The Backpacking Housewife: The Next Adventure

‘So, what you’re actually talking about is another research facility!’ I remarked a little sourly. I couldn’t help it. I loved his enthusiasm. But how could an abandoned island possibly be our permeant home? How could we possibly thrive, never mind survive, out here on a small rock? I imagined the two of us sitting on a deserted island beach together, sun scorched and dehydrated, with nothing more than one bottle of rum between us – like those poor abandoned pirates – and fighting over one gun with one bullet in it with which to end our awful misery.

As we made our approach, to what I could easily understand being thought the very edge of the old world, Ethan’s untouched virgin island rose dreamily from the sea and it was breath-taking to behold. At first glimpse, I see white crested waves crashing into rocky inlets and small sandy coves. But then I spotted a small heart-shaped cove with a tiny curved beach and with swaying palm trees and a labyrinth of boulders forming natural pools and seawater-flooded grottoes. I hear the call of seabirds, egrets, herons, pelicans, frigates, and drag my eyes upward over sheer rugged cliffs to see undulating hills covered in misty jungle, as Ethan steered us straight into the heart-shaped cove, where the shallow waters were teeming with colourful fish.

He puts down the anchor onto a sandy bed. ‘The boat will be safe here. This is the only safe way to approach the island because the lagoon on the other side is protected by a coral reef.’

Then carefully he pulls out an old battered map from a folder he’s brought along, and we stand together on the gently swaying deck to study it carefully. It’s deeply creased and faded with age. It looks exactly like a treasure map with its star shaped compass drawing and little illustrations showing landmarks. In excitement, I spot an outcrop marked ‘Treasure Point’ at the most northerly aspect.

Treasure Point: so called by ye freebooters from the gold and silver supposed to be bury’d thereabouts after the Wreck of a Spanish Galleon.

‘Oh, it’s a real treasure map!’ I gasp. ‘But who are the freebooters?’

Ethan looked amused as he passed me a bottle of cold drinking water from the cooler.

‘I’m guessing any treasure buried here would have been lifted a long time ago by my mate, Booty Bill. Freebooters, hence booty, was a name for pirates in the old days.’

My eyes flitted across the rest of the map. I see the island is long and shaped like a figure eight, or a symbol of infinity, with two distinct volcanic ranges and a narrow middle area.

‘Oh, look, there’s a house here!’ I shake my finger in excitement at an illustration of a dwelling. I immediately imagine us living there overlooking the beach and the lagoon.

‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up too much. I doubt it’s still here. Not after all this time.’

Ethan tapped a finger at the top of the document where it said: Map of Waterfall Cay by Thomas Jeffreys, Surveyor and Geographer to The King. The Virgin Islands, 1775.

‘This island is called Waterfall Cay? How beautiful. But surely it will still have a waterfall?’

My imagination conjured up a romantic scene in which Ethan and I were swimming naked below a tropical waterfall with rainbow coloured mists all around us. Ethan, who might have been imagining the same thing, slung an arm around me and pulled me closer to kiss me slowly on the lips. As we touched, our skin was hot and damp through the light cotton of our shirts.

His lips tasted of sea spray but in a nice way. More mythical merman than dirty pirate.

When he spoke, his voice was low and sexy. ‘Shall we go exploring to find out?’

We left the boat in the little bay and we slipped into thigh-high warm clear waters with soft sand underfoot and waded ashore. Once ashore, we made our way east through the steamy interior and then began a climb through steep and rugged jungle terrain. We stepped carefully along what appeared to be remnants of an ancient trail of flat rocks that must have been laid down and trodden smooth by many feet so many years before us. Pirates, castaways, sailors, explorers, wanderlusters—who knew?

We leapt across narrow rushing streams that cut through our path and in all the places where the path had collapsed. Ethan, being a gentleman, held my hand and guided me as we traipsed along muddy banks and through the deep forest foliage.

We quickened our pace once we heard the thundering sound of a waterfall ahead.

Then we fought our way through a curtain of hanging vines, to emerge breathless and dirty and sweaty, and to find that we were standing inside an open-air grotto filled with cool misty air in which countless shiny reflective green butterflies fluttered in streams of filtered sunshine.

It was breath-takingly beautiful.

Inside this grotto, there was also a large round emerald green pool of water, surrounded by many other smaller round emerald pools, separated and interspersed at differing levels by giant granite boulders. Some of these giant boulders were shiny volcanic black. They were round and flat and smooth from centuries of rising and declining water levels washing over them. Others were white, limestone or marble, and also flat and smooth.

