The Water

I found this swimming hole today on my 'lunch break'. I went in snorkeling, without the snorkel.
Even in the shallowest areas, there were fantastic fish - silvery and iridescent, striped and mottled - flitting over the coral. Bright red sea urchins, and purple ones, black ones. That's as far as I can get with identification. A guy snorkeling near me kept asking about turtles. He only wanted to see a turtle. Good grief! With an attitude like that, he's got no hope of finding one. But oh, that water, oh that water... like being back in the womb. Yet free. It's such an amazing thing to float above that mysterious world, bob around in the waves, dive down, pop back up again. The water is around 20 degrees. Which, oddly enough, feels cool when you first jump in, but immediately becomes perfect.


It was so hot and sunny on the South-East part of the island, I couldn't resist going over to Big Beach too. I ran my lunch break into overtime. There were humpback whales breaching and spouting off in the distance. I was happy - no, jubilant - in the water again and felt compelled to dance a mock-ballet in the waves for quite some time. Nobody knows me here. It's great.



My mouth is hurting real bad right now - too much pineapple today. I bought a couple from a road-side fruit stand, where the lady skinned and cut them up for me, insisting that I try them both before I take them. They were so sweet and tender you could swear there was no acid in them. She wanted to charge me $10 each. I just laughed, and then we haggled happily until the price was reasonable. A couple tourists came up and started inspecting the fruit.

American lady: Are your papayas genetically modified? Do you use GMO?
Hawaiian fruit-lady: What?
American lady: GMO. Do you know what that is? Genetically-modified?
Hawaiian fruit-lady: What do you mean?
American lady: Ge-ne-ti-cally Mo-di-fied!
Hawaiian fruit lady: I don't know what you're talking about. My fruit is organic.
American lady: It's organic?
Hawaiian fruit-lady: Yes organic, of course organic!

Bloody tourists. I hope she got the full ten bucks per fruit out of them.


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