At the end of several very busy weeks traveling in Singapore, Bali and Java Blonde and Brunette decamped (deglamped really if you’d seen the gorgeous place we’d just left in Java) for our last and much anticipated stay. A good friend had gone the previous year to Kura Kura Resort in the Karimunjawa Islands of Indonesia and insisted we would love it. So off we went! Kura Kura is a fabulous place that is a real pain to get to but well worth it.
We flew to Semarang then took the resort’s private plane to their speedboat which takes you to the island. All very Jane Bond-esque! The boat skims among many seaweed farms. The farms are delineated by endless lines of discarded plastic water bottles strung together in the sea. The “farmers” wear complete face masks out in the broiling sun. We assumed the face masks were to protect them from the sun. But to us it was a disconcerting, to be subtle about it, apparel choice.
During the several weeks before we went to Kura Kura Blonde had been a spectacle everywhere we went. There is a picture of Blonde on the iPhone screen of approximately half of the population of Indonesia. Everywhere Blonde turned up people were fascinated and asked if they could take pictures. Prior to the trip Blonde read the excellent but disturbing memoir titled “Infidel” so that word was rattling around her once-pretty little head. Brunette took to referring to Blonde as “the yellow-haired infidel” in yet another of our culturally sensitive behaviors.
But Kura Kura was nowhere and the guests staying there were primarily Italians who hadseen – generally through a haze of smoke – plenty of blondes and were very uninterested in an aging specimen from the U.S. (no matter how spectacular). On our first full day B&B went out on the resort’s morning snorkel trip. The other guests all seemed to be on honeymoons and were probably doing their own variations on “snorkeling” so we were lucky enough to have the boat to ourselves.
Two local guys ran the boat and took us out to a beautiful spot in the Java Ocean and indicated that that was where we should jump in to snorkel. Our jumps are more like plops so in we plopped. The snorkeling was fabulous with more healthy coral than we had seen anywhere else in years. We paddled happily around with our heads down for at least an hour.
Blonde swims wearing a Cartier watch and Brunette doesn’t wear a watch. Therefore, Blonde is generally the one who figures out that we have been out long enough that we either need to get our skin sold as leather or get out of the water. The time had come and Blonde turned to swim back in the direction of the boat. It was a fairly long swim and Blonde was still keeping her head down so her mask wouldn’t leak. Suddenly saw a pair of skinny dark legs appeared about 6 inches from her face. Given that there hadn’t been any other humans in sight anywhere and the two guys who drove the boat had gone below deck and fallen asleep within seconds of getting us to the snorkeling spot, these legs were an alarming development.
Blonde stood up in the water with post-snorkel snot streaming fetchingly down her mask-creased face and yanked the mask off and over her snarled yellow hair. The man standing there looked like some old (pre politically correct era) movie version of a terrifying native wild man. He was very dark, very skinny and had shoulder length black hair that clearly had never had the advantage of a good salon treatment.
Blonde did what blondes do well and gave him a stupid look. He smiled and said (within inches of her face) “Where you from”? Blonde sputtered out “America”.
America seemed to be a delightful answer to this unexpected new friend! He asked Blonde’s name and said his name was Jerry. OK. Not the name one might have expected but at least it wasn’t Bruce, Guido or Shecky or something even more incongruous. By this time Brunette had surfaced – a matter of no interest at all to Jerry.
Jerry was was with a group of other Indonesian men on a very inadequate looking boat. All of the men had digital cameras and were laughing at Jerry (at least that’s our version of it) and taking pictures. B&B were were beyond dumbfounded and a tad freaked out. We flopped and slithered our way back onto to our boat and Jerry swam over to his.
Jerry immediately began to swim back towards our boat holding aloft a giant, mostly empty and undoubtedly very warm, plastic bottle of Mountain Dew. When he got near he asked if Blonde wanted a drink. Blonde declined, citing our own availability of beverages. By this time our drivers had reawakened and were going to take us back to the resort.
Like so many vacation love affairs Blonde’s with Jerry was coming to a tragically premature ending. As we motored off Jerry ran to the bow (if that’s the front) of his boat, made a peace sign and called out “Peace and Love”. It was one of Blonde’s longest relationships ever and ended far more civilly than is the normal pattern.
And Jerry, if you’re out there somewhere reading this …….. would you mind clicking “like” on our Facebook page?