There and Back Again

The two bad parts of a vacation, in my opinion, are the flights to and from your destination. I wish one day, someone will invent a device where you can beam up and immediately land where you want to land – no hassles of flying and waiting at airports. You know, kind of like Star Trek? That would be so cool.

Well like all good things, my vacation to Playa del Carmen, Mexico has ended. I’m on board Jet Blue to San Francisco from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I am miserable, as you can tell. The five-hour flight seems to last forever, and I’m only on the first hour. The captain’s announcement that we are 25 minutes ahead of schedule is hardly comforting news. I’m tired and hungry and just wilting away. I might need another vacation after this.

It’s probably best to think happy thoughts and divert my mind away from the remaining four hours. I should probably think about the Caribbean Sea and all its glory. For the last seven days, it has been the thing that greets me in the morning and wishes me goodnight in the evening. While there, we got into a routine, my sister and I. We would wake up early to walk a mile or two along the beach before the sun gets too menacing. We’d get back to the resort in time for the buffet breakfast to be served. We’d eat the usual toast, fresh fruit, fresh juice and yogurt and then walk back to our cabana, change into our suits, find a quiet spot by the beach and sit for hours on end just listening to the ocean waves or to music, people watching, or reading a book. Around lunchtime, when the sun is at its highest, we’d pack our towels and sunscreen and head back to our cabana, to decide on lunch. To dine in the restaurant or order to go – that was the question. After lunch, we would shower and sit on our hammocks to continue pretty much what we did in the morning - read, listen to music or watch people go about their business.

At six thirty we would get ready for dinner at the La Loma, where our server Jose would always say, “tonight, we have only one soup. (Insert name of soup here.) Do you want soup?” To which, my sister and I would always say yes in unison and he would scribble on his notepad. Then he’d name the entrée choices, ask us if we want anything to drink and then leave us to enjoy a nice quiet dinner, without interruptions other than the other servers delivering food and taking away empty plates. A few nights they had a mariachi band to liven up the atmosphere. Another night they offered free tequila shots. That same night, I dropped my spoon on the floor twice, which embarrassed the hell out of my sister. It wasn’t the tequila though because the next night, I dropped a spoon again. At that point, even I was embarrassed. Slippery little suckers…

After dinner, we would take the short walk back to our cabana, the sound of the ocean getting louder with each step. We walk past the empty bar, the turn off for the reception desk and the turn off for the Aventura where breakfast is served in the morning, until we get to cabana number 14, where we rest for the night only to start over again the next day with pretty much the same routine.

I loved every minute of this vacation. I’m not one to get very active during vacations – it is after all a time to unwind – so this was perfect. I wouldn’t change a thing, except maybe the part about stopping over Fort Lauderdale on the way back to home. Let’s just say I’d rather be stuck at JFK where the choices for things to do while waiting is more varied. That and the bug bites, I could have prepared for the bug bites better. Well there’s always a next time.

Time check – two hours have elapsed. Three more long hours to go before touching down and return to what’s usual and familiar. The thought of retiring in my good old bed tonight and watching TV until I fall asleep is a happy thought after being away for a week, with no access to TV or the Internet but I’m still sad that vacation is over. I always do. It’s not that familiar and usual is a disappointment, it’s just that vacations are a change of phase that we don’t experience as often as we want to so that when it ends, you are always left wanting more.

If only the beam-me-up machine I was referring to earlier could be invented – or if only port-a-holes like those used in Harry Potter were real -then I can go on vacations more often and never left feeling wanting more nor feeling miserable onboard a long flight home.

I have to go on vacation to remember to write a blog entry - probably because that’s when I’m inspired to write something. Writing after a long day at work just doesn’t do it nowadays. Where’s the fun in journaling about layoffs and salary surveys anyway? It’s a depressing topic to even think about.

As I write this, the Riviera Maya is beckoning me, wanting me to return to its warm waters while the sun bathe me in its harsh but soothing embrace. I can see a couple of kids playing football in the sand, perhaps prepping for the 2010 World Cup opener in a few days. All along the seaside, families and “singles” have spread their beach blankets and soaking up the salty wind, coarse white sand and crystal blue water. Resort guests are lounging on their palapas or – like me – swaying in their hammocks, watching the locals reclaim their beach, even for a short while, and non-locals trying to turn brown without a tanning salon. The view is distracted once in awhile by a passing go-cart like motorbike – the shore’s patrol – and by a really noisy biplane advertising free margarita nights at the Blue Parrott. Other than that, it’s a scene from a dream or from those lovely Corona Beer commercials.