Ethan took my hand again as we leapt from one to another, like we were playing a game of giant checkers, to reach the deep main emerald pool beneath the tall and writhing and thundering white-water stream that fed it from high above.

In the smaller pools, the water was as still and smooth and reflective as a mirror. I peered down at my reflection. I’d like to say that what I saw was the face of a gypsy wanderer. Someone with the heart of an adventurer and the spirit of a mermaid. But what I actually saw was a middle-aged woman with a happy face, sparkling bright eyes, and long and messy and dirty wild hair. I decided I liked what I saw. This was Lori, the world explorer.

Not Lorraine, the ex-housewife from London.

Lori was a happier and more fun person than the anxious always unsure version of herself.

And then suddenly the mirror became a window into what lay beneath. Large translucent fish suddenly appeared as if by magic. They’d been completely invisible until the sharp rays of filtered sunlight revealed them. ‘Look—’ I called out to Ethan.

He was suddenly beside me and when our eyes met, my thoughts of love were clearly reflected in his eyes too. Our lips crashed together. Our breath quickened between our hasty kisses as we tugged and pulled at each other’s clothing. Not that there was much in the way of our bare skin. I dipped my fingers into the waistband of his shorts, flipping open the button fastening with one hand and boldly pulling down his zipper with the other and soon they were discarded, flicked away onto a nearby rock. In response, with a practiced dexterity, he lifted my vest top over my head and pulled down my shorts in one swift move. My bikini soon went the same way. Then we were together as one, turning and twirling, in the cool emerald pool.

At one with nature and with each other in what appeared to be a paradise.

Happily, after making love, we lay back in the wonderfully cool rippling water, listening to the rhythmic background of the cascading falls and gazing up at the small patch of blue sky that could be seen high above the walls of tall verdant vines that reflected in the pools of water.

It looked unreal. It was like being wrapped up in swirling northern lights. Like in a dream.

‘This place is magical. This island is incredible. Look at all these butterflies!’ I gasped.

I lifted a hand out of the water, sending tiny droplets of rainbow glazed water into the air.

I splayed my fingers wide apart under the wings of a hovering and shimmering and glimmering green butterfly. To my astonishment it settled itself down onto the tip of my thumb.

‘Oh look. It’s tame. I’ve never seen anything quite like this!’

‘Many years ago, this island was a butterfly sanctuary.’ Ethan told me, as he also lay back relaxing in the water. ‘One of my heroes, Alfred Russel Wallace, who was a 19

Century Scottish biologist and explorer and a direct descendent of William Wallace, discovered a unique species of giant butterfly right here on this little island.’

‘Do you mean William Wallace of Braveheart fame?’

‘Yes, that’s right. Alfred reported that the butterflies here were as large as dinner plates. At that time, the Victorians were keen collectors of tropical butterflies and so The Green Morpho butterfly of Waterfall Cay soon became highly sought after and so incredibly valuable that it was prized above all others. Eventually, Wallace came back to this island to find that his special discovery, one of the largest butterflies in the known world, had been almost wiped out. That’s when he established the sanctuary. To try and protect and save them. But, over the years, the island continued to attract butterfly poachers and so The Green Morpho is now sadly extinct.’

‘And that’s what led to its extinction? People collecting them?’

I couldn’t take my eyes of this tiny butterfly as it settled onto my hand, undulating slowly, showing off how it could magically change its wings from green to gold in an instant.

‘And these little fellows, although very pretty, aren’t so rare.’ Ethan told me knowledgably.

‘But maybe this island could be a protected sanctuary for butterflies again?’ I suggested.

‘Perhaps. Only, to apply for the protected status from the government, we’d need to find an indigenous species here or at the very least an endangered one.’

‘Indigenous? That means a native species?’

‘That’s right. Like the Green Morpho.’ Ethan leaned forward to kiss my bare shoulder.

As if offended at not being deemed special enough, the little butterfly fluttered away.

‘There’s only one problem. ‘I adore butterflies, but I really can’t abide caterpillars.’

Ethan laughed in surprise. ‘Why ever not? I mean, it’s not like they can hurt you.’

‘Because I think I had a traumatic experience involving caterpillars when I was a little girl,’ I confessed. If I closed my eyes, I could recall a misty memory of myself as a child, standing at a big leafy shrub in the garden. ‘I was picking caterpillars off a plant and collecting them into a plastic bucket. I have no idea why.’