Between Nuku Hiva, Marquesas, and Apatake, Tuamotus, there are 525 miles of open ocean

"So you were dreaming about guzzling strawberry-flavored cod liver oil while getting shot out of a cannon?" "Yeah, and when I landed, somebody handed me a greasy pork sandwich."

There is a narrow channel through the coral--on the fourth day the wind changes, and we miss it by a mile—means two more days zigzagging along the northern coast.

We're being tested, I say, and if we're found wanting, we will be punished again.

So I've learned. I stay calm. I realize I even feel happy out here. The atoll looks beautiful, those bursts of aquamarine before the breakers hit the coast, the yellow and green palms against the gray sky. We tack, the coast shrinks again.

Tallulah has stopped saying "Ready go" but every picture in her books is a picture of meat. We don't have any more meat. Or eggs. We have beans. This type of family togetherness begins to strike me as unnatural.

Adam has been at the tiller since three in the morning. Late that afternoon, I hear an onrush of water against the hull and feel the boat straining against the wind. We're less than two miles from the channel into the lagoon. Adam adjusts the sails under the gray sky, I’m steering, thinking up recipes using eggs. The wind seems to grow tired, then it renews itself. Suddenly we're at the entrance. And we're shooting through that narrow channel. The cobalt current rushes against us, the water is rippling, corrugated. Wind holds steady then falters. We can see in there. The water is turquoise. We can feel the ancient summons of the tide. Dusk is falling. I'm struggling to hold the tiller straight, Tallulah piggyback, lighthearted in this ecstatic rush of elements. She wants to know what dad is doing up there, lifting a palm to the wind. Talking to Yemaya, I suggest. She sings a wordless tune, and the wind suddenly blows. We burst into the open waters of the lagoon, lavender clouds against the illuminated gray of the sky. The anchorage is deserted except for a huge Australian boat, the crew staring at us as we race past. In the sheltered shallow waters drop anchor as light is extinguished like the falling of a curtain. Is this paradise?

There are many devils in the army fallen from heaven, who chose Lucifer and await his command in the struggle against God. And so this paradise of blues and greens has its fallen angel, alcoholic and alone, his eyes obscured by cheap sunglasses, a bag of black pearls at his side. He drinks Ricard. Tying off his large open boat to ours he boards, bringing misshapen pearls, toys for the baby. He sits and drinks, as if awaiting some communication that’s slow to come. The bottle is empty. Adieu, he says, without meaning it of course, and settles himself again. We pour him Cuban rum, to placate, assuage, and sit in the silence. At last, the invisible sign, and with a cry, he descends again to his brilliant corner of hell.

July is a month of festivals, held in a large covered area with a restaurant. We attended once. As we ate breaded shrimp and steak, French people in traditional costumes who’d come halfway across the world danced for the Marquesans their strange repetitive circular dances. Women waltzed with women, the shorter ones leading. Marquesans clapped and cheered, swinging their arms in concert with the music. The dancers broke and went out into the crowd in search of partners. A young man brought a middle-aged Marquesan woman out for a turn on the floor, and when he returned her to her table, invited her husband to dance. “Toi et moi?” I heard the man respond, shaking his head non.

Days pass slowly and mysteriously. We sit on the beach for a long time, dazed by persistent flu-like symptoms. A Marquesan appears with his horse. I look over and Lulah is sitting with him as he talks to a couple of women, what looks like an oreo in her hand, rapt as she listens to flirting Marquesan. A couple and their grandchild pull up in one of the shiny new 4x4s that most people here drive, flesh overflowing the bounds of their pareos, pull out a bench. The man pulls out a bench, sits on it and begins to tune his ukelele. He plays and sings to the accompaniment of the high tide.

I could say something else about all this, probably, but my brain has been mostly given over to processing the constant movement of this anchorage and the nausea that accompanies it, draining away my inspiration.

Further adventures in Mexican medicine

I woke up at 2AM a few nights ago with an itchy eye. I thought it was just allergies from the incredibly nasty/cheap apartment we had rented while the boat's out of the water but when I looked in the mirror the white of my eye looked like a venomous jellyfish complete with pulsing red tentacles and evil blue nerve center (I can hear some of you say, "Yes, but Adam that's how it always looks!" but really, this was not normal)
I first tried to poke it into submission which didn't help but made me fully awake enough to realize this could be serious. It felt like something was in there and as I was splashing water I was going through the list of the day's possible candidates: rusted metal; boat bottom paint; rusted metal covered in boat bottom paint and Coca-Cola (don't ask) ... Now I'm totally awake and briefly contemplating what I would look like with a glass eye [insert story of one-eyed Supercuts hairdresser who gets smacked by disgruntled customer] which is when I wake up Jessica and say we need to go to the hospital. We wake the baby who quickly is cheerful and ready for adventure which is good because the only ride available at that time of night was some drunken waiters who happily let Jessica drive us all toward the "expensive" hospital--San Javier's--while they take pictures of T with their cell phones and finish their to-go cups. Maybe too much adventure, on second thought, I'm thinking this is a trip to the hospital after all so we pull off at the airport and hop in a cab for the rest of the trip even though our drunk waiter friends beg us to save money by driving their car. My eyeball is at stake, I figure now is the time to spend. We arrive at San Javier's and after about 30 minutes and no paper work whatsoever I'm seen by an eye specialist--it's 4AM. The doctor and examining room look very legit and he even has a special eye examining contraption which allows him to find and remove the offending bit whose origins I never did determine. The situation finally seems under control, my eye feels better, and now I'm starting to wonder how much this is all going to cost us. He gave me a prescription which I filled at the in-house pharmacy for $35 and then I walk up to the guy at the front desk and ask for the bill...$120.