I’m on an elevated cabana and from my point of view, the sea meets the sky and the world is beautiful once again. No troubles worry me here. It seems as if I’m always swaying or floating – more like floating. The wind can take me any direction it wants and I will willingly go. My heart is light as a feather, ready to take flight and never return.

The wind is blowing. Gabriel, the resort bell-hop/jack-of-all-trades, waves at me on his way to making a delivery of what looks like a bottle of wine and basket of goodies to one of the cabanas next door. In a few hours, my sister and I will go to dinner, sit at our usual spot, and be greeted by our usual server – a shy but very nice gentleman with a three-letter name, none of which are vowels. He will ask us our room number though he already knows and brings us bottella de agua, muy frio, no ice. After dinner, we will retire in the comforts of our tiny but comfortable room with a ceiling fan that spins like a maniac. The soft music from Mi’s laptop and the sound of the ocean ebbing into the darkness will lull us to sleep, as it always does. Tomorrow will be yet another gloriously lazy day, where anything – or nothing – can happen.

I’m on day three of my seven-day sojourn in paradise. The one good thing about slaving your life away with work is that you can, every now and then, buy yourself a little of piece of heaven on earth, offered at discounted price from Travelocity, if you just know how to look. (Wink, wink!) We all need a little rest and relaxation, if anything to find our inner peace and purpose in life once again. After all, all work and no play makes you dull. So you work when you work, so you can play when you play.

Until next time! From Paradise, I’m signing off.

Pondering: “I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.” (Walt Disney)

Today, I celebrate another birthday. Another year older. Another step farther from the carefree days of my youth. Another mile deeper into maze of life. John Mayer, in one of his songs best summed up how I used to feel about growing old: “So scared of getting older, I’m only good at being young. So I play the numbers game, to find a way to say that life has just begun.”

But as I grow wiser with each passing year, I begin to understand and accept that there is no stopping time. Instead of holding on to the memories of my youth, I best start letting go. Accept what I cannot control and go with the flow.

A few days ago, I was watching this mini-series and one of the characters said that he read somewhere that after 25 million years we live again. We meet the same people we met 25 million years ago, love the same loves, and experience the same things over again - just like the life-span of the great heavenly stars.

I truly believe this. The thought that one day, I will meet and be with all the ones I love again, maybe under the same circumstance yet as if for the first time, comforts me when I worry about old age, the people I love and the after life.

I raise my glass for a toast and throw caution to the wind as I say to my future: Bring it on!

Pondering: One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

I never did quite understand why my sister Myra loves the song Wild Horses so much until I listened to it last night. And I mean really listen, and understand what the song is trying to say.

Faith has been broken, tears must be cried.
Let’s do some living after we die.

Wild horses couldnt drag me away.
Wild, wild horses, we’ll ride them some day.

In the stillness of the evening, inside the peace and quite of my room, while my heart throbbed a steady hum, and my mind slowly receded to rest – I realized that this is probably one of the most beautiful love songs ever written, though it may not even be a love song. (Who knows whatever goes on in the heads of Keith Richards and Mick Jagger anyway?)

But for me, it’s a love song alright – and a sad, sad one indeed.

Pondering: Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity. (Frank Leahy)

Memes like this is always a good motivator to update one’s blog. For this one, the instruction says, “Type what comes to your mind FIRST whenever you hear these 50 words. Don’t think and don’t go back and change. Doesn’t matter how random just type it!” Here goes…

I went to see Coldplay at Shoreline Amphitheater tonight. Had a marvelous time with my sisters Merced and Myra, and my office mate Chet. It was hectic getting to the venue but we made it nonetheless and all is well that ends well. The air was crisp and warm, the mood was happy and it rained butterflies - light, colorful butterflies. My heart was a-flutter during the drive home.

Pondering: I think miracles exist in part as gifts and in part as clues that there is something beyond the flat world we see. (Peggy Noonan)

Everything I have seen during this trip reminds me of how small I am in the grand scheme of things. The vast ocean, the endless snow-capped mountains, the age-old glaciers, the dark night sky, the animals that lurk in the forest and fly above the tree line, the endless waterfalls that sprout from nowhere and the rain that washes away the sins of the day – they all are far much bigger than me and my worries and my concerns. I am but a dot in this big picture of life.

