BigFish photos on Flickr

I came across a few shots of a trip Leslie (my wife) and I took to the Caribbean. Normally I wouldn't write about a vacation, but this venture is rife with "duh".

Back in '93 we set off for Maho Bay on St. John Island in the Virgin Islands. Being tree-hugging, eco-tourist that we were at the time we decided to stay in the Maho Bay Camp. The place was beautiful, and there was plenty to do. You could: explore, sail, windsurf, scuba, snorkel, fish, eat, drink, shop or just lapse into a coma on the beach. All-in-all the "camp" was pretty cool, sparse, but a really neat place. We stayed in our own cabana (hah, cabana... it was a tent with a kitchenette) nestled in the rain forest and over looking a blue bay.

Our first day there was warm, but overcast and drizzling. The rain didn't keep us out of the water though, within the first hour I had on my mask and snorkel and I was face down in the ocean checking out the reef that was right out my back door. The water was "Evian" clear, you could see forever. There were fish of all sizes and colors, sea turtles, starfish, stingrays. It was an underwater eden.

We explored for hours... Face down... In the tropics...

At the time, we didn't consider the fact that even though it was overcast we still needed to take precautions against sunburn. Seems that the cloudy sky only slowed the burning process. Not to mention the fact that the little bit of water we were in: (a.) kept our skin temperature cool while (b.) it acted as a magnifying glass on the rays that were reaching us, therefore rendering us crispy!

Of course we didn't realize it until much later that night, but my God we cooked our asses off!

So here we are, our first "us" time since our daughter had been born. We're tucked away in a romantic shanty in a tropical rain forest, a mountain view out one window and a view of a blue lagoon out of the other window. The tradewinds are blowing through our cabana/tent, the candles around the place are flickering in the breeze, setting just the right mood for Leslie and I to share... SUN-POISONING.

Oh shit, it was horrible! Leslie still has scars on her butt where she baked her skin off. My burn was so bad that within a couple of days the skin on the back of my ankles split open and the wounds started weeping, as did I. Thankfully I had a prescription for some really heavy pain-killers that I had brought along. The first night and the next day we were "uncomfortable", but sedated. If I remember correctly, when we ran out of the 'scripts we just started drinking heavily to dull the pain.

Did we pack it up and go home like most sane people would? Ah hell no! We had spent money on a good time and by God we were going to have a good time! Pain be damned! Now we're tourists with a vengenance. Drunk tourists, gorked out on narcotics, but tourist all the same.

We start looking for things to do.

We walk up to Maho Bay's clubhouse to see what else the island had in store. We perused the activities list. As I mentioned before there was lots of things to do on the island, but in our sauteed state there wasn't many things that "we just had to do". One of the activities the camp offered that seemed to be a crowd pleaser was a guided, night snorkeling tour. "See the Reef at Night... It's Amazing!" read the brochure. "$125 per person" also read the brochure. We talked about it and decided that's what we wanted to do. We figured that we could handle snorkeling at night, no sun... no pain. We also figured that those Maho folks must've been smoking crack if they thought we were going to pay them $250 to take us swimming. I had noticed a dive shop in the little town on the way to the camp. I figured we could go to the dive shop and buy underwater flashlights for $30 to $40 bucks a piece and we'd be in the water for around half of the price of what they wanted to charge per person, and we'd go home with a couple of cool, waterproof flashlights!

Now there is a reason why they charge $125 per person. Only at the time we never even thought to ask ourselves why.

Supposedly the reef is teeming with life after dark, we were told that there are "many, many MORE creatures at play in the water when the sun goes down". Just hearing the words "more creatures" had us foaming up, eager to get on with our little National Geographics adventure.

Later on that evening, with the brand new, hot pink, waterproof, flashlights in one hand and our masks and snorkels in the other we walk down to the beach to begin OUR version of the "Ocean Quest night snorkel". The sun had set, but it was still light out when we geared up and got into the water. we tooled around close to the shore for a while, always mindful of "the buddy system" we stayed pretty close to one another as we ventured out further into the bay. Time started flying by, before we knew it we had been in the water for well over two hours and it was dark. We noticed the nightfall, but it didn't concern us. We just kept oohing and aahhhing (which by the way sounds alot like porn when you have a mouthful of snorkel) at every new sight.

