Traveling While Standing Still

It was hard for a wandering gringo (in 2001, at least) not to be surprised at the island’s cozy size. Utila is small. It felt like half a neighborhood. Spend three days there—scuba diving, as one usually does—and you get the sense you’ve met, or seen, just about everyone. There’s the woman selling “jonnycakes!”, the kids scrubbing out their mom’s pots and pans behind the house, the drunk fellow sleeping under the fishing skiff, the laborer patching up the storefront with his trowel.

After a few days of exploring the reefs and floating up and down Main Street, we were either getting a little penned in, or a little adventurous, or both. Someone mentioned a trail through the mangrove forest to the other side of the island and a deserted bay called Rock Harbor.
So, we went, probably somewhat stupidly, and without a guide—but, again, small island, so we figured if we got lost we’d just keep walking till we came out on the shore somewhere.

Luckily, it was a dry season, and we made our way through the dense trees without much trouble. We marveled at the hordes—literally, armies—of crabs that seemed to be traveling in the same direction we were. At times it became challenging not to step on them. We pressed on and made it to Rock Harbor, but the notable part of the journey was the return trip.

We got lost. Sort of.

We ended up on a different path, one that passed by the shack of an old Garifuna man who came out and spoke to us in the pidgin you hear on the island, a tuneful remix of English and Spanish that can at times sound indecipherable to speakers of either language.

He invited us in and poured us a cup of his homemade “grape juice.” Whatever the liquid from the plastic jug had started out as, it wasn’t grape juice anymore. A few sips was the equivalent of a fine slap on the head. We sipped and sat at attention while our friend told us a long and involved story about his encounter with a giant sunfish (most adult sunfish weigh over 2000 pounds). I didn’t understand all of what he said, but he had the storyteller’s gift, and his words were a lilting, golden song. I could have listened for hours.

Sometimes I regret not having a recording, or even a picture, of that old man and his story. But then I wonder if that would just lessen the magic of the memory. The juice, the man, the music—it was all a kind of spell guiding our steps that evening while we walked, in the dark, back through the trees and safely home.