My first full day at Maho was peppered with meeting wonderful people. I guess that is what makes me different from the lovely 46 year old I met last night. She spoke of places and things. When I travel I have recently realized that I speak of the people I meet and what I learned from each of them. I am sad to say that I do not remember the name of 46 year old from Italy. I remember visually…which consists of the face of the person with whom I am speaking but also I visualize their name spelled out and associate it with something that describes them. Since I could not pronounce her name and did not ask her to spell it for me, I do not remember it. I do hope we meet again because I will remember her face and beautiful accent.
I began my morning by taking the ‘Goat Trail’ to Big Maho Beach. It is a very rocky hike, straight down and straight up. I made a spam sandwich, of all things, to take with me, along with some rice crackers and two beers to add to this gourmet lunch. As soon as I arrived…Joyful Julie and Charismatic Kate from Austin, Texas motioned for me to join them in the water because they had discovered a baby sea turtle. Since I had left my snorkeling equipment on the beach Kate even offered me her snorkel to view the baby better. How sweet. We spoke of being liberals and of the atrocities occurring in Mexico with the Drug Cartels and of being free spirits. It was lovely. Sadly they had places to be and left me to my snorkeling alone.
After seeing at least four sea turtles and lots of colorful fish I took a walk down the beach. As I was walking I saw three adorable children playing in the water and met Darling Denay (I am not sure if that is the correct spelling but that is how I visualized it). She had a day off from crewing a local catamaran and was out with her son and the sons of two friends. She had just gotten her Captain’s license and was quite proud of the accomplishment as she should be. She told me that I just had to rent a car and go to Coral Bay if I wanted to socialize with locals and boat people. So a rental car is in my future. She talked about her Mom who just turned 60 and was living here in on the Island and how she was in a “good” place. She also had just left a relationship and it was a good thing according to Denay. She was so friendly that it left me feeling happy that there are so many special people in the world.
The rest of the day was spent snorkeling and hiking. This evening I decided to go rent the car I would need to explore the Island. I had to bolt out the door as I was running quite late and I hear Mr. Frett’s Taxi Service waits for no man or woman. On board I met an adorable couple…Sexy Seth and Adorable Amy. Seth manages a Piano bar also in Austin, Texas. Today this Island seems to be full of people from Austin. They came to Maho at the spur of the moment and will only be here for a couple of days. I wanted to stay in touch with them so I reached for my business card and much to my distress found that the forgetful post menopausal mind was back. My wallet, all my money and credit cards were left in my tent. Seth, Amy and I pondered what would happen when I told Mr. Frett that I could not pay him. Seth offered to pay my fare but I declined because I needed to go back to retrieve what I needed to rent the car. When we arrived I explained my situation to a very stern faced Mr. Frett and asked if he could take me back. I was told that it would be a two hour wait. But then something wonderful happened. Keep in mind that Mr. Frett did not know my name of anything about me. This lovely, still stern faced man told me I could pay him tomorrow and gave me forty dollars to spend in town…who does that? I tried to give it back but he would not hear of it. Then I walked with Seth and Amy to Woody’s, a local bar. They insisted on buying my drinks. So tomorrow I tip Mr. Frett very well and take Seth and Amy with me in my rental car on an adventure so they will not have to take taxi’s everywhere and I will buy their drinks.
I have this warm glow about be this evening thinking about the good in people…even stern faced ones. There are many good people in this world we need to always remember and celebrate that fact at every opportunity.
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