Sometimes Trains

When you’ve been traveling for a long time by ship, sometimes nothing sounds better than a train trip. The world still rocks and rolls in a familiar way, so all of your sea-legs skills still apply, but it’s speeding, or occasionally creeping, across dry land.

This is the fabulous Dunedin railway station, built in 1906 out of basalt and limestone, and considered to be one of the most beautiful in all of New Zealand. It’s the home of what used to be the iconic Taieri Gorge train, now transformed to the somewhat less famous Inlander train due to lack of track maintenance deep in the Taieri Gorge. This train began running in 1907, following what our train conductor described as “our goldrush era, which lasted all of five weeks.”

The train takes you up to Hindon where this old rail car sits as a nostalgic reminder of a moment in time,

back when train cars looked like this. Truth be told, I couldn’t tell you what look the train is sporting today, because each and every car is different. It’s a pretty funny cobbled-together train actually, because one consequence of this hodge-podge of cars is that all of the doors at the ends of the cars are different, which means that all of the door handles are at different heights. And that makes walking between the cars somewhat treacherous, since in some cases the doors open in opposite directions so that you can only get through one door if both doors are open. And one of the cars has Hobbit-height handles, so that you have to bend over to open it. But why was I even walking between cars in the first place?

Because there’s an observation platform on the very end of the train, from which one can take photos without the glare and reflections that come with shooting through the window glass of the lit interior. That’s the theory, but by the time I had figured that out the end of the train had become the front, so that the observation platform was about to be immediately behind the locomotive. I was standing out there waiting when they switched the locomotive around from back to front, a slightly scary but mostly exciting process which looked like this:

The locomotive starts backing toward us,

coming closer, pretty fast,

closer still,

until with a mighty clang the locomotive and our car were coupled. As you can see, this was right under our feet, and the guys who were out there with me and I all cheered and jumped up and down a bit to express our relief at a successful conclusion to the process, one in which we did not get smashed to smithereens by the oncoming locomotive and had a birds-eye view of How Trains Mate.

One of the train crew made a quick check to see that all was well, and we were on our way. A few guys came and went from the platform, taking pictures and then escaping from the noise and soot back into the passenger cars, where, alas, my informal survey revealed that approximately 65% of the passengers were on their phones.

But one British gentleman and I stayed out on the platform the whole time, and he told me that as a boy in England he’d lived near train tracks and had a deep love of trains and rail travel instilled in him from a very early age. Me, I stayed for my late husband Shel and for my son Eric, train lovers both, because I knew that they would have been right there with me if they could have been. Also, I stayed for all womankind, just representing, since not one other woman came out to join us, or even to peek at the passing scenery from our post.

There’s lots of very pretty landscape to be seen from the train, not spectacular when compared to coastal New Zealand, but still nice. The train also passes through lots of tunnels, the longest of which stretches about 1400 feet, which is pretty long when you have your eyes closed and are trying to hold your breath against the flying soot particles. Also, they are very narrow. So narrow that if the train were to get stuck in one even the skinniest person wouldn’t have room to walk out.

This is the best I could manage to show you how narrow they are, because when a huge locomotive fills your whole field of vision you can’t see a tunnel coming up, and also, once I saw it, I kind of automatically ducked and closed my eyes as it rushed toward me.

A highlight of the trip is crossing the Wingatui viaduct, which is 650 feet long and 150 feet high.

So that was a sweet little day on the train through the hills of Otago, along the Taieri River, a journey back in time to pretty much nowhere and then back to Dunedin. A ride for its own sake, not to reach any destination but one to enjoy the simple pleasure of being on a train in the back country, reliving a little bit of rail history.

A Most Beautiful Land

New Zealand never fails to stun me. This was my first visit to the Bay of Islands, and it offered the kind of lazy perfection that I dream of, but don’t always find, when traveling. And when I can bask in beauty knowing it’s for a great cause, my spirit soars.

