Email Elizabeth2014 winter vacation
Swimming with a Dugong Beats Finding Nemo in Vanuatu
Dugong, by Big Stock Photo
Just to see a Florida manatee up-close in the wild of the Everglades last year was a treat, but imagine how it feels to be swimming alongside a sea mammal (sometimes confused with the manatee), called the dugong in Vanuatu. You can tell the difference between manatee and dugong, which are related to the elephant, by the shape of the tail. The dugong tail is shaped like a whale’s. But I wasn’t on a hunt for dugong. For a good two hours, I had been snorkeling west of the The Havannah Resort, cruising along clusters of coral admiring the colorful fish, often stopping to float in circles above brain coral. I was on a hunt to find Nemo.
Anemone fish such as clownfish are all over Havannah Harbor by the docks, which is located on the northwestern side of Efate Island. I spotted so many varieties of beautifully hand-painted-by-nature reef fish I lost count. Mostly blue and yellow assortments of butterfly fish but also tons of damselfish and angel fish in almost every color imaginable, except the danged orange with the 3 white stripes, bordered in black.
This is what happens sometimes when I give myself a goal. The goal for yesterday was “find Nemo.” I begin to feel a bit disappointed if I don’t accomplish the goal and feel even more driven to continue the search until I am successful, regardless of how much time it takes or how exhausted I might become. It becomes a mission. I have passions for missions, which is why I make a darned good Sacramento REALTOR. I just don’t give up until my mission is completed.
My husband has another name for this affliction.
If a client tells me he wants me to do the impossible, then that’s what I do. I love challenges and adventures. This was an adventure — trying to find Nemo. Like the late Harry Chapin wisely stated: it’s the going, not the getting there, meaning it’s the journey, not the destination. Along the way to find Nemo, I discovered brilliant blue coral, in addition to a striking deeply blue starfish. He was draped over a small rock as though he had been out drinking all night and had tried to crawl home to a bigger rock but only made it as far as this tiny rock and said to himself, “oh, what the hell, good as place as any to crash,” and collapsed.
I also saw giant cucumbers, studied coral breathing in and out and swam over a 3-foot moray eel that I first mistook for a braided rope, and then freaked out a little. Small yellow fish, large purple fish, tiny black-and-white striped anemones, I finned my way through thousands of irridescent slivers of blue — it felt like an underwater Disneyland-ish acid trip. What was that 10 yards away? A giant F-ing creature. Was I hallucinating? It looked like the back of a small whale, creamy in color with a splattering of darker age spots like that which dots the face of Art Linkletter.
From my underwater view, it seemed to have poked its nose up along the top of the water.
I quickly stuck my head out of the water and tugged off my mask. There was nothing anywhere; I spun in a circle, put my mask back on and swam in the direction I last saw it. Had I been snorkeling for so long that I’m beginning to imagine dolphins or whales? The creature was huge, the size of a sofa, and then I came upon its shimmering body again.
Eureka.
Well, I was assured nothing in the water would hurt me unless I touched a lionfish, and this was not a lionfish, so I followed and swam almost alongside until the dugong swam faster and out to sea.
And this is how I ended up in Japan. Swimming with a dugong. Well, it’s what could have happened if I didn’t have the good sense to pull back. Sometimes you find something else when you’re on a mission that takes you off track and pulls you in a different direction, and that’s typically just as well, and it might even be better. The staff tells me I am fortunate and that most people who come to Havannah Harbor in Vanuatu will never see a dugong.
The American on Suicide Watch and Clownfish in Vanuatu
Three blood-curdling screams should be enough for one day in Vanuatu. It’s a reflex, and I can’t help it. I suspect the staff is used to hearing such noises. It could be a guest falling off the cliff to her death, or somebody getting knifed in the gut or a roof caving in but we all know what guests in Vanuatu scream about, and it’s none of those things.
Perhaps I should clarify and say guests who aren’t from Australia. Those Aussies, they’re tough. And it’s probably not guests from Asia because they eat stuff some of us would rather not even think about much less drop live into our mouths. If I had to guess, I’d say it would be Americans and probably those from Great Britain.
First, I nonchalantly opened my 12-foot tall door and felt something fall on my arm. Casually glancing down, I discovered it was a gecko! A Bob Fosse flattened Gumby creature. No thinking, just screams and flinging my arm about so hard I’m astonished I didn’t rip it out of its socket. The gecko landed in the corner, behind a tall and heavy ceramic vase filled with swords made out of bamboo. I grabbed an umbrella and tried to coax the critter outdoors. Instead, the gecko ran into the vase.
I couldn’t lift the vase, so I laid it on its side and rolled it to the doorway and then shoved it outside. Once I saw the gecko had departed, I set the vase right side up but I could not maneuver it back inside. Oh, well, the Havannah staff will wonder what it’s doing under my canopy, shake their heads and say silly American on suicide watch.
That’s what my husband says they are probably thinking about me because I am a married woman who is spending Christmas and New Years on an island by herself in a foreign country. In their minds, there is only one reason a woman would do this and that’s because she’s getting ready to kill herself.
But not before I look up clownfish and go snorkeling in Vanuatu to find them. They live in families with a hierarchy. Victoria shared this fact, and I checked it out. And some of them do look exactly like Nemo. They rank in size according to their place in the family, which is always headed by a female. Not only that, but they can’t grow bigger unless one of them dies, kind of like those nesting Russian dolls, they each are a certain size in direct proportion to each other.
The astonishing thing is when the top clownfish dies, if the next clownfish in line is a male, the male must turn into a female before assuming leadership. And the sex change is not reversible. I am woman, hear me roar!
I was considering snorkeling around the harbor today when it started to rain. Instead, I cleaned up my villa, picked up an empty wine glass and carried it to the sink. More shrieks. At first I thought it was residue from the Shiraz but no, it was a giant beetle. He must have flown into the glass because he was so big that if he tried to climb up the side he would knock it over. He just sat there, lapping up Shiraz, and I could see a contented smile on its face. Either that or he had drowned.
Whipping my mini-bar menu over the glass, I carefully carried him outside and deposited his body in my neighbor’s yard. Go, be friends with somebody else, I whispered. Then, tonight, just as I was returned from a 90-minute full body massage and settled on my sofa to watch the sun set, I spotted an even larger gecko scamper across my iPod stereo. Third loud shriek in one day. Nobody came running.
I guess they figure housekeeping will find my dead body, and that’s soon enough at The Havannah. Everything can wait until the next day. Like snorkeling the harbor to find clownfish in Vanuatu.
