The flight was over before I had a chance for rest, but then again I've
never been able to fall asleep on a flight.
My last moments in Weymouth were colored
in an early morning shades of dark blue sky with gentle lines of blues and
pinks making their path through the horizon. Aric, standing tall like a grizzly
in his checkered bathrobe, house slippers and an endless tangle of curly hair
that amplified his head to mythical proportions, hugged me good bye before I
shooed him back into the ocean cottage he opened up to me for the past few days
as I gathered my bearings and figured out my next destination after leaving the
dichromic country that is Egypt, at once both chaotic and peaceful. I spun the
digital globe and considered Ireland or Malta, but the prospect of being
in Dublin alone during St. Patrick's Day didn't excite me and discovering heavy
rains in Malta exiled the idea of spending the rest of my trip diving the
Mediterranean. My friend in London invited me to go home with him to Paris for
the weekend, but coming from two weeks in near solitude among tourists and desert
dwellers alike to a brief interlude in the hustle of London to four days of
lazing around a quiet port town in Southern England, the prospect of heading
back into the maddening urban sprawl that is Paris didn't excite me. The
original plan B was to meet up with a stranger I met in Dahab who lured me to
England with the prospect of getting my PADI Advanced Open Water, but the
frigid waters native to an English winter squashed those plans and a car tour
of the U.K. with said stranger didn't seem to make much sense anymore either.
To be completely honest with myself, after a brief interlude in Jordan, my
heart was in the Middle East, and the moment my flight touched down in London,
I knew I should have headed further into the Near East.
Reluctant to take a train back to
London, I jumped at the chance to take a flight out of nearby Bournemouth
instead. As if in a flash of insight, I opened up my myopic view of where my
next destination would lead me and Spain shot to the top of my short list.
"Alicante or Malaga?" I asked Aric and with a quick reply my decision
was made.
"Where are you headed, miss?"
My driver asked me. In a state of half sleep I was started by the question and
said the first thing that came to mind, "to the bus station." I made
small talk with the young man driving my taxi while keeping a watchful eye as
the early morning sun started to make its appearance in the sky. As we passed
dock after dock of sail boats waiting for another day, I imagined what it would
be like to be here for the Olympics.
"You can buy tickets over there,
miss," my driver stopped the car and pointed to a small kiosk, "but
it doesn't look like it's open yet." I asked him if there was any other
way to get to Bournemouth and he suggested taking the train, "it's much
faster and a better option." At the mention of the train station I
realized I had told my driver the wrong destination, I had no intention of
taking the bus to Bournemouth, it was the train I wanted, but in my half sleep
the word, "bus" came out instead.
We stopped in front of the train station
not long after and still not remembering if England was a country where tips
were the norm or not , I told my driver to keep the change. After pulling my
luggage out of the trunk of his car, he smiled at me and told me I looked just
like Lucy Liu. I smiled knowing I only ever got that compliment while I
traveled. As he wished me luck in on my trip I noticed I was mistaken in
assuming my driver was a young man, when he smiled the cringles around his eyes
betrayed what I had assumed to be youthfulness.
My life has become a procession of
planes, trains, automobiles, and buses. My morning started out in a taxi to a
train station where service was suspended, but a bus waited to take passengers
to the part of the train station that was in order. From the train I gathered
myself into yet another taxi to find myself in an unassigned seat to Malaga.
Never one to ask for directions, when my plane landed and my bags were in hand
I found myself unable to find my next train into Malaga's city center. As I
tried to conjure up enough Spanish to figure out the words on a bus route map,
an English man approached me.
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