Soaring is effortless when you’re on a tall ship, in this case the R. Tucker Thompson, whose purpose in life is to benefit the disadvantaged youth of the region. Also, to fund that effort by providing visitors with one of the most fun sails possible. If you’re in the area, I highly recommend taking this trip. As a further inducement they bake fresh scones onboard for tea, and barbecue chicken on the deck for lunch. It’s pretty near perfect.

Normally I’m not at all a kid person, and the sight of several small children on a small tour of just 20 people might cause me to change my plans. But on this day, it turned out to be wonderful.

The ship offered everyone the chance to climb the rigging, and to swing from a rope out over the water and let go, plunging downward at will to a triumphant splashdown. Of course I didn’t do those things myself, nor did some of the other older passengers, but many people did, some of them quite small people. I’m talking about 4 and 5 year olds, perhaps too young to be scared, but having a most excellent adventure on the bay and providing most excellent entertainment for those of us watching them.

I never tire of the unearthly blue of New Zealand’s summer waters

or of its gorgeous cloud formations. I really do think it’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever been, and I’ve been to quite a few.

Waterfront Auckland has its own kind of beauty. It’s a frantically busy port, with thousands of cruise ship and ferry passengers swarming through the hive that makes up the cruise terminal and ferry terminal complex. I wouldn’t mind giving the crowds a miss, but taking a ride on the Waiheke Island ferry lets me indulge in my passion for boat-watching.

The boat traffic in Auckland harbor is a lot like the foot traffic – teeming, in-your-face crowded, constant.

From a ferry’s-eye view, we’re more or less on a series of collision courses,

and we’re not the only ones. These guys really were as close together as they appear to be, but everyone held a steady course and we all emerged unscathed., although I was holding my breath there for a minute.

Arriving at Waiheke Island the world turned from blue to green. I found it to be lovely, with vineyards in every direction. Since I was there for a wine tasting tour, this boded well. It turns out that Waiheke is the warmest of the New Zealand wine growing regions, whereas my palate is more attuned to cool climate wines. I did taste quite a few pleasant wines, but although I had planned to take some on board as an upgrade to the ship’s offerings, in the end I didn’t buy anything.

The first winery we visited, the organic growers Kennedy Point, did provide us with a classic New Zealand pairing of fresh oysters and Sauvignon Blanc. I’d skipped breakfast that morning, so the oyster-slurp broke my fast, and that was a definite first for me.

Another first was our visit to Casita Miro, where they specialize in Spanish-style wines to accompany the dishes in their restaurant. The owners aren’t from Spain, but are in love with all things Spanish, and so they’ve covered the grounds of the winery with mosaics in the style and colors of Gaudi’s structures in Barcelona.

Since there is no municipal water supply on Waiheke Island most of the available water is rainwater collected in cisterns, and all of the grapes are dry-farmed. Having lived and studied winemaking in eastern Washington I’m familiar with dry-farmed viticulture, but always with the possibility of emergency back-up water if absolutely necessary. Dry-farming your vineyards when there’s no chance of being able to water them in a pinch takes a single-minded devotion, akin to the passion required to recreating a little piece of Barcelona 12,000 miles away on a small island in the South Pacific.

I think it’s that spirit, the drive to make life good so far away, down near the bottom of the world, that draws me to New Zealand. That, and the indigenous people, the Maori. More about them in the next post.

Polynesian Eye Candy

I am here to confess, and apologize for, the inescapable fact that my impressions and recollections of French Polynesia are blurry, rain-soaked, dripping with sweat and the damp fragrance of flowers. Also somewhat random, like this part of the trip itself.

Tahiti, Raiatea, Bora Bora, then back to Tahiti. Not to the Cook Islands. Six days at sea, a number of which were rough enough that barf bags proliferated around the ship, although thankfully I never saw anyone using one. When you’re at sea you’re at the mercy of the weather, and the weather has not always been kind recently. But also it’s a matter of taste. Last night someone at my dinner table commented that she was missing the humidity. That’s a sentence that never have I ever heard before, one I’ll never utter myself. But it’s true that a very beautiful part of the world is in a constantly humid state, and here’s a little buffet of images from the beautiful islands of French Polynesia. Just imagine that the sweat is running down into your eyes and soaking your scalp as you view them and you’ll be right where I was.

