With all the importation paperwork finished, we are just waiting for the container to get offloaded. I am more impatient than John. He is more satisfied just kicking back than me. I putter around, a little anxious unless I’m doing something. I write, clean up around the cabana, swim laps in the turtle pond and plow through my second book.
Friday morning after breakfast the palate with boat finally arrives. Jason,Wilbur’s son shows up in a grey truck with the palate in the back. We are stoked! We unload the box and take it apart with the drill gun that we bought in Hawaii. Even though John hasn’t used inflatable since he had a sailboat a few years ago, everything goes nice and easy. I inflate the boat using the foot pump, while John works on the motor. By early afternoon we are making test runs around the lagoon. We go for our first surf on our own. The waves are about head high and it’s windy as usual. It doesn’t matter though. We’ve got wheels!
Blood gushes over my lips and past my chin. It’s really warm. I sit up on my board, a wall of whitewash cascading towards me. I lift my left hand up to my face and feel a large hole, a gash. No time. Chest back on my board I rise up, arms extended like I’m doing a pushup and shove the nose of my board down through the water as deep as I can. At the moment I can push no further I place my right foot on the tail and sink the back of the board, trying to get underneath the wall of descending water. I am tossed through the washing machine and pop up, my hands gripping the board. Another broken wave in a wall of white wash is thundering down on me. I paddle south hard towards the channel.
Fuck!
A moment ago I was surfing, riding fun waves. I had dropped in on an overhead wave and as I trimmed down the line, it sectioned out in front of me. I fell into the whitewater.
WHRAM!
It happens so quick I don’t even see it, just feel the impact of a hard object. The nose of my surfboard. I know its bad.
I look down and blood is splattering red on the board, diluting clear into the water. I hope to God it’s not all the way through my lip leaving me with some weird quasi-harelip. I push my board down and through the white wash again. I come up again. John is paddling back out towards the lineup. I raise my arm; wave it, side to side, with big broad movements.
“I’m hurt.” I yell out, he looks me but can’t hear me through the roar of the waves and howl of the northeast trades.
“I’m hurt.” This time louder. I’m paddling and pointing to my face at the same time. Blood is gushing down my lip, over my chin and soaking into my rash guard. John gets it this time strokes hard towards the boat. I hear the motor gurgle to life. He unties from the mooring, swings the boat 180 degrees and heads towards me.
I hand John my surfboard and hoist myself up and over into the dingy, moving quickly.
“I cut my face. Don’t know how badly.” The words leap from my mouth. I reach up again to feel if it’s all the way through. All I feel is a deep chasm on the left side of my nose. My hands work themselves around to my lip. Everything is intact there. Whew. I exhale for just a moment.
“Lemme see it,” John says.
I’m peeling off my rash guard as I turn.
“Yep, you cut yourself pretty good.”
I don’t want to know anymore. Plastic surgery. Stitches. Scars. Hospital. Infections. Images swirl in my mind. I roll up my lycra rash guard and wrap it around my face, around my lip and underneath my nose. The blood stops flooding after a few seconds and I’m holding onto the rope on my side of the dinghy. The whole left side of my face aches. There’s a dull pain. Not sharp at all like I might have expected. I put my hat on my head and cinch down the draw cord. I’m breathing awkwardly through my mouth as the rash guard doubling as a bandage is so tight up under my nose that I have to gulp air through my mouth.
We turn the boat into the wind and smash through the incoming wind waves. Our little inflatable boat flies into the air and comes crashing down over each one. It’s jarring to the bone. I hold on tight as ride towards home.
Two hours later I am in the hospital getting sewn up by a very nonchalant doctor. The nurse dresses the wound and I walk out. There is no charge as this is a government hospital.
We pull out of the hospital parking lot and onto the road I see bigger, shinier hospital across the street. I ask Alpa, one of the workers from Nihco what that hospital is about.
“At that hospital, they charge you a lot of money,” he explains.
“Good. Drop me off here; I want to have my wound checked.”
I walk in and within a few minutes a Philipino doctor is looking at the sutures that the government doctor put in. He tells me he is going to re-suture the wound as the other doctor only put in two stitches and completely missed a deep gash beneath my nostril. Immediately I feel more comfortable. The doctor asks me if I have had a tetanus shot within the last ten years, if I am allergic to any medication, and how well the other hospital cleaned out the wound. The Doc patiently puts six stitches into my face and sends me on my way. He tells me to come back in five days to remove the stitches. The bill with antibiotics comes to $110. I’m happy to pay.
I wake up in the morning with my face pounding and swollen. John has left early to go surf. I hang out in the cabana all day icing my face, reading, and sweating. I can’t go out into the sun. I convince John to buy a blender and I spend my days making papaya-banana smoothies and reading and catching up on movies I haven’t seen. The guys and girls around Nihco pay me visits every few hours to check on me. People stare at me as the walk past our open door or as I sit on the patio under the thatch roof. I smile or say hi and they always smile or say hi back.
