Tortugas Travels

I ran down to the shore, looking for someone who might be awake, but no luck. By dawn I was running up to people trying to buy a soda for 10 dollars. One of the boaters coming ashore in a rowboat took pity and gave me two Cokes.

I got married several years later, and I persuaded my wife to fly out and camp with me-and an extra-large cooler. We pitched a tent on the same spot by the moat wall. To this day, we remember three things in particular from that trip.

First, the noisy, rickety boat that approached the island and sent all the wealthy yachtsmen racing for shore in dinghies and Zodiacs, loaded down with bottles of Johnnie Walker and Chivas Regal. My wife and I trotted to the dock completely baffled. Turned out the beat-up boat housed a band of crusty, wildcat shrimpers that was like a motorcycle gang gone to sea. They swapped giant garbage bags of jumbo shrimp over the railing for the expensive booze, which they uncapped and started chugging on the spot.

Second memory: The wicked midnight storm that sent nylon dome tents rolling across the beach like tumbleweeds. We weighted down our own tent with coconuts and went to investigate the racket from the harbor, where collision alarms were going off as the wind tore boats loose from their anchorage.

Final memory, the next morning. We awoke and crawled outside. Leading up to our tent from the water were what looked like small tank tracks. They were actually flipper tracks, left where a loggerhead turtle had climbed out of the Gulf of Mexico in the middle of the night as we slept, looking for a spot to lay her eggs.