I sit here in the balcony of my cabin watching the slowly setting sun in the horizon. For the last six days the constant view from my balcony have been the mountains with patches of white snow, the rippling ocean waves, the occasional island far away with the lighthouse beam flashing every now and then. It is so peaceful and also so intimidating. I feel so far away from the world I know. I am in the middle of nowhere, sailing on this endless body of water. The quietness overwhelms me and makes my thoughts race through my head faster than I can absorb them or put them into writing.

Pondering: When I admire the wonders of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in the worship of the creator. (Mohandas Gandhi)

Today didn’t start out right at all.

It started last night, really when we got news that there had been a landslide early in the day and so therefore the White Pass trail has been rendered un-passable! A major blow to our vacation because this was to be the highlight of the trip. My sister and I were devastated. We went down to get information on alternate excursions only to find the Atrium filled with people trying to do the exact same thing. It was 8:30 p.m. and along with the frustration, we were getting hungry and tired. A crewmember saved us from the misery when he informed us that if we were canceling our excursion, we need not lineup as our accounts will automatically be reimbursed. Myra and I decided to forego the excursion and retired to a lackluster buffet dinner.

This morning, we both wake up wondering what we are going to do in Skagway if we were not going on an excursion. Mind you, we were going to be docked in Skagway until 9 PM – the longest stop of this trip. The view from our balcony didn’t give us a sense that there was a world in Skagway apart from the White Pass Rail. So I rushed to the Shore Excursion Desk hoping to salvage the day and was told to book excursions directly with the booking agents outside. I rushed back to the room – it was 7:30 AM – and noticed an envelope posted on our door. Inside were tickets to our revised on-shore excursion. It departs at 8:20 AM.

My sister and I got showered and dressed immediately, leaving our stateroom at 8:20 AM and hoping the busses would still be there. We got there in time only to learn that the cruise ship has overbooked the revised Yukon Territory trip and after much confusion, got seats to a bus that was reserved, I think, for German passengers. Instantly, our tour guide had to narrate the tour in both German and English.

We were driving around Skagway and the town looked really charming. Since we have until 9PM in Skagway, we promised ourselves that we would make time to walk around town when we return from the excursion. The tour continued and pretty soon we were climbing up the White Pass summit. The tour guide promised us plenty of photo-worthy stops along the way and that on our way to the Yukon Territory, we will have driven past a rainforest (Tongass National Forest), the alps (White Pass), the arctic (Fraser, BC) and then the desert (Yukon Territory). I was excited despite the disappointment that I was on a bus instead of the famous White Pass train.

That’s when my sister kindly informed me that my camera had no batteries. The night before I remember charging the batteries but indeed, I had no recollection of putting the battery into the camera. Shit! I was disappointed all over again so that the on-again, off-again German translations began to annoy me. To make matters worse, I was hungry and it didn’t look like our photo-worthy stops included visits to a coffee shop. Double shit!

But as it is with all bad news and bad days, they pass and things get better. In the end, all was well. The views were spectacular and the weather cooperated. Lake Bennett was jaw-dropping beautiful. The Yukon Territory was truly a blast from the past. It was like the set of Little House on the Prairie. I got to see the sleigh dogs (Huskies) though missed the opportunity to play with the puppies.

And best of all, the mother of all wonderful experiences, one that truly wiped out memories of the awful morning and the missed opportunity to go on board the White Pass Rail, the highlight of this entire trip, believe it or not – were the bears, big, beautiful, powerful bears! There were four of them, Mama Bear was the biggest one and then there were three cubs, one of which is what they call a spirit bear, AKA Kermode Bear – cream colored due to a recessive gene trait and very rarely sighted. Its color gives it a ghostlike appearance, which is why they play an important role in Native American/Canadian Indian folklore. Black, brown, big or small they are beautiful creatures, bears. My heart jumped at the site and I couldn’t take my eyes off of them.

I couldn’t have asked for a better way to end the long drive and the Alaskan trip in general. I have memories and images of beauty to last me a lifetime. Trips like this make me realize what a wonderful world it truly is!

Pondering: To be happy, we must be true to nature and carry our age along with us. (William Hazlitt)

Day 2 of our cruise. I woke up early, around 430 p.m. to find two things that brought a smile to my face: first, the vessel was slowly approaching the port of Ketchikan, in the southeastern part of Alaska. Second, my iPhone was showing ATT’s four bars, signaling cell phone service in the area. I am not totally unreachable anymore. Though no one is going to call me during this trip – I’m not that important – but just thought of being in the middle of the big ocean, with no way to call out or in (other than the ship phones that are ghastly expensive!) was a little frightening. I never thought getting a phone signal on my cell phone would bring such a sigh of relief from me.

