(written on February 22nd from notes taken previously)
You know how sometimes you try to be careful, and all your efforts just fail miserably?
😅
Well, that happened this morning.
Early in the morning, I got up to use the bathroom, and I was so slow and so careful undoing the loud latch to the door of our little dorm tent.
And then, just when I thought I had done a fabulous job of being about as quiet as humanly possible, I think it was my day pack, smacked the latch lever as I turned, and whack!
😶
[sigh]
Dang it.
I headed out for the morning, just slightly after the sun broke the horizon above Sunrise Beach, snapping a few pictures with the last of the picturesque lighting.
I spent some time lying in the hammock trying to make some journaling progress.
Then, shortly into the breakfast period, I wandered over, meeting up and chatting with Carrie, as I ate a large breakfast (an omelette tailored to my order, as well as a whole bunch of breakfast-bar type foods that you’d normally see at any kind of a hotel with a breakfast option).
Carrie was excited about the grouper that I’d seen, and so we had planned to go snorkeling together this morning, so after eating breakfast, I got myself all packed up, put my pack underneath some foliage on the beach (as it was threatening rain), and then headed out to snorkel with Carrie.
We had a great little time snorkeling, despite not seeing the grouper this time.
We were actually out there for a good little while before Carrie got tired and needed to come in.
I thought about making one last trip out (going down reef to the next point over), but I got to chatting with a young lady from I forget which country (England, maybe?) who was in Fiji with her family and had just been accepted to a university in Florida, and that ate up the last of my time.
The Resort staff were going around letting everyone know that a storm was coming in, and there was a good chance that the people in the dorms were going to be upgraded to bungalows for safety.
I, of course, was on my way to a completely different resort, though I would have loved to have stayed.
[sigh]
Just missed it. 🙃
And then the rain came.
And boy did it come! I grabbed my pack and dropped it off on one of the tables inside, and then being the foolish, look-at-me person I can sometimes be 😅, went out to play in the rain.
With my phone. 😬
I didn’t really think much of it because my phone was in my pocket.
But my phone thought a lot about it.
But that was sort of the problem. It thought and thought but didn’t tell me it was thinking.
Why do I say that? Well, my phone was working just fine after getting wet while inside my pocket. I was only having the normal issues of having a wet screen, where your finger can’t quite do what you’re trying to do, because the phone screen is sort of freaking out as the water creates phantom touches.
But I was able to do what I needed with a little bit of extra patience and effort, take pictures, etc.
Periodically, the AI assistant would randomly turn on, but I didn’t really think anything of it… wet screen. Whatever.
The staff members sang us a goodbye song, and then, though there had been some talk about the possibility of the boat not even stopping if the storm was bad enough, we did end up heading out (in a downpour 🙃) to the little covered motorboat that took us out to the catamaran.
On the catamaran, originally had my pack with me up on the top deck in the rain with me (by that point, I had put my phone in my pack to keep it out of the rain) before putting it below.
I spent a good little while hanging out on the top of the catamaran in the middle of the rainstorm, wind blowing hard enough to make the rain hurt a bit on my face, but it was still quite enjoyable, though I was, perhaps unsurprisingly, the only person up on the top in the rain. 🙃
I do love rain, and how often are you going to get the opportunity to stand on the top of a catamaran in the middle of the Pacific Ocean at high speed with a storm spraying rain and probably sea mist on you? 😁
After a good little while up top, I headed down below and started chatting with a Belgian couple who had been on Barefoot Manta with me but whom I hadn’t gotten to know while there.
They were in their early 30s, I think, he a neurologist and she a psychiatrist.
Great couple. 😊
We chatted for quite a long time, about all sorts of things (they asking questions about American politics and such). I think we chatted pretty much the entire rest of my ride on the ship, pretty much from the time I came down from up top, all the way to when I disembarked at Blue Lagoon Resort.
Up to that point, I had been able to use my phone with just a few wet-screen annoyances. But then… apparently I had let the screen be wet for too long, as water seeped inside around the screen into the internals of the phone, causing the same issue I had last time when I dropped the phone in the ocean.
The power button stopped working.
I could do anything I wanted with the phone, as long as it had nothing to do with the power button. The screen was on, and it was staying on, and there was nothing I could do about it, nor dared I.
Ugh.
Really!?!?
All caused by some attention-seeking stupidity.
I didn’t need to dance in the rain. Sure, I love being out in the rain, but my motivation was mostly for attention.
Play stupid games. When stupid prizes. 😅
The rain stopped before we got to the Blue Lagoon Resort, but that didn’t temper the enormous letdown I felt upon arrival. 😕
I think before we had even gotten off our little rowboat and on to the beach, I was already pining for Barefoot Manta.
This place was so big.
Ugh 😝
There were little buildings absolutely everywhere, like a little suburbia packed on a small island cove.
Not to mention, the homie, family ambiance at Barefoot Manta was lost in this more business-like, more machine-like resort.