I’ve always thought one could tell a tremendous amount about a culture in the way they stare. It is all in the eyes. In
And of course, as I sit waiting for my face and nose to heal, the biggest swell of the season rolls in. I know it must be really good because John doesn’t get back until late in the afternoon. He has stories of thick open barrels easily bigger than double overhead. A few minutes later the Aussies roll in. Jaime, one of the Aussie guys broke his board in half. He says three other guys snapped their boards too. They have photographic evidence and my jaw drops at the size and ferocity of the wave. On a big swell like this the wave does its best Teauhopu imitation. It feels like I missed the biggest game of the year, sitting on the bench.
The next day I can’t handle it anymore and decide to go out in the boat and watch. I put on my surf helmet and pull down the sun shade to protect my healing face from the water and the sun. The twenty minute dinghy ride out the reef pass is always really wet. We wear our raincoats not to keep us dry, that is impossible, but to keep the wind from giving us a chill.
We pull up to the mooring and tie off. The waves are smaller today but still solid. Nobody is out and the tide is high. John paddles out. I sit in the boat with the video camera shooting John on wave after wave. He gets a couple of nice barrels. An hour later a boat from the surf camp shows with about eight guys on it. The tide is dropping and the surf is getting hollower. Soon the lineup is crowded with almost twenty surfers and five boats. Beautiful and cavernous barrels are rolling through. Boards are snapping in half on blown takeoffs and inside on the reef. Soon John is paddling back to the boat. He was able to surf it alone for about an hour and a half and although the waves have gotten a lot better, it’s just not the same when you are dealing with nineteen other competent surfers in the water.
“I got you on the video cam in a couple of barrels,” I say as he paddles up to the boat.
“Yeah, I broke my board,” he says.
He hands me his surfboard and it is buckled in the middle.
“That sucks man.” I pull the board and lay it into the bow of the boat. As I look out towards the waves another set marches in firing beautiful cylinders over the reef.
“Yep, time to go get some resin and try and fix it.” John climbs into the boat. He stuffs a few bananas into his mouth.
We make the rounds from boat to boat, doing the surf talk thing.
The conversations blend into one.
“I had the best session of my life yesterday.”
“Did you see that photo of you dropping in?”
“I must have gotten twenty barrels.”
“What happened to you face mate?”
“That Japanese guy was charging yesterday. I want to go shake his hand.”
“I snapped my board.”
It’s the old shoulda been here yesterday routine. I’m over it. My face hurts and I’m ready to go back to the pad. We finally untie from the mooring and fight the wind for the whole bouncy, wet ride home.
I’m laid up for the week. While everyone else is out surfing, I get to hang out at the cabana with a swollen face, staying out of the sun. I don’t feel like doing anything except chilling out. I read all the books I brought with me. I go into town more than normal to check email and get on the internet. Time moves in that languid manner of the tropics.
On Thursday Wilbur the owner of Nihco lends me one of his cars and I drive out to the Hospital to get the stitches removed. It only takes a few minutes.
“When can I go surfing again?” I ask the doctor.
“Oh, you can already go surfing,” he says.
My face and nose still feel as someone hit me upside the head with a two by four. The surf has fallen into the flat category, so it doesn’t really matter anyway. In the evening Wilbur, Jeffrey, Alpa, Joe and a neighbor shows up to drink Sakau. Sakau preparation is really cool. A flat triangular rock is put on top of a couple of old tires filled with coconut husks. The Sakau root is placed on the flat rock, and three or four people sit around the Sakau rock pounding the root into a pulp with rocks they hold in their hands. The best Sakau rocks make a sound like a bell when they are struck. It sounds like music.
Once the root is pounded into a pulp, water is poured over it. It transforms into a pasty brown sludge. The brown sludge is laid onto several strips of sappy hibiscus bark. The bark gets wrapped around the sludgy mixture, and is wrung into a coconut cup. The result is a slimy coffee and cream colored beverage with an earthly aroma. As the slime falls down the throat the mouth is left with a slight numbed feeling. Soon, that numb feeling spreads throughout the entire body. It feels pretty good! The group drinking goes from boisterous, to quieter. Soon everyone is sitting around staring off into space as the Sakau cup goes around and around.
Although my stitches came out, my face and nose are still pretty sore. It hurts to smile or laugh or make facial expressions where I move my lip. Luckily there is no temptation as the surf because the surf is flat. I wait three more days.
On Monday John’s buddy Russell arrives from
In the morning we head out to P-Pass. It is my first surf since I got injured and I am really looking forward to getting back in the water. The surf is small, chest to head high. The northeast trade winds are blowing about 20 knots. Looking out the ocean is white capped as far as the eye can see. At P-Pass the peak stands up on the outside reef, windblown and chopped, but as soon as it hits the inside reef section the wave transforms itself into a clean little monster. We are the only guys out and we each get many waves. I’m feeling a little clumsy but it feels good to back in the water making some turns.
Three days later and we have been surfing everyday. Yesterday and the day before we actually got a nice head high wind swell, so it has been fun. The swell forecast says Friday were supposed to get a 6-10 foot swell. Hopefully the magic will happen. Hopefully I’ll be ready.
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