9 o'clock. It's the same a.m. routine: leap into a bikini, sweep open my curtains:
but there are no monkeys here.
From my view on the dock, no one’s up yet, except for Angela, Lorna, and Franklin, for whom Chow was substituting--Franklin, the real butler, a long-limbed, long-faced older man. He's my idea of a butler, lanky in an ascetic-looking way, and has what T later describes as having a "good, gentle energy" about him. Despite not being completely Californicated, I have to concur.
Anyway, I bound (gazelle-like) up the concrete steps and pop into the kitchen for a second, for them to tell me breakfast’ll be ready at 10. I take that as my cue to get out of their hair, and make my way back downstairs, tug on my fins, tighten my mask, and scooch myself off the dock. Since my first encounter with the giant manta ray, I’ve been told that a) mantas don’t have stingers and b) it’s possible to cling onto their "shoulders" for a ride. So I’m off to find that bad boy. To do this:
No dice, but I spend a good chunk of time around a shallow, reef-y area just off the dock, watching tropical fish flick in and out of cream-colored anemone tipped in fluorescent yellow and purple, like so:
...and avoiding spiny sea urchins, a.k.a., Diadema antillarum:
Wiki sez that their spines are "potentially dangerous." Whatever that means, I am glad I went against my instinct to...uh...pick. one. up.
It’s really too bad I don’t know anything about fish, because all’s I can say is that I saw purple fish, and blue fish, and striped yellow and black fish, and orange fish with big eyes, and so on. Also a Dory-looking fish that led me to chant, "just keep swimming" and "P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way" until I was so exhausted by my profound coolness that I had to stop.
After some time, I haul myself out the water--I’m trying not to over-exert myself so that I don’t go languishing miserably around with sore arms, as is my wont--but no one’s up yet. What's a gal in Jamaica to do? Climb into a deck chair and cat nap under the sun until called to breakfast. Say what, say what, say what? Girl, you know wussup.
Breakfast: freshly made mango juice (blend mango, blend ginger separately and strain, lime, some water to thin, and brown sugar), toast, fruit plate: papaya with lime, mango (this time including one of Blackie mangoes T purchased the other night), watermelon, pineapple,
Unlike my heart.
ackee and saltfish,
and fried salty plantains (“plant'n”?)
Then we manage to fritter the morning away, waiting on this person and that. It's already early afternoon when we finally get out the door for Y, V, and me to get dropped off at Frenchman’s Cove, a tourist "must see," and walking distance from Lolivya. T, t, and S are off to deal with tasks necessary to construct a one bedroom house that'll withstand hurricanes.
Sunloungers are two or three hundred J each, then another 200 for a bottle of water. I ask our server whether we can swim past the rope of buoys, and he tells me, "at your own risk."
Hmm.
The water's frigid, and I slosh into the waves just short of my tipping point, standing near a clique of women knee-deep and shivering. I share a grimace and a remark about the temperature with a bald-headed black woman from North Carolina, and we end up making small talk about our respective home-towns. The friendliness is so distinctly American, paradoxically warm and noncommittal, but easy in its familiarity. It's not that I expect a welcoming committee--although Jamaica's tourism board has certainly propagated its version of Jamaica aloha culture--it's just the constant staring. I suppose the tourist hordes don't typically comprise three black women, a black man, an Indian, and a Chinese. It's funny also because I haven't ever really experienced gregariousness and friendliness as an American cultural trait.
Or maybe I'm extrapolating too much, and lady was friendly just cuz she's from the South.
I finally take the proverbial plunge, ducking into the water, and striking for the buoys, which I find, in short order, float atop a stretch of water both deeper and more choppy than I anticipated. "At your own risk," indeed.
I moonwalk--less Michael Jackson, more Neil Armstrong bouncing with the swells--away from the rope, and quickly discover that the water at Frenchman's Cove varies in temperature, cold in spots, warm in other pockets, and the refrain between me and V is cries of "warm spot," "cold spot." I know. Two sophisticated ladies in their late twenties, early thirties.
What is it about clear water and a sunny day that reverts people back to this primordial, infantile state? A dopey sack of good feelings.
How much time can I squander bobbing up and down, watching the surf explode into the pitted rock face on either end of the cove?
The three of us are rotating time in the water with guarding our stuff, so I’m measuring time on my chair by Bob Marley songs--broil for two songs, jump into the ocean. And by jump, I mean, wade in apprehensively, flinching when a wave crashes a little two high, then taking a deep breath and dunking my entire body in, then emerging in a sputter of sea water.
Measuring time by Bob Marley songs is a good way to be, and I’m thinking that this day makes up for an entire class set of essay grading. Maybe.
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