The patron housing was nice looking, but just so… crowded. And if you took a wrong turn, you’d end up in what kind of felt like the slums. 😬
Oh, how I longed to be back at Barefoot Manta. 😞
In texting with my sister Heather, I mentioned to her that I felt like I was going from a 9.5 out of 10 to a 3.5. 😅
And this resort was more expensive. 🙃
[sigh]
First world problems. 😅
I was grateful to still be able to eat lunch, having been a tad concerned that I wouldn’t be able to because we arrived mid afternoon, but that wasn’t a problem at all. Everything was arranged such that lunch was still available for me. 🙏
I asked an older couple (probably late ’50s/early ’60s?) if I could join them at their table, and they said I could.
Johannes and Christine from Austria–wonderful people. 😊 We chatted about a whole host of things before parting ways for the night.
I spent a fair amount of time sitting on an outdoor couch under a pavilion. I forget exactly what I was doing, but I know that I was a little anxious about my phone.
After sitting there for a while, a young German man named Michael came over, and we chatted for a bit. We started talking about something that was super interesting to him that he wanted to talk more about (that I can’t remember what was at this point 🙃), but his wife was super stressed about something, so he apologetically left to go help her with whatever it was that she was stressed about.
Like Barefoot Manta, the main reason that I chose the Blue Lagoon Resort was for the snorkeling. In the research I had done, the snorkeling got rave reviews.
So I wandered over to the sports equipment center, which told me I needed to have the fins back by 5:00, and it was like 4:00 (Barefoot Manta didn’t give you any usage restrictions 🙃), and then I headed out to snorkel, and… well…
9.5 to 3.5? 😅
Maybe 2.5? 🙃
There was only a teeny tiny area where we were permitted to snorkel, and, pairing the super cloudy water from the storm with the reality that massive sections of the reef were simply dead, it was a significantly underwhelming and rather disappointing experience. 😕
It wasn’t my worst, that was probably our failed efforts in Costa Rica when we weren’t able to see pretty much anything because there was pretty much zero visibility.
But it was a huge letdown after the amazing experience of Barefoot Manta, and it made me wonder why people would give it such incredible reviews when there were so many restrictions, and when so much of the reef was just… dead.
Maybe the reviews are coming from people who’ve never snorkeled anywhere at all, so this amazing because there’s nothing to compare it to?
Or maybe the reviews aren’t legitimate?
Oh, and there also isn’t much of a beach. Maybe a grand total of 20 feet of sand before water? 😆
[sigh]
I returned the fins, and continued fighting with my phone, texting my sister Heather a little bit. Unfortunately, in the middle of my conversation with her, my phone gave me a message saying that I no longer had a SIM card in it.
😬
Crap. If that continues, then I’m only going to be able to use the phone with Wifi. 😬
And for whatever reason, my messaging app only works with cell signal but won’t work with Wi-Fi signal.
It just gives a message saying No SIM in place of the “send” button.
I carried one of my charging bricks around with me to keep my phone charged, as, being unable to turn the screen off, the battery drained down pretty quickly.
I spent a good little while working on my journaling efforts while hanging out in a hammock by the huge dorm (I think maybe 18 travelers per dorm room? 😶).
Eventually, it was time for dinner. A lot of people were going to the new Japanese restaurant, as I guess it had a really great reputation, but I was wanting more authentic Fijian cuisine, so I just went to the regular dining hall and asked them to surprise me with something authentically Fijian.
What I got was very similar to what I had eaten for lunch at Barefoot Manta, some sort of fish cooked in lemon or lime juice.
Super tasty.
The waiter asked me if I’d be willing to sit with a young lady who was there in the dining area eating alone, and though I wasn’t feeling very social, I accepted, and went over to eat dinner with her.
Nice girl named Clara, a recent high-school graduate from Germany, I believe?
We ate dinner together and chatted for a good long time before we bid each other farewell for the evening.
By that time, I think it was pretty dark outside, and as I was walking down the path between buildings on my way back to my dorm, I passed an AC unit and had the idea of putting my phone next to the hot dry air blowing out of the unit.
One of the challenges in drying out your phone on a tropical island is the lack of dry air. 😅
But here was this great AC unit, partially obscured by a fence, just pumping out hot, dry air. 😊
At first, I just held my phone next to the blowing hot air for a while, feeling a little awkward for hanging out behind a small fence next to an AC unit. 🙃
Can we say prowler? 😅
Eventually, I rigged my phone to stand on the shoulders of my charging brick, so to speak (as the portion of the AC unit that was blowing hot air was a little bit off the ground, and I wanted the hot air blowing directly on my phone), and there I left my phone, drying, fingers crossed, for a good while.
I wandered around, staying relatively nearby, as I wanted to keep my phone and charging brick protected.
Eventually, after I don’t know how long of letting it heat up and hopefully dry out, I retrieved my phone and charging brick and went over and hung out again on the hammock by my dorm room.
While I was sitting on the hammock, one of the girls who had been at Barefoot Manta when I was there walked by, and somehow my broken phone came up, and she suggested I play a YouTube video that output a bunch of different frequencies that were designed to expel water from phones.
I figured that was probably designed to get water out of the speaker, but what could it hurt?
So I found the video and let it play while I wandered up and down the beach in the darkness of night.
Unfortunately, that didn’t fix anything. 😕
My last thought, as I entered my dorm room, late at night, lights already out, was to put my phone under my pillow so the heat from the continuous lit screen heat the phone and hopefully expel any residual water that might be inside.
So I put my headphones in and stuffed my phone under my pillow, fingers crossed, and crashed for the night.
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 