by T. M. Boyd
“Two to the left…No, your other left.”
“Two to the left…No, your other left.”
Thwack.
“Ouch!”
The Ugly
Americans strike again. This time they
spent an interminable forty-five minutes piloting their kayak into mangrove
trees en route to a lagoon to view bioluminescent
dinoflagellates. And I had the
misfortune to be stuck behind them. And
then beside them in the lagoon as they complained to the tour guide. I didn’t escape them until the trip was over
and I was back in the bay in Fajardo.
We spent a
night touring the Bio
Bay in Fajardo, Puerto Rico, with Island
Kayaking Adventures. The trip should
have been a fun one, and in many respects it was. Heading out just before 9:00 PM to kayak
through a channel in a mangrove swamp to a lagoon where bioluminescent
dinoflagellates congregate. Then paddle
back to the bay in Fajardo
and do some shopping among the local artisans who had set up tables next to the
Bio Bay tour operators. For me, a kayak
trip beats drinks at a bar and dancing at a disco every time.
But it is hard to get through a
narrow channel when the kayak in front of you is perpendicular to the flow of
the water and has its nose buried in a tangle of mangrove branches. Repeatedly.
I should have known what to expect
when I perused our group for the evening and found a half a dozen older couples
that were extremely well preserved.
Retirement age, but looking much younger. The ladies, especially, had their hair
perfectly peroxided and styled. They had
to have escaped from the wrangler on their cruise ship, I’m just not sure
how…probably nagged the poor soul to death.
First they were concerned about the
security of leaving their shoes in a blue tub to sit on the beach while they
were out kayaking. Then they couldn’t
feel the darkness around them as we hit the channel in the mangrove swamp, and
spent the trip out and back being dribbled back and forth between the edges of
the channel like a basketball. They got
so turned around and fell so far behind the tour group, they lost sight of the
blue lights in front of them (every tour operator has a different color light
on their life jackets so that they can identify their tour members) and had to
have the tour guide bringing up the rear shine his flashlight on the channel in
front of them so they could see where they were going. And on one of the collisions, the woman I will
forevermore refer to as Abrasion Woman scraped her nose on a branch.
It would have been exhausting had
it not been so aggravating.
Then we got to the lagoon and they
could not figure out how to paddle their kayak alongside another. I finally had to grab Muttering Man’s paddle
and pull him in. Yes, I had to sit RIGHT
NEXT TO THEM during the lagoon lecture. And
when Miguel, the lead tour guide, told us to swish our hands and/or our paddles
in the water to get the dinoflagellates to luminesce, Muttering Man grumbled,
“Then why did you make us park side by side?”
But his grousing could not hold a
candle to his wife’s, Abrasion Woman’s, complaining to Miguel when she could
have been swishing with the rest of us.
I wish I were making up this exchange.
“Excuse me, young man.”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“During the journey out here I was
hit in the face by a branch and I now have an abrasion on my nose.”
Not a scratch. Not a cut.
Not a scrape. An abrasion.
I have to hand it to Miguel and the
other tour guides (Abe and Nave). They
were extremely conscientious about examining her abrasion and promising to get
her medical treatment as soon as they returned to the dock. They were so courteous and concerned that
they eventually got Abrasion Woman to back down and admit that her injury was
not severe enough to require such measures.
And the whole time this was going
on, her paddle was hitting me in the legs.
I so badly wanted to tap her on the shoulder and say, “Excuse me, but
your paddle is abrading my
shins. Would you move it, please?”
I can’t recall now why I
didn’t. I’m certain she never knew that her
paddle was assaulting me.
And therein lies the frustration
that the rest of the world has with the Ugly American – they are so swathed in privilege and
entitlement that they forget the world does not revolve around them. The Ugly American is absolute in his or her
belief that others should bend to accommodate them. The fact that the Ugly American is in someone
else’s home is irrelevant. Have they
never heard the phrase, “When
in Rome, do as the Romans do?”
I made the statement a few paragraphs
earlier about the Preserved Ones’ inability to feel the darkness around
them. What I meant by that was they had
absolutely no awareness of where they were or what was in their vicinity. The mangrove trees were home to any number of
insects and animals, including iguanas
and Puerto Rican boas,
and when any humans wandered too close to the trees, everything became hushed
and expectant. If you were paying
attention, you could literally feel the dark pressing back against you. And you knew to paddle away for a stroke or
two, which would take you back to the center of the channel. But Abrasion Woman and Muttering Man, as well
as most of their friends, could not perceive that. Apparently, in their minds, the branches and
animals should have given way to them.
They didn’t even have the sense to
look up. The trip in was cloudy, but the
cloud cover had lifted by the time we headed back. In many parts of the channel, the canopy was
open. If you looked up and could see
stars, you were in the center of the channel and clear of the mangroves. That seems so painfully obvious to me! But they were too busy demanding light from a
tour guide’s flashlight to look at
what they were asking the tour guides to illuminate. Tragic.
And embarrassing for those of us
who are not so self-absorbed but were a part of the tour group and associated
with them nonetheless. Miguel commented
to my friend how badly behaved our group was, and I am forced to agree. Even I couldn’t wait to flee from the cruise
ship escapees, and I had been looking forward to this particular tour for weeks.
The next time I am in Puerto Rico
(and I am definitely going back) I intend to take this tour again. And if there are any Ugly Americans in my
next tour group, I fear I may push them off their kayaks and into the channel. I have no doubt I will have made it to the
lagoon and back before they manage to scrabble back into their kayaks.
They’ll be too busy bickering and
complaining.
