some without mirrors, some right hand drives, other left hand drives,
And one which had to be jumped into half a block from home because there was a swarm of bees buzzing around the drivers’ side door.
The van I drove to pick the girls up had half a key stuck in the ignition and
a power seat that was jammed, nothing a simple pillow thrown behind me wouldn’t fix

The day I picked up Ebony from her work place, the car ran out of gas
And though we were at a gas station, the lady at the grocery store kindly informed us that they had gas, but the pump was not working.
We sat in the van waiting, not really minding much,
for help from family, which came in the form of uncle Tibby, who drove half the island with a canister of gas, and after topping up the van, drove off again with barely a word, suggesting that this was a rather routine occurrence.
We later found out that the gas pipe was leaking, draining the car of gas.

The internet had been down for 2 weeks,
kocked out by a storm
In order to plan the next leg of my trip Ebony, Shiraz and I drove 20 minutes to the airport almost daily, armed with a laptop and no extra battery.
We roasted in a van in the hot Bahamian sun - squatters in a parking lot shamelessly calling the Western Airlines Terminal Andro’s latest internet café for an hour at a time.
At home, there was dial-up – as long as the phone lines were up – and a phone book
Despite all of the seeming inconveniences, a lot of things got done,
The only difference, other than the speed,
Was the noticeable absence of stress I was more accustomed to.

I started to wonder if my suspicions had always been true, that less is more.
I wondered if we weren’t distracted by a million events in a day,
Constantly pushing ourselves to work at peak efficiency,
worried if we made it on time to 3 appointments a day,
when 1 would have been enough to satisfy
Would we trade the life packed to its gills with activities, striving perfection in order to achieve our schedues’fulfillment,
for one with a little less - but as I’m starting to see - one that is infinitely richer.

My mind drifts back to the dish washer in San Francisco
Where Katya commented, almost reading my mind,
That when you are living life out so loud,
You really don’t need a dishwasher in your life to keep you happy.

Feeling Loved.. in Maui

"I'm so sad you're leaving, I miss you already."
Parting shots in between hugs outside of Borders,
where Simone and I had been hanging out
dreaming dreams, both big and little, in the travel section
"Morocco... India.. Tahiti.. Let's go there!"
girlishly laughing while flipping through Fodders, Lonely Planet and Timeout
The travel section had never been so much fun

The only thing that makes partings like this bearable
is the knowledge that we wouldn't have met
if I hadn't similarly sad partings from other special people
in a city I would soon set foot in 2 days from now

Maui Rain

Darryl closing up the day at Kanaha - photo by Catherine

Today's downpour was a welcome change from the frantic scramble to hit the beach
It is amazing how efficient one can be when not utterly distracted by the conditions of the ocean
It's 11am and I've...
walked to 3 beaches, talked to 2 people on the phone,
painted 3 paintings and worked on a new approach to the experimental food bar
This might prove to be one of my most enjoyable days yet.
Given that the spoils of yesterday are still relatively fresh in my mind.
Paradise, rain or shine, would still be paradise,
now that I realize that paradise is much more a state of mind than anything else.

That gut feeling

We stood in the parking lot talking about boards
the sun had set a while back after ushering us back to shore with a pompous pink and blue rush of clouds
Some days there were rainbows while we, addicts of the ocean played in the waves
but today it was simply another magnificent sunset to close the day

But back to the boards, we spoke of finding just the right board to suit my frame
and stopped short after a few minutes of entertaining our imagination,
by the reality that I was going to be leaving in 7 days.
"And why are you leaving?"
"Because I need to get to Sydney."
Thoughts of intense sunburns, jelly fish and great whites made windsurfing there suddenly pale in comparison to the easy windsurfing I'd enjoyed for the past 2 months here.

The ache involved with following a calling, a gut feeling
intertwined with the desire to travel
and the pain of leaving new found spaces and friends
is something that I guess will be part of my life
until I make my way to a sun burnt country
which even as I look over with google maps,
is starting to feel strangely like home

serious hunger...

"She's what?!"
"Planting the tail of the board for her loops."
"No ****ing way..."

If the beauty of Helen of Troy launched a thousand ships,
then the audacity of the new girl on the beach landing her forward loops
was enough to send at least 2 grown men to try rework theirs.

Gido got 4 loops today and was so grateful for my instructional help and provocation that he decided to help rescue my board and rig which had woefully gone far far downwind to the lair of kite beach.

"I don't know why I want to do these tricks so badly." I lamented to Darryl after the long barefoot walk back from kite beach, the price paid for looking for good ramps to jump off far downwind as the wind declined towards the end of the day.

"It's because you're good, you should be learning them."
The words stunned me, I'd never really thought I was good at this.
Windsurfing was always that "evil thing" that took me away from time spent with family and friends, endless moments of angst while trying to stay off the water to honor time spent with people I cared about.
That past-time that caused my parents endless grief for skin accustomed to brown hues in a fair skin worshiping society

Maybe I was really good at this, maybe this was the time to find out
how far my skills would go if I threw guilt off to the wind,
believed in the promises of sunscreen and ate as many antioxidant blueberries as I could afford,
and allowed myself to entertain the possibility that this was a talent God had given me.
I'd be a fool to hold myself back from developing it now that I'd found it.

"You're only here for 2 more weeks, I think your friends here would understand if you couldn't meet during certain times of the day since you came here to windsurf."
Amen to that Daryl. I can't deny how ridiculously happy being on the water nailing tricks makes me.
Tours to upcountry and Haleakala would have to take a back seat for a moment.

To answer a self posed question, why do you do this thing?
Because I love it, and because I can.
and maybe most of all, because it brings God joy when his creation does what it was created to do.
loop on in joy...

Work in Progress

What gives you a headache for 2 days
is compelling enough to make you sleep for most of those days
and keeps you off the water?
2 straight days of the wrong technique of forward looping
Good incentive to nail my landing soon if I'm going to enjoy
the rest of my stay here.
Water never felt so solid