Today started out so perfectly. In fact, at one point this morning, I told G that this was the kind of day that a person was lucky to experience even a handful of times in their life.
Then it all changed in a minute.
We ate breakfast and were on the very first guest tender to Mystery Island. It was a gloriously beautiful day, another day of clear skies and low humidity, in the high 70s. We packed for a beach day, but were uncertain exactly how the day would unfold. In the past, we’ve hired a boat for a snorkel trip, snorkeled on our own, walked around the island and had lunch there.
From Wikipedia:
Inyeug island, also known as Mystery Island, is a small uninhabited island in Tafea Province of Vanuatu in the Pacific Ocean. "Inyeug" means "Small Island" in a local language.
Inyueg is also called Mystery Island by the cruise ships that regularly visit the island.
The island was visited by Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip in 1974, with the name "Mystery Island" coined to generate a more interesting headline of the report of the visit.
The island has an area of about 15.9 hectares and is located only 1 km south of the island of Aneityum. Inyeug is flanked to the west and south by the coral Intao Reef, that extends further south, and, albeit submerged, is the southernmost point of Vanuatu.
The island has the airport for the neighboring inhabited Aneityum Island. The airport is basically a grass airstrip, which gets small plane flights twice weekly from Port Vila via Tanna Island.
Back to me…
We’ve actually been on the island when that twice weekly flight landed, deposited packages and a few passengers, loaded up and left again. When you see the pics of nearby Aneityum Island, you can see why they used Mystery Island for a landing strip.
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| Aneityum Island |
We chose to first walk around the island, about a 40 minute stroll, but were so preoccupied taking after photo after photo of the beautiful water in a hundred shades of blue that we finally just settled in the shade under a palm tree to savor the scenery while there were few people around. In fact, we slept on the beach for a bit (I put my ear buds in to listen to an audiobook and that’s better than taking an Ambien for me).
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| My view |
The sound of people yelling finally woke me up and I looked up to see two women yelling for a lifeguard and emergency help. I looked out onto the shallow water to see if I could see anyone struggling- I’m not a lifeguard but I am a strong swimmer- and didn’t see anyone. But when I looked slightly to my left about 50 feet away I saw a small group forming around someone on the edge of the beach.
A fellow guest came running by saying she was a nurse and it didn’t take long before l could see her doing chest compressions and I couldn’t believe this was happening. G woke up and was soon running over (he was an instructor) but at that same time life guards started to arrive with an AED and soon after that the ship’s medical personnel started showing up and…they all worked so hard for a very long time but to no avail.
I was just glued to my spot on the beach trying to pray the Hail Mary (it’s what we Catholics do at times like these) and I couldn’t remember the words. I’ve prayed a million Hail Marys in my life and I couldn’t get past the first two lines. Over and over again…it wasn’t working. I was shook, and even more so when a couple of guests near me were talking about their plans for the evening. Right there, within sight of it all. And another took a photo. Cold.
We eventually left to return to the ship- that joy I had felt just an hour or two earlier was obviously gone, and it seemed wrong at that point to have any more fun.
When we got back to the ship and had walked up the stairs to Deck 4 from the tender pontoon, I could see the hatch on the opposite side was wide open and more medical personnel were there waiting, so I knew they’d be bringing him back that way. We went directly up to the Lido Deck for grilled chicken sandwiches, used a hot tub on Deck 16 and then returned to the cabin in time to get cleaned up for the evening.
When Captain Traverse made his usual departure announcement just before 5pm, he started out by acknowledging that a passenger had died on the beach about noon and asked for a moment of silence. That was all he said, that was all he needed to say. To those of us who had seen it all, this wasn’t a surprise, but that closure was appreciated. We know that on the average transpacific crossing, three passengers die. It just doesn’t usually happen on a beautiful beach surrounded by fellow guests. But then, while this was going on, I looked out at the water and decided that this really was a perfect gateway to the afterlife.
Tonight’s Princess Theater entertainment was Irish-Australian vocalist Peter Byrne doing a tribute to Neal Diamond. I know the timing was purely coincidental but his was exactly the show the guests needed to see tonight. He was funny, it was basically a huge sing along and I’m guessing I’m not the only one among us who felt the heaviness in my heart lift a little.
Laundry I’d sent three days ago was finally returned tonight. Robert had told us that Fijian discharge regulations put them a day behind. I’ll need to keep that in mind for our return cruise.
