Terra Firma

On the sixth day out, we’d anchored in a protected bay on Norman Island, uninhabited except for a pirate-themed beach bar on one of its many coves. The island is considered to be the model for Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. In spite of many intense searches over the centuries, no one has found the treasure chest that legend says was hidden there by pirates in the 18th century. A gold doubloon was found in one of the caves in 1972, the most recent sign of any such thing.

            

 There were three other boats anchored nearby but no sign of anyone  on them. The curved shoreline was fairly long, but stony and rough. I felt a strong desire to walk, actually walk somewhere on land. Terra firma. In almost a week, we’d been off the boat for three lunches, otherwise only to swim or snorkel. I announced that I would like to swim ashore.

David warned me not to touch any trees, as the extremely poisonous manchineel tree is common in the area. Its highly toxic sap was used by the indigeous people on the tips of poison arrows. Many early explorers of the Caribbean found out the hard way why the small green fruits of this tree were called “death apples.” Caroline pulled out a small book on tropical trees, and I noted that the manzaneel was a large tree with rough gray bark and small, shiny, alternate pointed leaves.

Caroline said it was too early in the day for her to swim, so she settled into reading Quakers in Conflict, about a 19th century split in Ohio between more traditional Quakers and a reformist branch that broke away.

As I let myself down the ladder, I saw a large, long gray fish lurking just off the stern of the boat.

            “That’s a barracuda, but don’t worry,” said Caroline; “they won’t bother you here.”

              Didn’t they call Sarah Palin a barracuda when she played basketball? But what do they know of barracuda in Alaska?

            I cautiously entered the water and the fish moved away.

Fortunately I could swim in the water sandals I’d bought for the trip, so I tucked my regular glasses inside my suit, and snorkeled a couple of hundred feet in, noticing schools of silvery minnows but few larger fish, as this was not part of the reef.

I left the mask and snorkel beside the bleached trunk of a fallen tree in a little clearing just off the shore. Only small portions of it were pure white sand. I’d read that the colorful herbivorous parrotfish actually make the sand. Vegetarians, they feed on algae that live inside the coral and nibble off and ingest tiny bits of it. Thus every grain of pure white sand has passed through the gut of a parrotfish.

I walked happily as far as I could along the beach until a rocky outcrop barred the way and then I ventured a little way back into the jungly forest. I had no idea what species any of the trees or plants were. They were not the showy flowering imports used for landscaping around fancy resorts. Higher up on the hills I could see small clearings with clumps of bristly cactus. No romantic swaying palms here.  Coconut palms, not a native species, were originally planted around the sugar plantations to provide cheap food for the slaves.

Further inland I noticed tens of thousands small red ants building a huge nest of reddish mud about six feet off the ground in the crotch of a large tree. It had gray bark and small, pointed leaves. Could it be a manchineel? And could these be fire ants? Aren’t fire ants from Florida, or Texas, or somewhere with a warm climate? Aren’t they called fire ants because of their burning sting? There were trails of ants coming from several directions, making their way in several lines up the tree trunk. Considering that the tree might be a manchineel (though its gray bark was pretty smooth) and the insects fire ants, the practical part of me overcame my interest in observing the natural world and I walked quickly away.

There was very little in the way of trash, flotsam, or jetsam on the beach, but the round plastic lid of a white bucket had washed up, making a possible sear on the stony ground. I settled down in the shade of a shrubby tree with round, leathery leaves, and put my feet in the water. Two Magnificent Frigate Birds soared overhead; Brown Pelicans startled me more than once as they crash-dived for minnows in the water nearby; and a Brown Booby landed on a rock, looking as foolish as the name suggests. Behind me, in the forest, a number of small birds were calling. I had no idea what they were.

It was very pleasant to be on land but i realized how very unfamiliar my surroundings really were. In Michigan I can identify almost any tree I see and most plants, but here nothing was identifiable except the landforms. The contours of Norman Island were gentle, relatively low hills, quite unlike the conical volcanic peaks of some of the surrounding islands. The colorful angular rocks exposed on the small cliffs were clearly sedimentary in origin; they’d been thrust up by nearby volcanic events so that the strata were almost vertical. They were stained in streaks of rusty red from iron leaching out and in some places black, probably caused by bacteria living on the iron.

