The young driver’s name was Jerry. I would guess he was in his mid 20’s. Tall, trim, and handsome. He sort of groused at the older man (who flashed this laminated sheet pasted with various pictures of island tours and had called Jerry over to drive us in his taxi for a late afternoon trip over to Champagne Beach for a bit of snorkeling). Down at the end of the cruise boat pier in Roseau Dominica, Kim and I joined Pam and her Greek boyfriend Stathi for this impulsive jaunt. Just two days ago Pam and her man were on the catamaran to Tobago Cay, where she bent my ear for half an hour after she drank who knows how many rum punches, lauding me for my boyish looks at my age and complaining about the darned size of this cruise all the while sipping on a plastic cup full of grapefruit colored rum punch in one hand and holding down her sun hat with the other. To add insult to injury she was from Dallas (just kidding Pam!)!
Well we marched behind the grouchy driver Jerry to his taxi just a block away and he loaded us up into a boxy Nissan van. Even though we all wondered why he was so irritated, we still went. Although, thinking back now, one of us did ask him if he really wanted to take us. “Sure, no problem.” He drove along the southeast coast of Dominica on Loubiere Road, with the sun making its slow descent towards the ocean for the evening. The coastal road was rutted in some spots, speed bumped in others. Along the way, he navigated through small villages – first Wall House and then Pointe Michel and finally to Champagne Beach. Stathi informed us that Jerry must have earned his PhD (pot hole driver) because he had dodged the biggest clunkers in the road.
With the taxi parked, we hustled down to beach to beat the sunset. Champagne Beach was rocky with stones piled atop black sand. Along the sandy trail, a few bright green iguanas skedaddled up the crackling dry hillside, and Stathi stopped for a few photos.
Flailing backwards into the water with fins and a snorkel mask was no picnic, what with the boulders and rocks and the surf rolling in. Although Kim beat us all into the sea, she beat us back out of the water too. As soon as I flopped into the sea with the grace of a drunken sailor, she came swimming back to the beach, blurting out curses – jelly fish this and jelly fish that.
But I persisted, and even Kim relented, wading back into the water, and then I saw how Champagne Beach had earned it's name - hot volcanic bubbles burbled from the sea floor, between schools of bright tropical fish, bubbling up from bright blue and pink patches of coral, between tall stalks of orange tube coral. Kim and I floated in bliss, grinning, thumbs up through this alley of bubbles. They made bubbling sounds too, like a toddler making popping sounds with his mouth, and that was surprising.
Finally we wandered back to the taxi, taking more pictures of the green iguanas. I was happy we had risked the impromptu adventure. But we were not yet done. Jerry drove his taxi up to a point overlooking Roseau, up hilly and winding roads, like weaving one’s way up Mulholland Drive above LA. There perched above Roseau, we looked west towards the sun touching the horizon, and below us we saw a cricket stadium and botanical gardens and two types of hummingbirds drinking nectar, and heard a marching band tuning up at a local school.
Jerry happily snapped a photo of each couple kissing with the sunset in the background, and then he drove us down to the town, through the Botanical Gardens, pointing out the caca de devil plant, a sausage tree, two caged parrots, and a crushed yellow school bus that was brought to rest by a tree downed in a hurricane; the bus, rusted and diminutive, remains to this day in its last resting place.
Sated with the afternoon’s adventures, we began our final trek back to the pier. Stathi and Pam somehow learned from Jerry that the man on the pier who had annoyed him was his father. And Jerry softened a bit at this, saying that there was indeed friction sometimes between the two (and we all nodded our heads knowingly, parents of adult children). But Jerry said that all it needs at times is a little oil and that love provides that oil, smoothing out the friction. His early grumpiness now made sense. So we boarded the cruise ship reminded of the universality of conflict and love between parents and children, and made it just in time for a quick series of snapshots of the setting sun off the starboard side, an orange ball drowning itself in the sea and flinging up sheets of pink into the sky. I hoped that our young Jerry, PhD, would now be out on the town with his taxi tips partying with his young friends for the evening.
Copyright 2011 by Tom Flynn
Photo Credits to Stathi!
This was your best story. Your fictional woman from Dallas was quite interesting!
Posted by: Pam Downing | Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 08:37 PM