13.
Becca
It’s quite a trek out to the reef. From the garden we head straight down to the beach. Upon hitting the sand, Rich immediately spots our guide waiting for us at the edge of the water. He waves and the man, several bags of equipment slung over his shoulder, waves back. When we reach him, the man, who tells us to call him Pace, hands us each a bag. Without another word, we set off down the beach, headed in the same direction Rich and I had taken after dinner the night before. We hike for a long time along the shore, at some point passing, though I can’t pick it out, the spot where Rich and I had kissed. Eventually, the resort long out of sight, we come upon a small cove. Pulled up onto the sand inside the cove is a small, single-motor boat. We drop our bags into the boat. As I climb in, Rich and Pace push the boat off of the beach and into the water. The boat afloat, Rich climbs in, Pace wading us out to deeper water.
When the water is about waist high, the waves calm thanks to the protection of the cove, Pace hoists himself into the boat and takes a seat in front of the motor. He smiles at the two of us wordlessly. Starting the motor, he guides us out of the cove, angling the boat so it skips lightly over the rolling waves of the ocean proper. As we leave the mouth of the cove, the water deepening in color as it deepens, Rich leans over and puts his mouth to my ear.
“He’s not much of a talker,” he whispers. “My friend told me he’s never heard him say more than one sentence at a time.”
From the looks of it, Pace is a true local. His skin is tanned a deep brown, his hair bleached from so much time in the sun. His age is hard to tell. Somewhere in his late-thirties, if I were to venture a guess. But who knew? Truth be told, he might very well have been fifty. Living in a place like this undoubtedly kept one young.
When we’re a few hundred yards out from the beach, Pace turns the boat and follows along the shore, the small skiff bouncing up and down on the waves. Luckily, thanks to having spent a good amount of time on boats as a kid, the jouncing doesn’t make me seasick. If anything, it merely makes me drowsy. Far overhead, thin white clouds are flying by in the opposite direction. I can see no signs of civilization around us, nothing but pristine jungle and white sand beaches and the brilliant blue ocean spreading out endlessly before us in sight. As for the water itself, it’s as clear as can be, the sandy bottom easily visible despite being thirty feet down. Every so often, we pass over a school of fish, their sides flashing orange and blue and pink and green as the sun catches their scales.
All told, it takes about forty-five minutes to get where we’re going. I can tell we’re getting close when the water grows shallow and the first vestiges of coral appear below us, shimmering beneath the waves. Soon it grows into a full-fledged reef, what seems like millions of fish flitting in and out of its every nook and cranny. To our left, not so very far away, is another thin stretch of achingly white beach. Looking at it, one got the feeling that not a soul had stepped foot on its sands since the very beginning of time.
Pulling the boat up to a pylon sticking out of the water, Pace ties us to it with a few well-practiced knots. Turning back to us, he sweeps his hand out over the water.
“We’re here,” he says, the look upon his face the kind a person gets when he knows he’s about to bestow a great gift.
“Ready?” Rich asks.
“Ready,” I reply.
Stripping down to our swimsuits, the three of us don masks, snorkels and flippers. Luckily, all of this equipment is in the bag Pace had handed me back at the resort.
Pace is the first to hit the water, dropping backwards off the lip of the boat in a graceful maneuver obviously practiced a thousand times. Rich follows quickly after, his splash making the boat rock from side to side. I tumble in after them, surfacing a moment later and blowing the water out of my snorkel. Before setting off after Rich and Pace, both of whom are already swimming away, I take a moment to pull my hair back from my face and secure it under the strap of my mask. Finally ready, I dip my face into the water.
And am immediately greeted by the most technicolor and beautiful sight I’ve ever seen. Every color in the rainbow is represented in the reef below me. A thousand variegated fish dart by, some round and fat, some long and skinny, some as big as my arm, some no bigger than my pinky. There are all sorts of plants and animals clinging to the reef itself, which is made up of a hundred different types of coral. As he leads us around, Pace enthusiastically points out all there is to see, Rich and I swimming side by side behind him. There are sea anemones and hermit crabs and sand dollars and brain coral and plants that look like big Japanese fans waving in the underwater breeze and other plants that look like leafless trees, their branches kicking out every which way. So many different forms of life there are that it would take an entire lifetime just to catalogue it all.
