Looking for Paradise

 

When I was much younger, I lived for a brief time in southern Mexico near the border of Guatemala. At that time, it was a very small, desolate seaside community which was reached by a four-hour bumpy bus ride from Acapulco or an even bumpier two-engine prop job plane ride over the mountains from Oaxaca. There were only two cars in the village – an older forest green jeep with running rust and mismatched tires owned by the local rico playboy, also known as the governor’s son, and an even older tarnished sedan owned by the local Departamento de Policia de Puerto Escondido. Most of the children ran barefoot through the streets, girls in embroidered muslin dresses brushing their knees and boys in khaki shorts passed down from older siblings or cousins. You didn’t know who they belonged to, and it really didn’t matter since everyone was responsible for everyone’s children, whether it meant giving them a hug and an afternoon snack or shaking a finger and shooing them away from the chickens they were chasing. Once a week the sleepy town awakened to find a hustle of activity as the Mercado came to town, highlighting vendors from all over the countryside selling fruits and vegetables, clothing and string bags, chickens both live and dead, jewelry, sundries, and just about anything else you could imagine. It was a happy, almost carefree, innocent time unencumbered by the modern conveniences which “make our life easier.”

I went looking for another glimpse of this simple life in the islands of the central Caribbean recently. After a long and exhausting flight from the U.S. and a quick stop at a local store for provisions, I boarded a catamaran for a week’s sail through the numerous islands scattered like freckles on the turquoise sea.

The wind was brisk and the sunshine warm as I sailed through the clear water. I stopped in Tortola to clear British customs and was greeted with the pleasant articulation of the crisply uniformed British agents lounging in their air-conditioned office. Although still deeply entrenched in civilization, the unfamiliar speech resonated as a promise of more exotic locales to come.

Heading out to sea once again, I entered a small cove and dropped anchor to spend the remainder of the day. There was a crystal white beach outlining the shore and a small dock enticing visitors to a ramshackle building touting the battered sign “Pirate’s Bight” in sun-bleached letters. After getting everything on the boat squared away for the night, I leapt into the water for a snorkel and swim. The clarity of the water and the sheer variety of sea life made my heart soar as I edged my way through walls of bait fish and schools of hungry tarpon. As the sun dipped lower, I reluctantly swam back to the boat and rinsed the sticky saltwater from my body. I let the warm setting sun dry my body and then headed below to change for dinner.

Rowing over to the dock in my dinghy, I noticed that quite a few more boats had invaded my quiet cove. I guess my little attempt at a forgotten piece of paradise had not gone unnoticed by others. Duh – there was a small restaurant here after all, catering to those voyagers looking for a piece of paradise but not wanting to get too far away from their afternoon cocktails and chef-prepared lobster. Still, there was a quaintness to the place, and I docked my little boat and trudged through the crystalline sand towards the tattered restaurant. After perusing the menu, I ordered the obligatory Painkiller and a more-than-adequate dinner of fresh local fish, island rice with peas, and Caribbean black beans. Then here they came – the cacophony of woo-woo girls already in full drunken swing from the rum punch on the party boat.  As if beckoned by the setting of the sun and the illumination of the little restaurant, they came like mosquitos drawn to a warm body. And the peace of my little cove ended.

A few more days of sailing and mooring in similar coves gave me a much-needed thrill and break from my day-to-day reality, but I still felt that I had not ventured far enough out of the norm. I pulled into St. John for a brief re-provisioning and took a few minutes to sample this island’s coffee. As I sat there outside the waterfront café and looked over a manicured park complete with tables and benches, I heard the shouting of a drunken soul swinging a half empty bottle of vodka. As it was only ten in the morning, I took a moment to pay closer attention to what he was saying as I tried to figure out why anyone would spend their time on a beautiful Caribbean Island smashed to the gills. He kept shouting, “I did it. I made it here. I did what I had to do and I made it.” Yes, he had made it here, but for some reason he was still trying to escape his reality. The wastefulness of it all saddened me, and I made my way back to the boat and tried to sail away the image he left in my mind.

The next morning, I set sail again in another attempt to see the real island world. As I looked around, many boats were already on the water sailing with me. I suddenly realized that we were all after the same thing – an escape from the everyday world into a seemingly more simple, more real time which we imagined came with peace and tranquility. The problem was, the vast numbers of people on this quest created the very situation we were trying to escape from – noisy bars and restaurants, the constant ringing of cell phones and one-sided conversations, the bright lights interrupting the astral display above us. And all of us knew that we played a part in this disruption, so each of us carried a glimpse of guilt behind the smiles that were plastered on our faces and pretended this was really what we wanted all along.

I became withdrawn from my fellow travelers, trying to determine if I was missing something, if I was happy to still be so in-touch with the rest of the world, if the non-tourist existence I so longed to see was gone forever or just on a different path. The sense of unease prevailed throughout the morning until a sudden and severe squall caused us to have to tuck into a small lagoon and drop the hook.

The squall soon passed, and I came outside to assess my surroundings. This was not a tourist spot, for sure. There were no restaurants or shops, no party boats. A few small cottages of faded pastel dotted the countryside. There were several small children splashing and chasing a happy mongrel dog at the shore’s edge. A line of goats picked their way over the rocky terrain, babies jumping playfully, nanny and Billy goats focused on the trail with heads hanging low. The only road was made of dirt and laced with potholes as it wound up the mountain.

I watched a man slowly pick up a stack of palm leaves. He shuffled over to a small structure framed with hand-chopped tree branches and began to methodically tie the palm leaves to the top, one-by-one. There was absolutely no urgency to his actions and when he completed the stack, he shuffled back to gather more, pausing for a moment to gaze at our boat and raise a hand in welcome. This gentle man was completely involved in the moments of his life. I thought of how the workers back home attack the trees with a mindless fury, rushing from one chore to the next, and speeding their way through life. How much do we miss around us in our haste to keep moving? What must it be like to have nothing you must do except tend to the task at hand?

With these thoughts in mind, I swam to the shore and began to follow a goat-trail over a small hill by the sea. At the bottom of the trail I saw a bubbly pool, created by the foaming waves that crashed over and through the rocky enclosure. I glided into the warm water and let the waves and bubbles roll and churn over me, laughing with each new surge. I realized with joy that I had absolutely no place else I needed to be, nothing else I needed to do at that moment except relish the bubbly pool.

Satiated and saturated, I headed back to the boat. My heart was light and there was a smile on my face as I imagined how good a hot shower was going to feel and a cold drink was going to taste at my hotel tonight.  – Donna Holmes, Staff Writer