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I’ve been staring at the edge of the water
long as I can remember
Never really knowing why
I wish I could be the perfect daughter, but I come back to the water..
~ Moana
Usually, in my line of work, the day before I join the ship is the strangest and probably the most stressful. You get dropped off at the hotel in the dark – usually around 11 or later – and you have dinner alone in whatever restaurant is in the hotel, then you try to sleep for the few hours before the very early pick up time the next morning. It’s the limbo day, and it’s not usually any funny.
Never once – until today – have I had a travel day that actually lands me in daylight, with the time and the inclination to actually do something.
My flight was at the usual ridiculously early hour, but it landed me in Honolulu at 2 in the afternoon.
Time, I had time.
This…is very unusual.
Even more unusual is the fact that they put me up in a hotel I was actually familiar with, right in the center of town, this is extremely rare as usually we’re housed out near the airport and nothing is within walking distance. But there I was, in a familiar area right in the middle of Waikiki…
So I just started walking. I ended up finding a beautiful outdoor Italian café for a very late lunch (so late as to be dinner really). I’ve always loved patio cafes, perhaps especially when I’m alone. For once ,I was eating dinner on the company dime , all by myself, and actually relaxed about it. There is a rather a big difference between sitting alone in a hotel room and sitting in the sunshine watching palm trees. Plus the spaghetti was yummy.
And then I just started to…wander. I had a vague idea of going to the zoo, but by the time I finally made my way down there it was closed. It’s a long walk, so I ended up instead on a self-guided tour of various statues all hung with leis, and of banyan trees that look as though you could step inside them and lose yourself, emerging to find that hundreds of years have passed even though you swear you were only gone for a moment.
Eventually I did make my way to the beach, but not until the sun was starting to dip towards the horizon, painting the sand the kinds of vibrant colours you don’t see anywhere else. Photographs cannot capture that properly, they miss the colours, they miss the emotion, they don’t capture the way the waves sound or the smell of the luau going on behind you…and over the years doing this job I have come to realize something: the best moments in life are sometimes the ones that photographs can never capture.