A Little Island Adventure

About 10 years ago I went on a cruise with my father. It was a free trip for both of us and being that Carnival Cruise lines wanted to impress Dad, we each had our own Penthouse suite. It was really cool. We each had our own Jacuzzi, sound system and all kinds of cool amenities.

It was a Southern Caribbean cruise and we visited five different islands. The Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, St. Lucia, St. Thomas and Grenada. As Dad isn’t one to really do anything active, he rarely left the ship. I made sure I got off at each port and did some exploring. When we stopped in Grenada I decided to do some snorkeling.

I paid some guy five bucks to take me to a beach where I could get in some good underwater sightseeing. He took me to his little boat and off we went. We arrived at a beautiful white sand beach and he dropped me off. As I was getting my gear on I noticed there was nobody else around. I had a choice, I could go out into the sea by myself or wait for the boat to come back and find a place with a few more people on it. Being the genius I am, I stayed and went snorkeling.

Once I started walking into the water I started getting a little apprehensive. I mean, here I was, thousands of miles from home, alone and as I looked out into the sea I could see our ship anchored what seemed like light years away. I put my mask and snorkel on and started checking out the sights. About 15 minutes into it I felt something brush against my foot and it scared the hell out of me. I popped up out of the water and looked around and saw a big piece of seaweed and was able to catch my breath.

It was at this point that I realized what a moron I was to be out there by myself and decided I’d had enough. I went up on the beach and went over to the dock and just sat. I saw a boat heading towards me from the distance and saw that it wasn’t the same one I had taken originally. There were four people on the boat and two were obviously islanders and the others, tourists. As the boat approached I asked if they could take me back to the port and was told there would be a cost of five bucks. I readily agreed, the tourists got out of the boat and I hopped in.

Once on the “Ninja” (I don’t know why I remember the name) I introduced myself to Stan and Bob. We started talking about life on the island and were, at least I think, enjoying each other’s company. We told each other about our families and the things we did for fun and just literally shooting the shit. I was having a really good time and the idiotic experience I had just lived through was but a memory.

About 10 minutes into the trip back I noticed what I thought was a buoy out in the distance. I mentioned to my new friends how odd it seemed to see one way out where we were. They both agreed and we started heading out towards it. As we got closer we say that it wasn’t a buoy at all. It was a person. Bob revved up the engine and we were flying towards what we thought was a swimmer in trouble.

As we approached we could hear, what turned out to be a woman, yelling something but we were too far away to hear her. We all thought that she was in big trouble. We were so far from the shore that we could barely make it out in the distance. As we approached, Stan grabbed a lifejacket and tied a rope to it while yelling out to see if she was ok. She was still yelling back at us and as we approached we could finally make out what she was saying.

“Have you seen my beach ball”? We all three looked at each other as if to check that we heard what we thought we heard and looked back at the woman. By this time we could see that she wasn’t in any distress at all. The closer we got, we could see how big she was. She was huge. We told her to swim over to us and hop in and we’d take her back to wherever she came from. She said, very politely and in an outstanding island accent, “No thanks, I need to find my beach ball”. Again, we found this strange but told her we’d help her.

It took all three of us to pull her in and once we got settled she told us that she had been on the beach with her kids when one came to her and said the beach ball was gone in the water. We must have looked for about 10 minutes before we saw the prized possession in the distance. We caught up to it and brought it to safety. At this point we were way off shore and started back to the beach she needed to get back to.

On the way back we pretty much just let her talk. She told us that the distance she swam was no big deal and that she could have stayed out much longer to find her beach ball. The whole thing fascinated me. I couldn’t stop laughing. I mean, here was this woman out in, literally the middle of the ocean, with no boat or life jacket and her whole reason was to get a stupid beach ball. I mean, c’mon, if I was that far out in the water I know there is no way I could find my way back to safety.

Anyway, I couldn’t get over how important this beach ball was to her. I started thinking about how cheap beach balls were and thought about how poor this person must be. I started feeling sorry for her and others on the island and started feeling kind of down. Here was this woman risking her life for something that I not only take for granted but wouldn’t think twice about buying another if it was in the basement and I was heading out the door. She, on the other hand thought nothing of it. Like this was an obvious choice when the kids said the toy was in the water.

It took us about 10 minutes to get her to her beach, think about how long that would take to swim, and as we approached the shore we saw that there was a man standing right at the edge of the water. He had his hand up above his eyes shielding the sun as if he were looking for something. As we got closer the woman recognized that the man standing there was her husband. She called out to him, ostensibly I thought, to tell him she was ok. She waved to him and stepped out of the boat and into the surf. As she started walking towards the shore and her husband he yelled something out to her. Now, a normal person would think that he would check to see if she was all right. Normal is a rather subjective thing. After seeing his wife after what could have been a most treacherous swim, all we heard him say in that most wonderful Caribbean accent was, “ Did you find the ball?” I cried I laughed so hard.