I write to you from the Twilight Zone***. It’s midnight… One minute ago it was November 28th and one minute from now it will also be November 28th. Don’t worry about it…
Anyway, I am dreadfully behind. The Pacific Ocean looms on all sides as we brave its stormy depths en route to Hawaii, our final port. What? No I’m not crying, how dare you. I’ll use the upcoming 3000 nautical miles to catch you up on the last five countries. First stop: Mauritius.
The little island off the coast of Madagascar was a necessary Texaco for the ship, so all of us got two nights to run amuck in the sun after Midterms. Let’s rewind a few weeks… Megan, Jeff, Jade, Bill, The Brothers Garcia (whose real names are Kevin and Brett Wil-something, but this is irrelevant), and I decided to rent a villa. Online we found an awesome mini-mansion by the beach with its own pool and hammock. We were pleased. Enter Jacques - pronounced “jah-KWEESE” for all incorrect intents and purposes. He was the man in charge and he was alllll about us. But after 2 weeks of Jacques emailing Megan at least 4 times daily (almost always finding a way to incorporate the phrase “ooh la la”) and sending us pictures of his family and car along with a detailed description of his most recent vacation and a list of activities we could do with his sons, we all started feeling dimly nauseous. Then he Google Earth-ed Megan’s house. Game over.
So there we were, 15 minutes before our arrival in port, frantically searching for a new villa. Several hours later, across the island in Grand Bay: Ikbal, the new Jacques, arrives at the doorstep of our new villa to let us in and hand over the keys. It’s absolutely gorgeous… except that it has no sheets, has no toilet paper, has pink shimmering metallic mattress coverlets, and is otherwise completely undecorated except for the smallest vase you can possibly imagine adorning the mini fridge. By Day 2 the running water on the second floor decided to back out of the deal. But there was a hose in the front yard…SO WE LOVED IT.
In the coming days and nights we had sooo much fun. Just plain and simple good times with good friends. I can’t even do these days justice with only my meager words. We walked from our house to the beach and ran into the water and played football and climbed trees and swam and laughed and I bought an extravagant ring floatie for 10 bucks. An extravagant rip. Then we made a deal with a guy on the beach who took us on a snorkeling trip for 10 bucks (don’t think I don’t see the irony here). We had a glass bottom boat all to ourselves and we took it way out to sea; the water was so clear you could see zebra fish for miles. We jumped off the boat’s roof and swam underneath it to flip each other off through the glass bottom and took the floatie out into the deep and it was just sooo fun.
It started getting dark so we went to the store to buy groceries and then didn’t buy anything but Top Ramen. We got back home to find that one of The Brothers had bought himself a ‘personal snack’ consisting of Doritos. What’s that about… Anyway, the other Brother and I had a water fight with the hose in the front yard (difficult with only one hose. Tactics were limited: take turns spraying each other in face; “make it rain” so everyone loses) and then found a drawer full of candles and played with them in the driveway. We also filled the bathtub to turn it into your standard “Jacuzzi” and crammed four of us in there for 2 hours just living it up. That night we went dancing at a place on the beach called Banana Bar where a reggae band was playing. In the wee hours of the morning, as the singer with dreads-to-the-floor got awkward cause he ran out of Bob Marley songs, we decided to swim wayyyy out in the harbor to where all the jumbo yachts were docked. It was the greatest achievement of my life… silently parting the pitch black waters of the Indian Ocean, mischief masked by darkness. We climbed their anchor ropes like pirates and lay in the nets watching for shooting stars in the Milky Way. Then we’d back flip off the back of one yacht and swim on to the next. I don’t want to say The Perfect Crime, but…
The next day our friend Kate’s rich cousin flew in from Dubai for the day and paid for all of our friends to spend the entire day sailing around the island on a yacht. It was so awesome; we sat out on the bow taking turns doing the thing from Titanic and then the yacht docked off the coast of a tiny island and we all jumped off the boat and swam out to it. They barbecued on the back deck and we all acted dumb together and the whole thing just reeked of happiness and light.
Spent another carefree night twirling at Banana Bar and another morning on the sand. We had to leave that afternoon and I hated it. I feel like this would be the appropriate time to scream SPRING BREAK 09 and wave my shirt above my head…
Additional Notes:
-I’d like to extend a warm Congratulations to Jeff for facing his fears. He is an unbelievably weak individual and is afraid of almost every thing we saw and did. He went swimming, jumped off something, and looked at fish. Bravo Jeff, we’re proud of you.
-I wore the same dress from the moment I got off the ship to the moment I got back on the ship. I packed a full backpack of Attractive Beach Wear… but if the dress fits, wear it.
P.S. I even wore it in the Jacuzzi.
***I’m not naming names, but The International Date Line wouldn’t be out of the question.