Northerlies

Christmas day, La Cruz de Huanacaxtle
Christmas has gotten weirder and weirder. Now we’ve begun to collect icons: a Virgin of Guadalupe, La Guardia—a blond angel watching over children crossing a rickety bridge—an Italianate Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus with an Oración por las Familias printed on the back. Lulu, as she’s begun to call herself, bites it and says “baba, baba.” She loves pictures of other babies. We’re not feeling particularly religious, just kinda lonely.

Christmas Eve, Puerto Vallarta
Walking toward the corner where we planned to meet after a spontaneous hour of Christmas shopping, in a papeleria for streamers, a candy store for bright foil chocolates and the Telas Parisina for sequined and glittery ribbon, I passed an office set into the steep hillside, faded olive green chairs in an empty waiting room, the walls covered with portraits—a lowering doctor wearing huge square glasses holding newborn twins by their feet, faces red and swollen with birth, a woman’s white, emptied abdomen at the edge of the frame. On the other side of the room was a soft, pale Jesus and a young man holding out his arms to measure a prize dorado suspended on a hook, the glistening blue bay in the distance.

December 20, Tehuamixtle
I got sick, too sick to move for a couple of days. It must have been food poisoning. The evening of the third day we up-anchored and sailed toward Cabo Corrientes. We'd try to round the cape, then curve toward the top of Banderas Bay. That morning a wind began to blow hard from the north. We hove to and waited for it to change, tossing in a heaving, spray flying, churning factory of wind. On the second day we turned back. Fast through the swell toward Tehuamixtle again, the implacable drip of leaks in the deck. We went to a hotel. The room had four beds, all with bright red satin coverlets, and buckets of fake flowers rooted in sand. Next door we found Socorro cooking enchiladas and fishermen sitting in chairs overlooking the bay, watching kids bag oysters on the dock. She was padded, quiet and smiling, heating oil in a pan, pollo deshebrado marinating in chile sauce. “Socorro—what does it mean?” Adam asked. “I don’t know what it means,” she said thoughtfully. I think to myself, I looked that word up recently. We eat plates of enchiladas and sopes and drink agua de lima. “Whenever you are hungry, come and I will feed you,” Socorro tells us. Socorro—it means succor.

December 14, un restaurante de mariscos, Punta Perula
La dueña and her daughter waited with me at a table under the palapa. They showed me their cross-stitch. Pillowcases--a bouquet of red roses, a pair of bluebirds. Mi Amor. They brought the finished covers out from a room behind the kitchen, smelling of mildew. Contigo duermo en el cielo. “I also made one with turkeys,” the señora tells me. “Turkeys are so beautiful.” The women tell me in Spanish the colors of the yarn—tinto, verde de caña, verde de banderas—unfurling patterns stitched while waiting for customers, watching the light on the water, boats rocking in the swell. “There was a one-eyed man who used to come here,” the old woman says. “He was from pa’alla”—up there—the curve of her fingers taking in the United States. “He came for years, but I haven’t seen him in a long time. I suppose he’s never coming back.” Love, I dream with you—stitched in the blue of the sky, above an arbor of roses, a wine-red heart.



PS sorry for the lack of visual stimuli, our camera succumbed to our gritty lifestyle and is holding our photos hostage for now.

Dengue Journal Day 8: Dengue Deliverance

I don’t have dengue according to the latest test report. This is a good thing. This means I’m no longer ONE mosquito bite away from a potential hemorrhagic reaction; I, like everyone else down here who hasn’t been infected yet, am TWO mosquito bites away from potential hemorrhage. What a relief.

This dengue journey was brief but informative. First, I learned the word “viremia”, a noun that means “the presence of viruses in the bloodstream.” A great word which, when being your own doctor or just talking casually about infection, really gives you some med cred—don’t be afraid to use it. Second, I never thought about it before but the mosquito is, by far, the most dangerous animal to man with 2 to 3 million deaths/year. That figure puts into perspective the vastly smaller number of deaths caused by white sharks, grizzly bears and falling coconuts—creatures we more commonly associate with deadly danger. It’s something to think about. And finally, speaking of coconuts and hemorrhage, I wanted to share my primary tropical medicine goal—that of being the first American since WWII to be saved by a coconut IV.

