the left hand canal of venice
The small propeller plane rolled to a stop. The terminal for this airport was an open air structure with a corrugated tin roof. Security consisted of a single xray machine in one corner of the building. The passengers waiting to board had chosen to line up and run their bags through the machine. They easily could have exited the terminal onto the runway from anywhere else in the structure other than the security corner. Presumably someone might have objected to this.
From the airport it was a short walk to the beach where ferry boats ran passengers across to the island I was headed for. The ferries were large wooden trimarans with spindly outriggers. These waterstrider-reminiscent vessels were built by hand with minimal tools right on the beach. tree branches and random lengths of lumber were used to brace the keel and ribs and act as the building jig while the vessels were planked and developed enough structure to hold their own weight. Once finished, they were rolled on logs down to the ocean.
The island was south of Manila in the Philippines. I had traveled there for the excellent scuba diving in the area. Recently having gotten scuba certified, I was getting in some good practice due to the area's laid back approach to safety. The local dive shops were perfectly happy for me to tag along on dives to deeper depths than I was licensed for. They also wouldn’t bat an eye if I got in longer dives by ignoring the very reasonable safety precaution of always surfacing with a predetermined margin of air left over.
When not diving I was consuming healthy quantities (purely a volume measurement) of gin and exploring the island on foot. However, I had been looking for an opportunity to rent a motorbike to explore farther afield. That opportunity came when one of the patrons I was chatting with at an open air pool hall offered to rent me his scooter. We agreed upon a price and I arranged to meet him the following morning to collect the vehicle.
Around the middle of that following day, while jostling the scooter along a narrow dirt road, somewhat disoriented, I came upon an intersection and slowed down to take my bearings. A young man hopped up who was sitting next to a motorbike parked in the shade. “Are you looking for the crystal caves?” he asked? I wasn’t and hadn’t been aware of their existence. “Yes,” I said. Money exchanged hands for his guiding services and he hopped on his bike and led the way down a narrowing track. Eventually we had to leave our bikes and continue on foot.
Walking along we began to hear nearby gunfire. My guide seemed unfazed, and the gunfire continued but the sound diminished as we moved farther away into the jungle. Upon reaching the cave, the young man turned on a flashlight he had been carrying, and we began to down-climb, scrambling over slippery rocks into the darkness.
A ways in, we came upon the crystals, jutting down from the ceiling and up from the floor. We continued along, looking up at the crystals, shining in the illumination of the flashlight. Suddenly my guide stopped and abruptly shown the flashlight at my feet. Less than a yard away, a snake lay curled. Black with bright electric blue stripes. “Careful” my guide said “Most poisonous snake”
I was visiting a friend who was working at a maritime museum in Venice. I had taken a short flight down from the Netherlands where I had been working in Scheveningen.
My friend had an apartment in the neighborhood of Giudecca and a small wooden venetian row boat with a six horse outboard engine that the museum had lent her as a means of commuting around the city and lagoon.
My friend hadn’t yet driven her loaner vessel extensively and had been opting to take public boat transportation around the city. Having worked driving small launch boats for several years previously, and generally being somewhat arrogant about my helmsmanship skills, I decided to take this once in a lifetime opportunity (for a non-venetian) to explore Venice by water. Acting as boat chauffeur and general purpose equipment carrier for my friend for the week, we roamed the city and surrounding lagoon documenting various specimens of traditional venetian boat construction. I’ve been told since that there are special permits and licenses that you are supposed to have to pilot a boat through the canals of Venice.
Throughout the week, I had observed that vessels traversed the canals following a traffic flow pattern of predominantly staying to the right hand side. I had dealt with all other possible right of way mistakes that I could have made by piloting our small craft in a manner that kept us out of everyone's way. This strategy was quite successful and aside from nearly swamping our vessel in the wake of a bigger boat out in the lagoon, and getting yelled at for passing within perhaps a hundred yards of a floatplane dock where some presumably wealthy, powerful, and possibly famous people where deplaning into gorgeous varnished mahogany runabouts, the week passed without any maritime mishaps.
Until a day late in the week, we found ourselves motoring along the right hand side of one of the bigger canals. We were about to turn off this onto a perpendicular side canal.
I was running close to the buildings to stay clear of the larger vessels. Upon reaching our turn, a swung to starboard, cutting the corner close in an attempt to continue to stay out of everyone's way. As we rounded into the new canal, we were faced by a string of three beautifully varnished wooden taxi boats motoring towards us, all running along the left hand side. With seconds to spare before a collision with the lead taxi, I tucked even closer to starboard and threaded the needle between the gorgeous taxi boats and the stone wall of the building along the side of the canal. We slid through this opening with mere inches to spare on either side. This maneuver was met by a classic tirade of Italian shouting from the drivers of the beautiful taxis, unintelligible to me but presumably profane. As I reached the end of the string of three boats and made good my escape from the predicament, the last driver turned and shouted after us “you drive on the left! In this canal only!”
My neighbors at the small motel were both French. “How are you at driving a scooter off-road?” one of them asked. They were inviting me along to a surf break that was a bit more rigorous of a scooter ride away than the spots we had been frequenting. But the ocean swell had shifted, if we still wanted to find good surf that day we needed to drive to a different side of the Balinese peninsula from where we were all staying.
With surfboards strapped to the sides of our 50cc scooters we turned off of the main road and bumped along a rocky path through the forest and then across a field of grazing cows before parking at the top of a cliff overlooking the ocean. From there, a set of stone steps cut into the cliff face led down to the water. The French guys told me that there were 500 stairs in the case.
The wave was big (for my skill level) overhead and a half or so in height, very hollow, and breaking on a rocky reef. The water was beautifully tropical and clear. These factors created a nerve-wracking situation; at the exact moment when you needed to spring to your feet, the crystal clear water would hit the precise focal length where the jagged rocks below would snap into sharp focus, displaying with perfect clarity exactly how precarious the position you had just put yourself in actually was.
I kept bailing out. Pulling back over the shoulder of the wave, hesitant of the consequences of a fall. My two french companions were both substantially better surfers than me. Every time I pulled out of a wave without catching it, I would call over to them, saying that I was in over my head and that I was going to return to the beach. They would shout encouragement. Telling me to give it one more try. Finally I paddled into a wave and committed. The wave curled up beneath me and I sprang to my feet, dropping down the face of the wave towards the submerged but perfectly visible rocks. I cut hard to the right, barely keeping my balance during the bottom turn and then rocketing back up the face of the wave. I executed several more turns up and down the face of this perfectly formed ocean beast and then peeled away over the shoulder as the wave tapered out around the corner of the reef. My friends cheered, the wave was, I think still to this day, the best I have ever ridden.
With renewed confidence and enthusiasm I paddle back to the lineup excited to try again. Soon, my chance came and I paddled to match speed with the next wall of water that rose up behind me. I popped to my feet and lost my balance, tumbling into the trough of the wave as it broke on top of me. In the tangle of whitewater I hit the reef feeling myself collide with sharp edges of the rock, cutting into my back. I held my breath and rode out the rest of the hold down, trying my best to protect my head as I continued to tumble. Eventually I surfaced and dragged myself onto my surfboard, paddling laterally out of the path of the next advancing wave. Once clear, I felt my back and found blood. I paddled towards my surfing companions. “I fell on the reef” I said, “I’m bleeding” “Get out of the water!” they called out “there are sharks!”