Chapter 8
Touring the Island
By the time we exited the zoo, we were hungry. Larry said there was a small diner that served shrimp and steak down to our right on the street around from our hotel.
“How do you know all these places, Larry? Were you here on a job?” I asked.
“Yeah, I had to come down here years ago. The guy skipped bail and I had to fly out here to track him down. You can’t go far on an island.”
We turned in early, and as I sat on my bed reading my book, I fell asleep. During the night when I awoke, I put the book away and drifted back to dreamland.
Peacocks calling out like a banshee through the darkened forest misted by fireflies. Hobnobby ran passed me into a small shack. I turned the knob on the gray wooden door and a nisser came off in my hand and blinked his eyes at me. “Is that my dog I hear?”
I woke up to daylight flickering through the drawn edges of my open window and could hear some dog barking from the street below. Looking out of my window, I could see a dog owner walking his brown and white beagle hound that had spotted another dog walker passing by on the opposite side of the road. I hurried up to dress and gathered my toiletries to put back into my large purse. With my small suitcase in tow, I caught up with my friends heading down to the open-air café to have our breakfast there.
“Hmm, here’s an interesting story,” Larry remarked as he began to read the news off of his phone.
“I don’t want to hear any news, bad or good. We are only going to think about having a good time,” Trisha said, touching his arm.
“I’ll agree to that,” I added.
Larry, giving up against two women, suggested we walk over to the beach to watch the waves roll toward shore. I noticed a rainbow-colored sailboat drifting on the edge of the horizon. At that moment, I was in a peaceful place.
Prior to our eleven o’clock boarding time, we made our last bathroom break and took our hotel bus to the Port of Entry for the Swedish Star. There we stood in line holding our ship pass cards we had received by mail in our hands and our driver’s licenses. In my excitement, I almost dropped my I.D. card. Our line crept along until we were able to walk through security before heading upstairs to embark. I wish the slower people in front of me would move faster but then I discovered what was holding up the entry into the ship.
At the ship’s on-ramp, the photographers solicited their services before we could board. They wanted to take our pictures. Later, if we wanted to, we could purchase them as a souvenir. A beautiful Hawaiian lady put a flowered lei over my head and Trisha’s. Larry got a seashell lei. All I remember was some hunk of a Hawaiian native standing next to me against the blue background behind me. The photographer explained to me how a Hawaiian scene would be added to the photo’s background for my finished picture. The native couple stepped away after the photo shoot and we moved on.
We followed the long line of passengers on the ship’s on-ramp that would take us up to the fifth deck. I looked to my right and left side amazed at the enormity of our vessel. I read somewhere the length was 965 feet long and held 3500 people including the ship’s crew.
The three of us entered the main lobby and Larry directed us passed the greeters toward the elevators. The color and dazzling designs of parrots, flowers, and palm trees were embedded everywhere on the walls and the stain glassed ceilings. I found the ambiance filled with various images along with the Hawaiian music flooding the lobby, and yet I remained eager to discover what was next around the corner.
Our rooms are located on the tenth deck. I wanted to make sure we had balconies. By the time we arrived at our cabins, Larry and Trisha’s delivered luggage sat in front of their cabin door. Since I had my suitcase in tow, I went ahead, inserted my passkey into my door lock, and entered my room a few doors down from theirs. Then a deafening shrill alarm sounded.
“What’s that?” I yelled toward Larry, popping back into the hallway.
“Muster drill, get your life jacket and we follow the signs printed here,” my friend shouted back, pointing at a placard nailed to the wall. Trisha ducked under his arm wearing her life vest.
“Look inside your cabin closet,” she yelled to me.
Muster drills are required before the ship sets sail to instruct the passengers what to do if the ship is in danger. Many people walked through the hallway as I reached up on the top shelf of my closet to retrieve the orange life jacket. The alarm continued to blare in a pulsating rhythm. Hurrying out and locking my door, we followed the signs and assistants who directed us to the stairwell. We are not to take the elevators as they are locked down during this safety gathering.
The attendants told us to go down to the sixth deck. The crowd of people swarmed around us as we walked down the stairs until stewards herded us into the main seating area of the theater. All of a sudden, the beeping alarms stopped. I swear I could still hear them in my head. There we waited as the steward in front gave us a lesson on how to fasten our life vests. After a half an hour of this procedure, the crew allowed us to leave.
“Well, that was exciting. I forgot they were going to do that,” I said, unlatching the life jacket strap around my chest.
“Better to be safe than sorry,” Trisha remarked.
We took the next elevator up to our deck