So what did I have? Consults with one of New Zealand’s top specialists narrowed the options down to pretty much any virus other than dengue or typhoid. Since the headache is pretty much totally gone and I feel fine otherwise, I am until further notice. Many thanks for your wishes for a speedy recovery. Many thanks also to you anonymous internet dengue researchers that contributed sources to this entry.

After watching Adam lie in bed moaning for a week and then get misdiagnosed with typhoid, I finally went to the pharmacy today and bought him a course of Cipro—an antibiotic that is very conveniently available here in Mexico without a prescription! Even though it says on the box, “Su venta requiere receta médica”! (“Receta,” as I learned almost immediately upon arrival in Ensenada, meaning “prescription.”) While Adam taking antibiotics makes me feel better—not least because we're supposed to be having a baby in three weeks—it may not really speak to the illness at hand. According to the Mexicans I’ve talked to, he probably has something called “chipil”—which, they say, men contract before the birth of their first child. If it’s not dengue, it’s “la panza” (the belly), they shrug. Chipil is some sort of sympathetic illness that medicine won’t cure, characterized by—well, exactly the symptoms he’s been having! My Mexican friend down the street explained that the baby was taking Adam’s energy, too—drawing on both parents’ bodies as it gathers the strength to be born. I like that egalitarian notion—I like it very much.

Dengue Journal Day 6: Fever Dreams



Today was the day to get confirmation of my self-diagnosis at the local clinic. My friend Armando, in whose mosquito infested shop I was probably infected,

said they could diagnose and treat me with no fuss. Great, I thought, I can go there then go outside again without feeling like someone is resting their blazing-hot iron skillet on my head.


They were supposed to confirm my diagnosis and give me the necessary cure, but it didn’t end up working like that. When J and I got to the clinic, it was empty save for a family w/ small child getting a check-up and, judging from its offended sounding squawks, a shot. There was also an older gentleman who seemed to be waiting too but the nurse just shooed him away from time to time, perhaps he was merely clinic-curious.


Well, the nurse rapidly took my blood pressure, weighed me and took down some facts then led me across the hall to, the doctor? Whoever he was, he was mostly hidden behind a huge typewriter. He had AC in his office, unlike the nurse, and tons of medicine so I felt like I was in the right place—especially since I had read the big sign in the waiting room which says all treatment and medicine here is free.


He asked about my stomach and tongue and palpated my abdomen but since my symptoms haven’t extended lower than my cheekbones (mild rash), that didn’t seem relevant. Basically I feel fine except for a 6-day mild headache and some pain behind my eyes. Fine, that is, until I step outside, then comes the skillet and soon I face the choice of finding shade or passing out. The doctor pounded out a prescription on his typewriter and handed me some medicine and started to describe what and when I was supposed to take. During his mumbled spiel I caught the word “parasitos” and immediately I’m thinking, wait a second, this isn’t caused by parasites and isn’t that the prescription Armando got from this same clinic? Maybe this guy isn’t a doctor. Maybe he’s just a parasite eradication worker sent by the government of Jalisco to guard their pile of free medicine. I ask him if he thinks I might have Dengue fever and he says probably not because if you had Dengue you’d have pain behind your eyes…well, “I have pain behind my eyes,” I told him, and he then sent me back across the hall to the nurse. She jabbed my finger and then squeezed two drops of blood onto a glass slide to have it tested. She also asked where we live because, apparently, in a week or two, if the test is positive someone will knock on our door to let us know.

Self-portraits of left foot

In the spirit of memorializing trauma to lower extremities, Adam took these photos of his foot. a) The leg-engulfing infection in Monterey b) The result of a freak sting-ray accident in San Juanico. Doesn't look like much, but. The gritted teeth and barely articulated cries for hot water said otherwise c) What happened when he tripped over some rebar while walking along the sidewalk in Cabo, obsessively knotting the fringe of a cheap Mexican blanket.

Jessica's dog bite, partially healed

Fortunately or unfortunately, you don't get the full impact of the gore here. I guess it was too gross to take a picture of at first--neither of us could face it. Now I just have a dog-shaped scar and a fang mark on my leg. I'll always remember Ensenada.

Monterey/Look what dragged the cat in

I was walking to the bathroom in the evening. Adam was unable to walk, due to his weird foot infection. There was this shape up ahead--a wobbly, mutating blob. What was it? The man from the harbormaster's office who had checked us in the night before (nasty, unwashed, and, in Adam's case, infected) was standing next to it. I asked him what it was. He said it was an otter that had escaped from the aquarium. "All they do is eat and rub themselves," he pointed out. I made Adam limp down to check it out. We marveled at the dexterity with which it rubbed its head, over and over.