Today, we had our first excursion offshore. We cruised the inside passage all the way to the Misty Fjords National Monument. What an amazing display of nature’s wonder and beauty. It was cold as hell on board the catamaran but I wouldn’t have wanted the tour any differently. The Misty Fjords were truly misty and thereby eerie, peaceful and intimidating.

We caught a glimpse of a number of wildlife on the ride to and from Rudyerd Bay. We saw a family of orcas, bald eagles perched on top of trees, a bald eagle’s nest the size of a water rafter, seals that were, as I was told, warming themselves while growing hair and hundreds of purple starfish growing on the side of giant rocks in Punchbowl Bay. For a moment there, I thought I was finally going to see a real live bear but the thing got shy and disappeared before the Captain could point him out to us.

My sister Myra was busy taking pictures of the scenery, and so was I, though for a while, I was busy just trying to stay awake. Alas, I haven’t been sleeping real well during this trip. I always somehow find myself awake at 3AM, unable to go back to sleep no matter how many ships I count. So on board the catamaran this morning, I felt like lying my head against the window sill and dozing off. I fought against it because that would have been a waste of freaking money.

Now were back on the big ship. In a few minutes, we’ll be sailing away again. Our next stop will be Juneau, Alaska. Who knows what awaits us there - another wet and rainy morning for sure and a host of many more beautiful scenery. I can’t wait to get there…

Pondering: Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains. (Diane Ackerman)

For the first time in my adult life, I had a massage. Not a back rub or the occasional neck massage my sister gives me but a full body, hot stone massage. I still don’t know what the big deal is about massages, that some people find it the most ultimate way to relax. It’s not that relaxing for me – in fact it’s stressful because it hurts and I have low tolerance for pain. Nonetheless, I had a good time on that massage table. The feel of hot stone against my skin was relaxing and soothing; more so than the muscle manipulations.

My massage therapist’s name was Jean. She is from the same country as me. She’s a nice girl; very polite, very quiet which is what I want my massage therapists to be – or pedicure specialist or hairdresser, etc., as I’m awkward with small talks and chitchats.

Anyway, as Jean was massaging away all the tension in my back, I had a flash of my childhood. I was sickly when I was a child. I always had respiratory problems, bronchitis being my number one ailment. For some reason, every time someone in the family was sick with cough, my mother would always call the local manghihilot - a.k.a. masseur or masseuse (usually the former than the later). We don’t consider them as massage therapists in the traditional sense, but rather as quack doctors. I can’t remember his name anymore, but I remember him being really old and wrinkly and his hands were huge and rough. He would show up to the house with a bottle of very green menthol oil and I would be quivering with fear at the sight of him because I associated him with pain. (Remember, I have low tolerance for pain.) At times, I thought he was chanting while rubbing my back with the cool oil, but that was probably just my imagination. You know how when you are young, all old people you don’t know have a potential for being a witch when the moon is full? I thought he was a witch with healing powers because he always, always made me feel better afterwards, despite the fear.

Then as Jean finished the therapy, she dimmed the lights even more and told me to relax for a few minutes while she fetched me hot tea and a host of products I knew she was going to try and sell me. Anyway, I lay there on that table, my eyes covered with warm towel, my whole body just melting away from the state of relaxation. I struggled not to doze off in fear that I might snore – how embarrassing! But I did doze off briefly and as I doze off I had a dream.

I dreamt I was coming home and greeting me at the airport were my brothers and sisters and my nieces and nephews. In this homecoming dream, everyone was still very young, especially the nieces and nephews. I haven’t seen them all for almost fourteen years. They are smiling and waving at me and I wave back. We all hug and the hug seemed so real. I hold on to them for a long time. They slipped through my arms just as I hear Jean quietly sneaking back in the room, the smell of chamomile tea wafting in the air. The images of my family disappear, the dream is over, and I am back where I was before the dream.

I guess the point of this entry is to say that memories from my childhood and my old home are moments that can never be again, and because they are nothing but a thought that you can’t hold in the palm of your hands or relive and revive like an old stage play, I don’t like thinking about them. Yet they always sneak up behind me at the most inopportune moment and they always leave me pondering and then longing.