When you don't see it coming, and it dazzles you

There we were. All of us. Gathered together after a remarkable day which started with a professional bargain process to rent four motorbikes with board rags to go to the Cenningan point, where the waves were breaking, and ended up with our gang chilling out at the porch of our beachfront little homestay. There was no electricity in the island but that didn't bother us at all because the locals managed to keep the beer cold. And what if they didn't.

The wooden porch sheltered five of the boys lined up facing the sea. The sky was tainted in pink prior dusk and now assorted all the spectrum from blue to orange. I wondered how did that looked like for Chiaki, who was squatting, leaning her back to the porch front. Did you know that Japanese people don't distinguish between green and blue? They use the same word for both. I noticed that after she pointed out one day that we could cross because the lights were blue.

Allen was sitting next to me, sharing a large Bintang, the local Balinese beer. Both side facing the boys. Rob, looking at us all and doing the talking, backed up by the astonishing sight, and us, well, we took a back sit two Bintangs ago and were enjoying his speech about USA investment on Marine life jackets. And talking about rescue operations, Allen helped me from being sucked up by the powerful sea that day. The shipwrecks weren't the best place for a first surf lesson. -Paddle!- he shouted, but I had no strength at all. -Paddle! to your right!-. I looked to my right and saw the cliffs right next to me so I exclaimed, hoping he would change his command: Which right?-, then he cried out: The only one you haaaave! It was a slow motion superhero-like lifesaving instruction. He eventually had to paddle for both of us to get inshore...

After travelling for a while, looking for a chance to overcome my limits, even to push my luck a little. After many adventures and troubles, I realised that this very porch went far beyond those boundaries: it was that precise place what made me feel that I've achieved something. Not the waterfalls I've seen while hiking, or the corals I've stared during diving, but the wooden porch with a view. The porch which guarded my newborn-prince size bed and sheltered a gecko, a noisy room mate who kept me awake the first night, but found himself outnumbered that night.

So there we were, under the wooden porch, surrounded by the nothing in an island with no electricity, and not wanting to be out the woods yet.