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All It Takes To Make Me Happy!

Writer's picture: Pru WarrenPru Warren

Oct. 17 (Thursday. I have to write out the day of the week because that is my ONLY frame of reference. That and my phone alarm rang a few days ago to remind me to take out the garbage for trash night, which was not going to happen from Espiritu Santo.)



 That’s a photo of the end of last night’s sunset. But this is about today…

 

YAY! Water!

 

We snorkeled off the island of Moso, where we did not set foot on land. No tribal people dressed in traditional outfits to amaze the tourists—just a seriously long stretch of coral reef and five to thirty feet of glorious, cool, clear water.

 

The waves were too rough for the fabulous diving platform. We headed out on Zodiaks; by chance Twig and I were on a boat driven by Tua and with Kura (o lovely Kura!) as our snorkel leader. We bombed our way across enthusiastic waves and laughed as we rapidly became drenched in sea spray long before slipping under the surface. The current was strong, so the idea was to get well ahead of the Orion. Then we would drift with the waves and Tua would follow in the boat. As soon as anyone got tired or wanted to get out, they would signal for him and he’d motor over and pick them up. We drifted for almost two hours—it was bliss.

 

Twig and Harry loaned me their underwater camera, which I ran out of batteries almost immediately, not realizing that I’d used a setting that left the lights on the front of the camera continuously. But while it was still working, Trish spotted a ray lying flat on the sand. I maybe got a picture; then Kura offered to take the camera to get a better shot. Down she went. Cool! The ray got spooked and “flew” off, and that was as lovely as watching it lie still on the white sand.

 

OH SHIT forgot to say!! Tua apparently saw a motherfucking dugong as we entered the water!! I mean, shit! Talk about your charismatic megafauna! We did not see it, and I hate to feel disappointed because all the things we saw were so glorious—but the South Pacific version of a manatee?? They’re said to be much larger than the manatee. I WANT TO SEE THAT!

 

Still, I had to be content with drifting along, pulled up and then down by the waves that no longer felt oversized. (I can hear it in my snorkel when some water has crested the top and is resting at the bottom of the J shape. I inhale slowly and deeply and then exhale hard, making an involuntary “Tuh!” sound and the water jets out the tube and lands on someone else’s back, if they’re too close. It’s deeply satisfying.)

 

Kura was really good about pointing out things she saw. In her flare orange “staff” swim shirt, she’d swim down ten or fifteen feet and point at something. We’d gather around and wait for her to resurface. “What did you see??”

 

The answer was often entertainingly anticlimactic. “Sea cucumber! Isn’t it beautiful?!” A sea cucumber serves a massively important purpose in the coral reef; it cleans the sand. I mean, really cleans it. Think of a sea cucumber as a marine Roomba. But they aren’t exactly lovely. In fact they look like six or eight inches of slug. Or a snail without its shell. Hardly something you’d wish the camera battery was still working for…

 

…until she found a pineapple sea cucumber, which was two, maybe three feet long and covered in short dark spikes, and that at least was something to be stored in long-term memory for use in some far distant nightmare. Gross. And very cool.

 

Kura dove down again and pointed at a curved blob under overhanging coral. We gathered and peered at the blob. “Is it an octopus?” I asked when she surfaced again.

 

“No—it’s a, how do you, I don’t…um, a dollar?”

 

“A sand dollar?” Graham asked. (Graham and her partner Anne are my new best friends; I adore them.)

 

“Yes!  A sand dollar!”

 

Hold on for a flashback: In the Prudence history are two parents who loved long walks on the beach. Fucking LOVED it. Often two of their three daughters would follow along, while the third, very pale daughter huddled in the shade of the lone umbrella and hoped that the books she’d packed in would last until the end of the day.

 

When they would finally return, my father occasionally held in his Daddy hand a fragile disk of sand, friable and prone to breaking.  It would have five little divots along the top arranged in a star shape. “What is it?” I’d ask.

 

“Sand dollar,” he’d say. “A good one, too. Look how big.” His best finds would cover the palm of his hand.

 

The sand dollar Kura was pointing to was significantly bigger than my head and as round as if someone had stuffed a yellow-gold, seriously oversized loaf of sourdough bread under a ledge. “That’s a sand dollar?” I questioned. “That huge thing?”

 

“Yep,” Kura said laughing. “That’s a seriously huge sand dollar!”

 

I’ll say.

 

Later she found a smaller one—this one maybe a LITTLE smaller than my head—and unlike the massive one that she was unable to bulge, the smaller one could be lifted from the reef. She brought it to the surface so we could touch it, admire it, be dazzled by it. It was a dusty red, and quite hard to the touch. It felt like a really huge M&M with dimples all over its skin, which is to say I got the sense that it had a hard shell but was vulnerable inside. When she turned it over, damned if there weren’t the same five divots in the star pattern. Holy crap—is that not amazing?

 

Well it was to me!

 

We swam over the beautiful black sea stars that I’ve fallen in love with; damn my stupidity for killing the camera’s battery! I saw many of my favorite fishes plus some new stunning examples. One very large parrotfish-like charmer whose coloration was like particularly vivid tie-dye all over…and then the darker version. More black in THAT vat of tie-dye.