After the deserted islands we’ve been visiting, pulling into the modern development that is all around the port at Pape’ete Tahiti is quite a shock. It’s a busy port, and since I’m fascinated by maritime traffic as a result of having lived so many years on an island, I was happy to see the activity.

The inter-island ferry zooms past us as we creep into the port,

and this tug guards us as we back infinitely slowly and carefully into our berth.

The Aranui 5 pulls in next to us, and I’m amazed to see that she’s a combo cruise and cargo ship, something I didn’t think existed any longer. Look her up if you’ve ever wanted to cruise on a freighter.

The presidential palace for all of French Polynesia is in Pape’ete, and was built in 2000 in a style that’s reminiscent of the islands’ French colonial past.

Architecturally more interesting is this church built from native natural materials. The dark stones are lava, the white ones are coral, and the mortar holding it all together was made from puverized lava and coral, depending on the desired color.

Here in a public park we saw these fishermen mending a huge net that they said was 500 meters long, which is 1,640 feet. They eat a lot of fish in Tahiti.

Nearby, where a small river flowed into the sea, was an easier catch. Our guide opened a can of sardines, tossed the contents into the water, and voila! eels appeared by the dozens. He could have just caught them with his bare hands, but instead took us to a restaurant for lunch.

This is the poisson cru that is ubiquitous in the islands, raw fish in a sauce of coconut milk and lime juice. It’s the freshest, most refreshing food imaginable on a hot sticky day.

Pape’ete also has a famous market where you can get pretty much any sort of handicraft you might be looking for, as well as some produce and fish.

Unfortunately, the most beautiful things I saw on Tahiti came just after my camera reminded me of what I had forgotten, that it likes to be plugged in and recharged every night. Here I will just have to use my words. Tahiti, for all its development, is a lush paradise of waterfalls, cool grottos nestled in greenery with water gently seeping through the lava above to mist the pools below, and gardens everywhere. It’s very much a tropical paradise as I’d imagined one, and consequently houses that are an hour’s drive outside of town sell for a minimum of $250,000. Gauguin would have fainted.

Here’s some real eye candy for you. In a classic case of burying the lede I’m embedding this photo deep in the post, since the censors and scrapers typically take note of the first and last shots in a post. Also, because it’s a source of a bit of personal shame.

On Raiatea it was pouring rain, preparing for the coming cyclone. Water was monsooning everywhere, and my clothes and hair were running rivulets.

Fortunately our guide Tere was properly dressed for the weather.

Gorgeous, right? So where’s the shame in that? Never fear, I will tell all. The thing was that I hadn’t realized that this excursion would involve jumping out of the boat into the shallow water, several times, and then climbing a vertical ladder to get back aboard. My knee agreed to jump out of the boat with no complaint, but refused to cooperate with climbing back in, which was predictable, if only I’d thought things through in advance. And while it might seem like a dream to find yoursef sitting on Tere’s beautiful shoulder being pushed up a ladder, to me it was a bit of a nightmare. In retrospect I probably should have just enjoyed it to the max, instead of feeling humiliated, but I’m sure you know what I mean. Encounters with perfect bodies don’t happen all that often in my world, and I wish this one had been under better circumstances. Oh well.

We also visited a tiny rum distillery on Raiatea, but the rum was stunningly expensive and not my favorite so I didn’t bring any back to the ship with me.

The upside of all that moisture is that there are flowers everywhere you look. So if you feel that you have to look away from any of the previous images you can always look here. Although I’m guessing that you won’t, and that you will be glad to enjoy this tiny taste of all of the beauty that is French Polynesia.

Stormy Weather

This is a just a brief bulletin from the climate change-informed department of weather. If you’re in a part of the world that’s currently getting inundated by various nefarious weather phenomena, you’ll sympathize. Over here in wherever-we-are, we are too.