I looked out at the Unity and waved to see if anyone was watching me. No response. After a while I swam over to the reef at the edge of the bay and added several new species to my list of corals and fishes. But I wanted just to sit still a little longer. When I returned to my spot in the shade, I found a conch shell, perfectly intact, about four inches long, just at the edge of the water. It was the only shell I saw. A nice little souvenir.

I was very happy to be on land after five days at sea. What joy seeing land must have been to early travelers crossing the ocean on voyages of many months. We are terrestrial creatures, after all, and as lovely and fascinating as the underwater world of the reef is, it is not our home. Only our modern equipment allows us to look in on it. The coral, fish and other marine creatures have evolved their myriad shapes, colors, sizes, defenses, and reproductive strategies safe under the sea, all without interference from plundering, polluting  Homo sapiens. Until relatively recently, that is.

A Learning Experience

“But what is your address in the British Virgin Islands?” the stern young immigration officer asked me, looking at the line I’d left empty on my official immigration form.

I was third off the plane, having had a seat by the exit door of the small propjet that had brought me to the Beef Island airport in Tortola. The warm, humid air of the tropical evening smelt evocatively of the sea.

“I don’t know; I’m going to be sailing with friends on their boat.”

“What is the name of the boat?” he asked.

I blanked it out. Senior moment.

“Liberty?”

He asked if I was sure. I waffled. Not sure.

“Where is their boat?”

“It’s in a marina,” I guessed, haltingly. Where else would it be?

“Marina Cay?”

“Sure, that’s it, I think,” I replied, and wrote Marina Key on the form.

He could tell I was lying. He took back the form, scratched out those words with a frown, put my passport aside, and told me to stand against the wall near his booth. He beckoned to the next traveler to come forward.

I tried calling Caroline and David’s mobile phone. No answer, no message service on their British Virgin Islands number. Of course, we’re all in our late 60s, a generation not perpetually wed to those handy devices. Tried it again. No luck.

I watched as the last of the other passengers slowly made it through. A half hour had passed. The officer seemed to have forgotten about me.

I tried the phone again. I was tired; I’d been traveling since I left home in snowy Michigan at five a.m. I wanted to get on with my Caribbean adventure. What would I do if I couldn’t contact them? Would I be spending the night in an immigration holding cell? Put on a plane back to San Juan?

Finally a young woman in a uniform walked in and I waved her over. I explained that my friends were surely outside to meet me and could give her the information needed. She spoke to the immigration officer, interrupting him from processing a young white man with dreadlocks. He looked displeased but agreed that she could escort me outside. He tossed my passport and forms in a drawer.

On the other side of a low barrier, there were my smiling hosts, slim, tanned, gray-haired and all dressed up in their matching Unity baseball caps and polo shirts.

“What’s your address?” I cried frantically, “They won’t let me in without an address. I tried calling you…but no answer.”

“Your address is Sailing Vessel Unity,” David replied.

“Okay, but where is it? They want an address.”

“At the moment, in Trellis Bay.”

The woman official wrote down the information.

“Oh dear, we didn’t bring our phone,” Caroline murmured. “We were afraid you’d missed the plane.”

The immigration officer made me wait until all the other passengers from a second small plane had gone through before he returned to my case. He leafed carefully through my passport, examining the visas, corrected my immigration form, and scrutinized my customs form. An hour after my arrival, I was finally allowed to pick up my duffel bag, pass by a customs officer, and enter the British Virgin Islands .

What I learned: first, you need to have an address, any address, when you enter a foreign country and second, don’t mess with an immigration official. Caroline and David led me across the short distance from the small airport to the dingy dock on Trellis Bay, boarded their dingy Seek and motored over to a restaurant on the other side of the bay. I really needed a drink. After a gin and tonic for me and a glass of wine for them and some grilled mahi mahi, we dingied back to the Unity. They showed me a few essentials on the 36-foot boat and we all went to bed early. The bed in the aft cabin was comfortable and the gentle rocking of the boat pleasant, but I had a hard time getting to sleep.