Oct. 11
I swear—I wasn’t coming on to the man!
The day has been action-packed, but the best part was about three hours spent drifting in about eight feet of crystal-clear water, breathing through a snorkel tube and gazing in astonishment at the reef world beneath me.
Even on a massage table, there’s no chance of being as relaxed as I am when I snorkel. I suppose astronauts doing space walks might stand a chance, but I bet they’re more stressed than me. With monster flippers on my feet and a tube to the surface, I can float just under the water. Arms and legs hang as they will. Neck arches forward. Core is easy and relaxed. The breathing is audible, so it’s like a meditation.
And what I was seeing! Dozens of tiny fish—maybe two inches long-nibbling a coral and totally ignorant (or uncaring) that they were a shade of neon bright blue never seen save deep within a Korean gaming parlor. Just dazzling.
Or the chrome-yellow and cobalt guys; bigger and shyer. Or the olive-green fish with a rose splotch on its back. Or the purply-blue sea stars, a foot long and looking like they were made of velvet. Not just any velvet; the velvet from a groovy 1970s pad that featured black lights and posters of panthers. We’re talking SERIOUS velvet.
But the relaxation was so immense that I did something I certainly hadn’t planned on: I closed my eyes for a few minutes. I floated in darkness, just so I could listen to my own breathing and feel the waves wash over my back, my butt, my flippers. My god. It was simply dazzling.
I was partnered with a buddy for a little while, but she left soon. The two mermaids who were watching over us—Heather and Kura—didn’t force me to wait for another snorkeler to show up; they could see that I was pretty comfortable in the water. (I don’t say that lightly; it was Heather who said “You look pretty comfortable in the water” in her glorious New Zealand accent and I took it as a compliment so powerful that I’m repeating it here.) Heather and Kura okayed me swimming on my own as long as I stayed close to the boats.
(The Lindblad rig was, as usual, a genius set up. They tied a large square metal plate, coated in rubber or something else non-slip, between two of the Zodiaks (rigid inflatable boats used to ferry us to shore or to the snorkeling platform). We were driven out to the platform in one Zodiak, transferred to one of the ones holding the platform, given a second safety briefing, and then stepped onto the platform to sit down and put on our fins. One end of the platform was out of the water; the other end was about a foot deep. It was like a zero-entry pool. Slipping into the blissful water was easy, graceful, fun.)
For a while, Kura swam with me. She’s an islander; from the Cook Islands, actually, which made me hide a smile since I put a Cook Islander into my Cupid’s Quest series and I know as much about the Cook Islands as any person who read one Google article about the place more than a year ago…
“This is pretty blissful,” I said. “And it’s nice that you guys are letting me swim solo if I stay near the boat.”
“Yeah, Heather and I will watch you. We’re pretty easy. HE’S not, though.” She threw her thumb over her shoulder to the roving Zodiak that was walking sentry duty around our boundaries, where some eagle-eyed guy was watching all the snorkelers. “That’s my uncle,” she added.
“Cool! You’re working with your uncle!”
“Yeah.”
Kura and I got along immediately. This was her first time in the Solomon Islands and she had no problem admitting when she didn’t know something. Her attitude was totally engaging and charming. She was enjoying the day every bit as much as I was.
It wasn’t until much later, at the “Captain’s Welcome” that evening that I learned who her uncle was…
“Wait—your uncle is TUA??”
“Yeah—why?”
Flashback to the first Lindblad cruise I took, to Antarctica. Tua was the Lindblad expert in traditional navigation. His talks about how he navigates without GPS or mechanical instruments was so dazzling and impressive that I wrote him into a book.
I wrote him into the Cupid’s Quest series about a guy from the Cook Islands. TUA WAS THE INSPIRATION FOR LUKE, the magnificent hero of book three in that series.
OH MY GOD. I have always hoped that Tua would never stumble across the book, for two reasons. First, because Luke’s knowledge of traditional navigation did NOT come from Tua or any other expert; it came from the aforementioned Google. So I didn’t want to know just how painfully wrong I’d been.
And secondly, the book is majorly dirty; Luke has sex with Our Heroine. He has a lot of sex with Our Heroine. Graphic, raw sex. And there was only one person I’d ever met from the Cook Islands. So who else would an interested party assume was my inspiration?
I swear: I don’t have designs on Tua’s body!
That’s not the kind of thing you can just walk up to someone and blurt out…
Anyway, I’ve totally bonded with Kura, who wants to read the Cupid’s Quest books. I sent her the links to the ARC versions so she doesn’t have to buy them, but she’s promised to explain to Tua that I’m not lying in wait to ankle-tie him and drag him off to my cave…
WHICH, happily, is the upgraded cabin on the fifth deck! I’m so pleased! It’s a strangely shaped cabin but it suits me to a T. Big windows! The guy who had this cabin wanted a bigger bed and I wanted bigger windows; we worked it out that we’d swap, and the amazing hotel manager, Rebecca, gave us the thumbs up. Yay!
The day was so crowded; I’m sure if I wasn’t so tired, I’d remember them and wax rhapsodic. Alas, my eyes are closing on me and that’s a sign I must obey. Tomorrow’s snorkeling is what they call a drift snorkel. We’ll be swimming in a part of the ocean with a pretty strong current so the boat lets us off in one spot and follows us as we drift effortlessly along; then we get back in via a “ladder” that’s really more of a staircase. Twig asked the expedition leader, Lyle, if it would be a good first snorkeling experience for Harry and Lyle thought it might not be a good one. “This is a deep-water snorkel,” he said. “Maybe Harry would prefer to start his snorkeling in Vanuatu.” Oooh!! A deep-water snorkel! What new things will we see tomorrow?!
My swim tunic and leggings over my bathing suit were a DREAM. I loaded up with the special reef-friendly sunblock I bought (we all did; it’s so thick that for a. while the entire passenger list looked like Queen Elizabeth I who painted her face with lead to look paler…but I only had to do my face and neck and my hands; everything else was covered. It was fantastic. A total fucking success.
No photos because I don’t have a waterproof camera…but you’ve got this ever-so-attractive one of me in my cabin sporting that high-fashion mask. Hard to believe anyone would find my attentions to be unwanted, huh?! Should have seen me do the Baby Elephant Walk in the flippers!
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