Leslie's flashlight beam would land on a huge parrot fish and the damned thing would seem to glow. Or my beam would fall on a clown fish feeding around a sea anemone. Occasionaly when one of us would see something really cool, we'd pop our heads out of the water and say "d'you see that?" and the other would let out a snorkeled audible "uhhhh-hhhuh".

At one point while we were face down, the water around us turned into this quivering soup of fish. Apparently we had startled a school of fish and now we were in this living mud. Millions of tiny "guppies from hell" were freaking out all around us. Literally they were all over us, they were in our hair, our ears, our swimsuits, everywhere (yep, there too!). In a blink they were gone.

We both popped up, unnerved as hell and spitting fish.

"You ok?"

"Yeah. You?"

"uh huh."

We collected ourselves for a few seconds, put the mask and snorkels back on, then we were back exploring. By now it was REALLY dark! We kept swimming. Our only field of vision was within the beams of our flashlights. I remember thinking to myself how creepy it was that all of this life was around us, but we could only see within the thin cone of what our beams could spotlight.

We kept swimming.

Our beams would dart back and forth searching for the next new sight to see.

Then our beams converged on it. Let me rephrase that... our beams locked onto IT. And time stopped.

There, not 20 feet away from us, was the largest eyeball I've ever seen in my life! I have no idea what kind of creature was behind that orb but that fucking eye was the size of a hubcap.

The eye glanced once in Leslie's direction, then glanced over to me. I almost chummed in my swimsuit. We were in a deadlocked gaze with something WAY bigger than either us could've imagined.

We blinked first. Our heads popped out of the water simultaneously.

me: (calmly) "d'you see it?"

Les: "uh huh."

pause... pause... pause...

me:(still calmly) "wha' say we head back?"

Les: "yeah."

We calmly turn around then break into this panicked "swim for your life" effort to get to the shore. I'm practically "Jesus trotting" across the water I'm swimming so hard. Rooster tailing it I tell ya!

Then I hear Leslie say... "Mark. Where are ya?".

I stop swimming and answer "I'm right here." Seems like, in an effort of self-preservation, my subconscious said "screw the buddy system. swim! swim if you want to live!"

"I'm over here!" to which Leslie replies, "keep talking, so I can find you."

Now I'm starting to reach defcon 1 on the panic meter.

Not only are we being chased by "satanic guppies", and a fish the size of a large condominium, but now my wife is lost at sea, and I've lost my bearings... I don't know where the shoreline is. For all I know I could be swimming towards Venezuela.

Needless to say we find each other (please no comments about the old cliche two ships that pass in the night, I might vomit.) then we get back into the "buddy system" groove. This time we're holding each others hand while we swim, but we're still lost. Finally I see a dark outline of an anchored boat that I noticed earlier in the evening as we were heading out. Once I get an idea of the boat's position, we swam towards it and off in the distance I see a light that I recognized in the camp. I know where we are! But we are a L-O-N-G way from the shore.

We finally make it back to the beach. Once there we crawl up onto the sand and try to catch our breath. Completely out of energy, still hurting from the burn and hungry beyond belief we slink back to our cabana/tent and crash for the night.

We didn't leave the tent the next day. Sunburnt, exhausted, hungry, in a tent, in the middle of the summer, with no AC. My, aren't we are having a swell time! Actually that was one of the neatest places we've ever been. Another really neat (although some somewhat less thrilling) thing happened while I was there. On the day we left home to go to the airport, I stopped and picked up a copy of John Grisham's book "The Pelican Brief" to read while I was there. I finished the book on the exact same beach that the main character was on at the close of the book. I didn't read ahead, nor did anyone clue me in that the character would wind up on Maho Beach in St. John. I was blown away.

By week's end I had actually adopted this too-cool island vibe. I recall taking the Maho shuttle bus down to the little port town several miles away from camp to check out the place. On the way back, the shuttle was loaded with a herd of fresh-off-the-boat vacationers. I remembered thinking to myself... "Fucking tourist".

bikessm by Lisa

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Cool bikes in a London plaza. Possibly BigFish folding bikes?

0L6A8203.jpg by Erik Ball