<< Continued From Part 1

The long, slender beach unfurls next to the posh resort my family and I stayed in – now, a series of gutted remains.

As I run my eyes along the blackened, weather-beaten skeleton of the hotel, every single usable (or saleable, or meltable) item picked from the carcass, I remember it when it still had its skin of whorled wood and gauzy curtains and tile. I remember the undersea murals that swept dramatically around the walls behind the registration desk, now spray-painted, peeling and punched.


I remember running my hands along the hundred-thousand seashells tiled painstakingly along the walls, most of which are now either absent or shattered. I remember the sound of steel drums coming from the pool bar as I would lie alone on the beach, picking out individual stars, feeling small. Feeling far from the sky.

That was a long time ago, of course. Very soon, the sky is exactly where I’m going.

-----

The beach has a beached ferry far on one end, gutted and drenched in graffiti. Rusted holes pock the sun-bleached hull. Someone tells me that the ferry used to be the ruined hotel’s proprietary vehicle – the one we rode once to get here, when it was sparkling white and crewed by cheery men in pressed uniforms. The proprietor had been using it to carry loads of drugs along with the hotel guests. He messed up a shipment. He did not survive the consequences, nor did his family.

When I fly over it later, on my first final approach, I wonder how dramatic the boat's final hours were.

A couple of us hire a small boat to check out the surrounding neighborhood of water and scattered islets.

We find an island that only exists at low tide, its resident crabs scrambling around in confectionary-looking stolen shells.

The sky overhead reflects in the tidepools, waiting.

-----

The first day unfolds lazily, putting its loads into skies stirring with cloud.

Some loads barrel up to full altitude, while others slide along under the cloudbase and trickle jumpers out for hop-n-pops. There are freeflyers, trackers, belly groups and a whole lotta wingsuits jostling around manifest. The dripping heat is making me unwilling to don my new Squirrel Sumo today, so I’m relieved when Roberta Mancino, here as an organizer, snags me for a four-way freefly with herself, Brett Kistler and Igor Pankevitch.

We file into the military Casa we’re jumping from. As the wingsuits slot themselves daintily into the web-backed seats against the sidewalls, the army flight crew cranes their necks for a look, military game-faces firmly in place. While the plane rumbles across the island to the other side of the runway, there’s a flurry of hands adjusting PFDs and fussing with inlets. When the aircraft slams into full speed, we’re not ready for it. We rattle into each other like a boxful of dolls, righting ourselves just in time to see the last of the island disappearing from the side-door view.

These are not jump pilots, and we’re about to run out the back door of this thing over the open ocean.

The green light turns on ages before a good spot. We mill at the windows, looking at endless blue all around us, a handful of elfin islands shrugging green shoulders nonchalantly over a tie-die of shallow sandbars. Finally, I can see Contadora from my side-door perch, its long, slender strands of beach outlining what looks like the laughing head of a fancifully-drawn fish. Around it, the endless panel of sea beneath the clouds looks like a deep-blue, misplaced sky.

I smile widely in my helmet and click my visor.

It’s game time.

 

Continued in Part 3 >>