Yesterday we were in Raiatea, where it was off-and-on pouring like the word drought had never been invented. Our guide told us that an edict had been issued by local authorities for all of French Polynesia to Stay Out of the Water. Arriving back onboard we learned that we were to sail last night for Bora Bora, as scheduled, then return to Mo’orea for a night, not as scheduled.

We had a change of command in Pape’ete, with Captain Carl leaving us, to rejoin the ship in Dubai (assuming that we ever get to Dubai) and Captain Gianmario taking over until then. Captain Carl was an uninterrupted fount of information and detail, Captain G. much less so. Naturally there was grumbling and muttering and wondering why we were going backwards to Mo’orea, why we had even come to Bora Bora, and all that kind of speculation that could have been assuaged by detail.

Waking this morning to a ship that is swinging pretty regularly around her anchor, we learned that Mo’orea is no longer considered to be a safe harbor since the tropical depression we’re in is deepening and there’s a chance that it will strengthen to 100 mph winds by tomorrow night. So now we’ll head back to Pape’ete this evening, where there’s an actual dock and we won’t be anchored out, and where I guess they could easily get us all off the ship if such a thing were to become necessary.

Meanwhile we’re hanging out in Bora Bora all day, where I am reluctantly but respectfully declining to go ashore. As much as I am curious about the legendary island my tolerance for being soaked to the skin was exceeded by a mile yesterday, which I’ll tell you about soon. For now I just wanted to say that we’re still here, even if we’re not there. We just heard that our next port, Aitutaki in the Cook Islands, is currently deemed to be inaccessible. I’m guessing that we’ll be heading straight to New Zealand when this blows over.

I see that California is getting hit way worse than we are, and other parts of the world are getting extreme weather as well. Try to stay dry, my friends, and we’ll do the same. And wherever you live, vote for folks who take climate change seriously. Our collective future depends on it.

Of Mutiny and Atolls

Back in 1789 when the notorious band of mutineers seized control of the HMS Bounty after putting the captain overboard, they hid out from justice right here, on Pitcairn Island. I expect that it looked then pretty much exactly as it does today, and a less hospitable island is hard to imagine. Nonetheless, some 47 intrepid souls currently live there, many of them descendants of the original mutineers and most of them over the age of 55. They are actively trying to increase their population, so if you’ve ever imagined becoming a virtual castaway on one of the most remote islands on the planet, Pitcairn might be just what you’re looking for.

They have visits from a supply ship once every three months, but there’s no airport, so getting on and off the island requires a lot of patience. Every house recently was furnished with solar panels, so they have electricity, and Internet. They’re British citizens, and His Majesty’s Government is the island’s only employer. I can say without hyperbole that there’s no place like it on Earth.

But what you see above is all I saw of it. About half the passengers did manage to get ashore, but I was not one of them. The seas were rougher than they had been at Rapa Nui, and my bad knee was still hurting from the previous tendering experience. Also, the captain warned us that we would have to walk half a mile uphill, that there was no shade, nowhere to sit down, and no restrooms. It turned out that some of those things were true, although the islanders mustered a few ATVs to taxi people up the hill, and the church did open its bathrooms. But I learned that after the fact, and spent the day gazing at the island from a distance, wondering if I could ever survive in such rugged isolation, and enjoying the sight of greenery after five days on the pure blue sea.

Leaving Pitcairn behind we struck out across 1250 more miles of empty ocean to Fakarava atoll. Here Azamara had planned a brief time for us, consisting of photo ops with these lovelies,

musical entertainment,

and ladies making leis for us. These leis were works of art and I waited to have one made just for me. The long wait as one lady carefully made my lei gave me the opportunity to speak French with her, and try to scrub my brain of Spanish for a while, which is a lot harder than I had imagined.

I also visited the grocery store, which you can count on me to do just about everywhere we go.

Yep, that’s all food from France. It’s true that Fakaravans, and all French Polynesians, are French citizens, but still it’s jarring to see the store filled with French products, the exact same ones we used to buy when we lived in France.

