Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
no surprise that somewhere in the middle of this ring of fire in the Pacific there would be
this submarine activity.
One afternoon, not long after the quake incident, a new cruising boat arrived in the bay. It
was unusually late in the season to be arriving at the hurricane hole that we were in. The
boat was positively decrepit, to put it kindly. The owner and his wife and young ten-year-
old son were from Spain and were evidently desperately poor. This was one of the most
unkempt boats I had yet seen out cruising. They apparently had had quite some voyage on
the way from Spain to Tonga.
Gavin, in his usual friendly and nonjudgmental way, soon befriended this little family on
their tramp yacht. I don't really know if this was because the young woman Maria was
charmingly good-looking or what, but he would come back to Déjà vu with great stories of
how this poor couple and their charming young boy had left Spain in a boat as a last ditch
effort to travel and escape the poverty they were mired in.
They were horribly poor, God knows how they had acquired their boat or how they could
afford the costs involved, but they did. We learnt a lot of lessons here. One of the most ob-
vious ones, which I could relate to, was that if you were passionate about doing something,
anything, it could be done. It is astounding how a positive attitude will get you the things
you truly desire; it almost feels sometimes that someone is smiling down and favoring a
striving soul. It reminded me of the old saying, “God helps those who help themselves (but
God help those who are caught helping themselves),” as some comic had later tacked on.
The young boy, Raoul, whose mother and father believed in love first and all else will fol-
low, was a delightful lad. We never saw him without a bright smile on his nut-brown Ro-
many face. He had short, curly, black hair and bright, mischievous, black eyes and charm-
ing, impish, boy features and a sinewy body. He was usually bare chested and wearing his
only pair of raggedy red floral shorts that flopped around his knobbly knees, his feet always
bare and dusty from the dirt roads. His outgoing positive spirit was contagious and it was
not too long before everybody on the island recognized and loved him. His broken Eng-
lish was a delight to the ear, you could not help laughing with amusement at his, “Too very
bloody wonderful!” when asked how he was, delivered with flashing smile and direct gaze.
Soon, he had a fleet of kids his own age following him around in delight, and he became a
familiar fixture.
It turned out that Raoul's parents were great entertainers. His father, Giorgio, was a very
fine guitarist, while Maria was a very accomplished flamenco dancer who would make you
think you were in Spain watching her spin and twirl, clicking her castanets with such speed
and accompanied by Giorgio's passionate flamenco playing.