 

Kura swam down again like a mermaid, pointing with delight at…what? What is it?

 

“Do you see that sea star? I’ve never seen one like that!”

 

Well, it was a pink sea star. It looked like every sea star you’ve ever seen in a book. Her white-toothed grin was beaming out. I had to shrug and take pleasure in her excitement. Kura is so beautiful and kind; how can I mock my girl-crush for being so excited about a starfish?!

 

I did notice that the pink star fish liked to hang out next to beige corals. I think it had a color sense, and was dressing for autumn business casual. Not like those hippie tie-dye fish. Psht. The pink starfish was only waiting for us to swim on in order to pull on its simple single strand of pearls and slip into some sensible low-heeled pumps suitable for the work week.

 

Bliss. I love snorkeling.

 

Twig has had horrible mask issues. The mask that served her well on the first day developed a gushing Niagara of a leak on the second day (“Yep,” said Jeff the snorkel leader that day, “this happens.”) and her mask today simply didn’t fit her right. She would ignore the water flowing in until it got to her eyeballs and then she’d have to clear her mask…yeah. I guess you would! Her snorkeling karma hasn’t been as good as it should have been, so we’re both really hoping we’ll be able to get one more snorkeling in when we get to New Caledonia tomorrow.

 

The afternoon was spent napping, which was blissful. I opened my eyes long enough to snap a lazy photo of fat clouds hiding the brilliant light behind them.



And I went to hear the Nat Geo guy, Kennedy, read from his memoire of being a photographer for what he calls “the yellow border.” (Nat Geo.) Twig and Harry received an invitation to sit at his table tonight for dinner but I didn’t, so I’m going to see if I can glom on to Graham and Anne… Must go see if I can find them now at the evening’s recap before dinner.

 

And I need to get Harry to download the three silly photos I took today so this post can have SOME images!

 

I’m back from dinner. No photos, because Twig and Harry were invited (by written invitation!) to have dinner with Kennedy the Nat Geo writer/photographer at his table and I WAS NOT! Oh the insult! My point is—they’re still sitting at dinner while I, happily, had a wonderful dinner with Graham and Anne (my new absolute besties) and charming Heather the Lindblad guide and we all finished our desserts and put down our forks and spoons and got the hell out of there, delighting in the early retirement—so take THAT, Kennedy and your formal invitations!

 

But I couldn’t get Harry to download the three inept photos from the reef, so all I have for today is a series of sky photos—and this one:



 This is the lounge, where we have a recap of the day each evening, plus a look ahead at the next day. It is also the site of a small triumph for me tonight! When we get to the Bay of Islands in New Zealand (last day of the cruise before reaching Aukland the next day), we will get to tour the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, where the Maori and the New Zealanders finally made peace. It’s considered sacred ground, and Tua explained to us that there would be a ceremony. The leader would welcome us and then the local people would sing for us.

 

Tua said that they won’t expect it, but he will step forward at that point and thank them—and then he wanted all of us to sing a song to them. He and his niece Kura have been teaching us a simple song in Maori, and each evening we sing it in a call-and-response style. Kura sings the first line and we sing it back, then she sings the next line.

 

The second night we practiced this, I videoed Kura singing it, so I was able to learn the song. (Eight lines, five notes total, extremely simple.) The words were provided to us, so I memorized them:

 

E toru nga mea,

Nga mea nunui

E ki ana

Tetupuna

Tumanako,

Whakapono.

Ko te mea nui,

Ko te aroha.

 

In roughest form it means that there are three things all people care about: Land, community, and knowledge—but above all that is love.

 

It’s very simple and very pretty and of course I heard a harmony. So it came time to practice tonight at the recap and Kura had gotten the time of the recap wrong so she wasn’t there. Tua (who also has a great voice) was willing to lead us, but he couldn’t get going so I sang the opening line. I happened to be sitting next to Heather, the Lindblad guide, who could hear me, and she ran to get me a microphone. So when we did the song a second time, I sang the call part and the others responded, and that was pretty thrilling for me.

 

Kura arrived late and was whispering with Tua while Jeff was giving his talk about photography; she ran the same microphone back to me. “Let’s do it again! Will you come up and sing it with me?”

 

“Sure—but can I harmonize?”

 

“Absolutely!”

 

At the end of the recap, we did it again and I got to harmonize, into a microphone, and it sounded so lovely to my ears. There was much and flattering applause and I was made very, very happy. It’s a hootenanny on the high seas!

 

Hey—I DO have another photo to show you besides the magnificent moon shining on the sea (on the OTHER side of the boat, grr!).



When I got back to my cabin, charming Mervin the cabin steward had made me a little towel elephant AND he’d seen my wonderful bat carving so he hung the bat over the elephant. I find this perfectly adorable. I am at charity with the whole world tonight. All it takes is some harmony and a lot of sea water!



 

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megnapierauthor
29 oct 2024

I LOVE the bat over the elephant! And I love the image/imagined sound of a hootenanny on the other side of the world😍

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