There was just time for a quick dip in the warm turquoise water, where I learned a couple of obvious lessons in a hurry. 1) the South Pacific is very salty, although Google swears that the Atlantic is even saltier. 2) one floats in salt water, especially if one has an excess of, ahem, fat cells. I could barely keep my feet on the bottom, which was rocky and full of coral so it was probably just as well. But my dreams of snorkeling my way through the rest of the islands definitely got shaken up, because if all I can do is float face up on the surface like an otter I’m not going to see a lot of fish or coral reefs. I have to learn how to get my feet under me, a humbling lesson at my age.

And then came a super-sad moment. I was loving my lei, and planning to keep it in the little fridge in my cabin so that I could enjoy it for days. but as I walked up to the tender a crew member informed me that we couldn’t bring flowers on the ship, and pointed to a big pile of abandoned leis. I briefly considered bursting into tears, but one look at the crew guy’s face told me he meant business. I also thought about starting a mutiny of my own, but soon thought better of it. Why Azamara paid those ladies to painstakingly make gorgeous leis for us, only to have us throw them away after only an hour or so is something I’ll never understand, but it made me feel a bit sick. So this picture with my lei will forever be my best memory of Fakarava, and now we are sailing to Mo’orea.

Reaching Rapa Nui

Of all places on Earth that I never imagined being able to visit, Easter Island, more properly called Rapa Nui, would have to be at the top of the list. It’s impossibly remote, lying 2200 miles off the coast of Chile. And even when you get there, unless you fly in, you have only about a 50-50 chance of getting ashore by boat due to the heavy swells and wind that are pervasive around the island.

But the weather gods smiled on us, plus we’re sailing with the intrepid Captain Carl Smith. A seaman’s seaman, he navigates the boat by sextant and stars, using GPS as a backup, and he was determined to get us ashore.

This is a place where you go ashore in a tender, the ship’s lifeboats that hold about 60-70 people. The harbor wasn’t visible from where we were anchored out, so the tender driver had to stand up and stick his head out in order to watch for rocks, and we had a local guy on board to help him navigate through a fairly treacherous approach. And speaking of treacherous, I have to tell you that getting on and off the tender in the heavy swells we were experiencing was something of an ordeal.

Here’s how it goes down. The ship puts out a small platform attached to the boat. Crew members stand on that little dock as, one passenger at a time, they toss us into the tender. I say “toss” because this is the drill: two strong guys are stationed on the dock, and another two just inside the tender. The two on the dock each hold one of your hands, very tightly. They watch the swell, and when the tender is somewhere near level with the dock, they yell “go” and kind of push you into the waiting hands of the two guys in the boat, who grab you and make sure you’re steady on your feet and can get to a seat. They do this with women, men, older folks and younger, and there’s no macho “I can do it by myself” attitude allowed. You just have to submit to being, as the Captain put it, manhandled. It’s actually kind of a scary process, but they’re very good at it, and we all made the leap safely.

You go to Rapa Nui to see the moai. Carved from native volcanic rock, there are over 1000 of them on the island. Depending on your source, they were carved at various times between 1200 and 1600 AD. They have been slowly being restored and are now protected as the cultural treasures they are.

It is thought that they portray the likenesses of high-ranking members of those ancient civilizations, although since they were carved entirely with stone tools they probably didn’t represent their models with any degree of finesse. However, it is believed that the moai embody the valor and spirit of those important people, and so they all face inward, casting their protective auras over the settlements of their people, with their backs to the sea. And this strategy seems to have mostly worked, since Rapa Nui was never molested by sea until the Dutch arrived in 1722.

Above you saw moai that have been excavated and restored and are standing up. But there are also many more that are fully finished, but buried by time, so that only their heads can be seen.

All of the moai were carved at this one quarry. And then, somehow, many of them were transported up to 11 miles from their birthplace. Since they’re about 13 feet tall and each weighs something like 14 tons, it’s hard to imagine how the ancient people accomplished this. There are many theories, including the building of rubble ramps underneath them, standing them up bit by bit by adding to the height of those ramps, and then possibly walking them forward, inch by inch. Other theories imagine the use of ropes and log rollers, but as one guide pointed out, there’s very little wood on the island and the ropes of the time would have been made of twisted grasses and bark.