Several times Pace dives down into the water, kicking his powerful legs to force himself beneath the waves. The first time he does this, Rich follows after him while I stay at the surface. Seeing that they’ve left me behind, Pace motions me down. Expelling all the air from my lungs, I swim down to him, the pressure in my ears creating a dull ache in my head. From then on, whenever he does this, I follow after without needing to be told.
Each time he descends into the water, it is to point out some fascinating feature—a hermit crab, or a lace-like piece of coral, or a fish that at first glance seems to be a rock only to quickly swim away upon our approach. In a small cave near the bottom of the reef, Pace points out a gruesome set of teeth lurking in the darkness. An eel, easily one of the ocean’s most terrifying creatures.
Time passes quickly swimming around this wonderland. There’s just so much to see that I spend every second in a state of utter fascination. I’m not in the water long before I begin to get the feeling that Rich had been right at breakfast. Maybe we were living our lives all wrong. How much better would humanity be served if we spent more time focused on the natural beauty of this world of ours rather than worrying about our petty problems?
Just before returning to the boat, we come upon our first shark. I’m swimming next to Rich, watching a parrot fish pick at a sea anemone, when from around the corner of the reef it appears. It’s long and grey and has a wide, flat head. It must be six feet in length at least, making it easily bigger than me. When I see it, my heart leaps into my throat; instinctively I grab Rich’s arm. Pace, seeing my reaction, laughs, his eyes behind his mask crinkling in delight. He points at the shark and gives me a thumbs up. Using his hands to mimic chomping jaws, he shakes his head. The meaning is clear: it’s one of those sharks Rich had mentioned earlier, one of the non-dangerous ones.
Pace swims towards it, Rich swimming after Pace. Though I’m still not entirely convinced that I should be swimming towards something that could very easily eat me, I reluctantly follow suit.
But they’re right; I don’t have anything to worry about. The shark, far from being disturbed by our presence, carries on with its business, not paying us the least bit attention as it grazes along the ocean floor in search of food. For several minutes we follow it, watching its graceful, swaying movements as it swims along.
When it disappears into the ocean proper, the three of us return to the boat. I’m hungry now. Climbing up a ladder hanging off the back of the boat, Pace turns and helps Rich up after him. Together, the two men, each taking one of my hands, hoist me out of the water and set me on my feet in the middle of the tiny vessel.
“Wow,” is the first word I say upon removing my mask and snorkel. “So beautiful.”
“Like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Rich agrees, dropping down onto the bench at the bow of the boat. “But damn am I hungry! Nothing like a bit of nature to work up an appetite.”
From a bag at his feet, Pace extracts several plastic containers filled with food. He cracks them open and passes them to me as I settle onto the seat beside Rich. Inside one of the containers is an assortment of various fruits. In the other, there is braised pork. The three of us are so hungry that we dig in immediately, no one speaking as we pass the containers back and forth. The sun is high overhead, the world shadowless.
When we finish eating, Rich and I put on some sunscreen (luckily, unlike Rich whose shoulders are now a bright pink, I had applied some before leaving my villa), wait several minutes until it dries, and then don our masks, flippers and snorkels and slip back into the water. Pace stays in the boat. I feel much more at ease in the water the second time around, not even jumping when another shark appears a few minutes later. Even though I’ve already seen a thousand different species of fish during my first foray amongst the reef, more and more unknown creatures keep appearing.
The afternoon is starting to wane when we return to the boat the second time. I’m exhausted by now, my arms and legs jelly from all the swimming despite the help of the flippers. As before, Rich climbs out of the water first before helping Pace lift me into the boat. As Rich and I have another snack of fresh-cut fruit and braised pork, Pace, a happy and serene look on his face, unties us from the pylon, starts the motor, and begins to guide us back along the shoreline.
We ride the entire way back in silence, not a thing needing to be said. The spirit of the day is with us all, resting lightly upon our shoulders as the boat skips along atop the water. The afternoon is fading quickly. A large mass of clouds wells up from the western horizon and soon covers the sky. Without the direct rays of the sun upon us, the air grows chilly. I shiver, Rich instinctively putting his arm around me. I lean into him and let my head fall onto his shoulder.
I doze off quickly, the thousand colors of the underwater world we’ve just left still dancing before my eyes. As darkness overtakes me, I sigh and settle deeper into Rich. The waves are slapping gently against the hull of the boat, Pace whistling some jaunty tune to himself.
What a wonderful day.
A wonderful day with Rich.