In 1955 the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl traveled with the American archaeologist and anthropologist William Mulloy to Rapa Nui. I heard several guides speak in reverent tones about the work Mulloy did to uncover the secrets of the moai and restore the statues to a semblance of their former glory.

I also had the opportunity to see a little Rapa Nui music and dance performance.

The people themselves are called Rapa Nui, as is their language, and also the island itself. Of the 7000 inhabitants of the island fewer than half are indigenous Rapa Nui, with the rest being of Peruvian mixed heritage dating back to the invasion by the Peruvian slave trade in the mid-1800s, or more commonly Chileans, following the annexation of the island to Chile in the late 1800s.

Today the islanders are Chilean citizens, and everything they don’t grow on the island is shipped in from Chile, 2200 miles by sea, including fuel, grains, building materials and machinery. In the event of a zombie apocalypse I’m not sure how they’d survive.

I went into a small grogery store in the town of Hanga Roa, just to see what they had there, and found it to be surprisingly familiar. In fact, Hanga Roa itself seems startlingly prosperous,

and I thought it could pretty easily be mistaken for a California beach town.

Outside the town center the houses were a bit more modest, but we didn’t see any signs of the kind of rural poverty that we have encountered so far on our trip.

This cemetery looked very European, not surprising since most Easter Islanders are Catholic now. One guide did tell us that among the island’s population are seven Buddhists, members of a Japanese family that settled there.

This church looked pretty straight-up Catholic, although with some pleasing Polynesian touches.

There were some signs of trouble in Paradise, though. Quite a few of them, in fact, in various places in and around Hanga Roa, accusing a local official and his Chilean sidekicks of corruption.

All in all Rapa Nui is a fascinating blend of the ancient and the modern, and I’d rate this visit as one of the more privileged and mind-bending experiences in all of my travel adventures. And next, on to Pitcairn Island, final resting place of the Bounty mutineers.

(Mostly) Edible Peru

Being slightly obsessed with ceviche I decided that when we docked in Salaverry, Peru I would take a class in making ceviche and pisco sours. In the event it wasn’t the best bowl I had in Peru, but it was pretty darn good. But in order to get to our class from Salaverry port we traveled

on the Pan American Highway. Yep, this is it. It’s absolutely nothing like what I had envisioned the 19,000 mile long highway, which stretches from Alaska all the way to Ushuaia, Argentina, to be like. Actually, it doesn’t go quite every mile of that distance, taking a break at the Darién Gap in Panama, the site of so much recent and tragic news.

On the road I took a few pictures through the window of the moving car. They reveal in a hurry that the whole country does not look like Lima.

Passing through Trujillo we headed for Huanchaco, on the coast. Starting from their pretty church

we wandered through the open air market. Food markets are among my favorite travel sights, so I assume that you’ll also be thrilled to see what was on offer in the Huanchaco market.

Surprisingly there were blueberries everywhere, and they were gigantic, almost the size of grapes. Really delicious too. That’s guanabana next to them, which are sometimes called soursop in English.

I really wanted to buy some of these salsas to relieve the blandness of the ship’s food, but alas, we aren’t allowed to bring stuff like this on board. The lady selling them just spooned whatever you wanted into a plastic bag, and I saw people getting small amounts of several kinds in the same bag, not all mixed together but nestled alongside each other.

There was a small butcher shop, and although the sign says that they sell all sorts of meat, they weren’t selling guinea pigs. Normally I like to try just about any food, but for some reason the idea of guinea pig just doesn’t appeal to me, so I was glad not to see them there. Apparently they are mostly eaten in the Andes, and in tourist restaurants where they are fried and served whole, with their little faces and feet right on your plate.

You could also buy various types of chorizo as well as dairy products.

And since we started with transportation I’ll toss in a couple of other examples:

a little tuk-tuk type of vehicle called a mototaxi,

and the ubiquitous and iconic reed boats that the local fisherman use to bring in their catch.

These are woven entirely by hand, and apparently need to be replaced about every 6-8 weeks, so fragile are they.

And that’s what I saw of Peru, which I have always thought of as being all about the mountains. That’s a funny thing about traveling by ship, you get to visit mainly ports, seldom having time to venture far inland. After Peru we struck out into the vastness that separates it from Easter Island, more than 2300 miles away. But that’s its own story.

Sail On And On

After many long years, during which humankind has turned itself inside out and coughed itself up, I have once again ventured out. Out into a turbulent world, and back into the safe harbor of French Letters, which has become my most reliable source of memories of the best of times, and also of the worst of times.

Ten days ago l set sail on a five and a half month world cruise. The voyage will take me the wide world over, with the exception of places that are currently at war or experiencing other political unrest to the extent that no one wants to insure a passenger ship in those waters. So even though I said wide world, it’s gotten a whole lot narrower in the past few months.

The itinerary may or may not look something like the map above. It’s a very odd sensation, knowing that I am on a journey to who-knows-exactly-where. On the itinerary used to be Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Quatar, Ecuador and Israel. They’ve all been replaced with destinations deemed to be safer, while the Red Sea, the Suez Canal and a bunch of Middle Eastern countries are still showing up on our go-to menu. I’m guessing that some or a lot of them will get scratched off, but my crystal ball is clouded. Places that have been safe one moment have been known to suddenly blow up. Less often, peace breaks out somewhere and the world heaves a collective sigh of relief.

I guess this uncertainty-riddled trip is has become a metaphor for my life in general. Perhaps is it for yours as well, because if there’s anything that recent events have taught us it’s that you just never know. It’s the oldest of platitudes, the deepest of truths.

The night before we sailed out of Fort Lauderdale this was my bedtime view, a final sleep on land. Tonight, and every night for the next 150 days, I won’t be able to predict what I’ll see before falling into an ocean-rocked sleep. Sleeping out on the ocean in calm waters is a lot like sleeping in a cradle. Silent and dreamless the night passes quickly, although as we just crossed the Equator yesterday the days pass equally fast. I’m still fighting my way through a ton of software changes that are making French Letters more complex to use than ever, so if things are looking a bit funky around here for the next little while please forgive my housekeeping. But I won’t forget about you, and will do my best to take you with me everywhere I go, wherever that may turn out to be.

Cross Bat Off My List

Now that I’m just a week away from leaving home and kitties until after Christmas, friends are asking me how I’m progressing with my To-Do lists. So far today I have been able to cross off:

* Order yen and yuan
* Vote
* Drop off bat
*Convince T-Mobile and Verizon to settle my bill

Of course, that last item took the longest, over a week, actually.  But really, it’s too exasperating to talk about.

The bat is what I really want to tell you about, that, and the advantages of living in a small town.

Yesterday Minou brought a creature in the house. I went to see what the batting-something-around sound was, and thought I saw a small bird. When I picked it up to rescue it, it turned into a bat. Quite a large bat, actually, considering how small and frail it had looked with its wings folded.

Now normally, of course, I would never pick up a live bat, so I was kind of freaked out. And since a bat that Minou could catch in broad daylight, a bat who couldn’t fly, a bat I’d touched bare-handed, all added up to potentially bad bat news, I confined the poor thing to a tupperware and waited for the health department to open this morning.

The bat expired overnight, even though I’d carefully punched breathing holes in the lid of the container. I’m not even sure why I did that, since obviously the lab was going to need a dead bat. So this morning I took an extremely dead bat into the County Health folks, who remarked that it was the second one to be brought in this morning, and it was only 10:00. Now I’m waiting for them to test the bat for rabies, and really hoping that a series of four rabies shots is not in my future. Apparently you get them in your arm now, no longer in the abdomen, so that’s something.

Then, bat-disposal accomplished, I went a couple of blocks over to the Elections office to cast my mid-term vote. And guess what? I was the first person in my county to cast her ballot! In fact, they printed it out just for me, since on election day I’ll be at sea, somewhere between Hong Kong and Vietnam. I would imagine that going to that extreme to help me vote is a small-town thing, although I’d like to think that every county would make such an effort to help out a determined voter.

Having contributed my drop in the ballot box to the Blue Wave, I went another couple of blocks over to the bank that can get me Japanese yen and Chinese yuan overnight, with no service fee.

Maybe events could have unfolded like this in a large city, almost certainly so. But it took me under an hour to accomplish all that, and most of the time was spent waiting for my ballot to be printed. We don’t have everything here in Walla Walla, but within a five-block radius we can have a bat analyzed for rabies, a ballot personally printed, and receive foreign currency overnight.

Now if only we had some alternative to Verizon and T-Mobile and spending hours fidgeting on hold only to be transferred to yet another person for the gazillionth time, this town would be just about perfect.

 

 

 

Soaking Up The Land

Today I had the doors open all day, for the first time in months. The temperatures had plummeted into the 70s, which to me is paradise. And tonight I could sit outside for dinner, and linger long afterwards, for the first time in weeks, The smoke has finally dissipated, and left us with Moderate air quality, and I swear, I’ll take it, even though it’s not classified as Good.

And tonight I lay in the grass and looked at the sky, awash in the sweet fragrance of alyssum. Evidently it’s been far too long since I did that, since Minou circled me restlessly, mewing gently and rubbing himself against my outstretched extremities. A starfish on land, I was.

But soon, in less than a month, I’ll be at sea. At sea for three months, surrounded by oceans and the lands that abut them. Traveling in the company of 1300 strangers, all people who’d presumably rather be at sea than on land. So what could possibly go wrong?

Really, I expect all to go, forgive me, swimmingly. By then I will have eaten all the garden vegetables I can, and will leave the rest to my house sitter. I don’t know whether she cooks, but I hope so, because there will be approximately 400 padron pepper for her to deal with. When I planted them I forget what late producers they are.

As much as I enjoy my current life, I am looking forward to being cast adrift, waking each morning not knowing what the day will hold. Aside from a couple of weeks on the island and a week in France, I’ve been tethered here for the past three years. For me, that’s a long time.

A part of me is yearning to fly free. Another part of me, the part that’s older and on this journey alone, is scared shitless.

I have just one more month to prepare for this adventure. Yesterday my dining room looked like a shoe bomb had gone off. A dozen pairs of shoes (thank you Zappo’s) were spread over my dining table, and spilling onto the floor. I’m in search of the shoes in which I can walk comfortably all day, a task complicated by the fact that I have enormous feet, and a recent foot injury. Only certain shoes will do, and holy moly are they had to find. Today I managed to get seven pairs returned, but I have to confess, a few more pairs are on the way. No vanity is involved, I assure you. All of them are in the “ugly as sin” category.

But then, I ask myself, why in the world should I care? There’s not a person in the world that gives a fig how I look. And I’m going to be in places I’ve always wanted to see (China! Japan! Australia! and other wonderful Asian and South Pacific countries as well).That’s what counts, that I get to go there.

Here’s what I can’t let count, even when it’s hard: Leaving Minou and Toby for three months with a person they don’t know. Not making anything with the prodigious plum crop my tree will be dropping soon. Trading the nostalgic scent of flowers for the aphrodisiac scent of salt air. Leaving the people I am used to seeing on the regular for people I’ve never seen in my life.

Trading land for sea, that’s the dilemma. It’s the thing that keeps me wondering whether I’ll stay here or return to the island. I love my home here, and am having a good life. But the sea is in my blood, and it tugs at me every day. Maybe I’ll get that out of my system after floating in its aqueous embrace for the next quarter of a year. Or maybe I’ll learn that I can’t live without it a moment longer.

So in a month I’m setting sail, hoping that time and the sea will tell me where my future lies, and will show me how far I’ve come.