Reading of the book by Bernard Moitessier "Tamata and the Alliance" makes you think about the Pacific and its islands.
Pacific has always been a realm of dreams for me. As a child I have read Julius Verne and watched "Dolphin Oum" cartoons. Later, in life I visited some of these places.
The coast of Washington and Oregon are by far the most beautiful places I have ever been to. California carries its dreamy spirit where I have spent many evenings sitting on the beach looking at the balmy sunsets. I lived in Okinawa for three years and dove countless times on the coral reefs. I visited Hawaii twice in transit, but I have never been to the South Seas.
The closest I have ever gotten to the equatorial paradise on Earth was Guam.
My visit to Guam was brief, just a long lay over on the flight from Hawaii to Okinawa. I was on the military flight in the enormous Air Force C-5 Galaxy cargo plane, I don't remember anymore if Guam was a scheduled stop, or not, but I remember vividly that our plane broke down and we had an emergency landing and evacuation on some back-strip of the Andersen Air Force base in the middle of the night amongst tall cane, or grasses. The evacuation was brief, we were not to take any personal things with us, we stood some few hundred feet away from the plane, and I just remember seeing some kind of hydraulic fluid shooting up in the fountain from the port wing. When I asked on of the crew if that happens often, he said "Every time you get on it..."
To give you some idea about what it means to realize that your plane broke over the Pacific you have to imagine that the distance from Hawaii to Guam is twice as far as California to Florida and there are only couple of small islands between: Wake Island and Marshal Islands far to the south and absolutely nothing between, except sharks. Okinawa is another New York to Denver distance away.
Next day, I needed to find some other arrangement to fly to Okinawa and that would not happen for the next 16 hours, so I hitchhiked to the beach.
For someone who spent 3 years in Okinawa, you might think another island will not make much impression, but Guam was different. It is not so much for the climate (Guam is about 12 degree north of the Equator), but rather for the coconut palms and the people. I remember walking the sandy groves of the coconut palms and watching the absolutely cute brown skinned local kids playing between the palms and on the white sandy beach. Absolute paradise.
I did not see much of the island but my trip to the beach showed me enough, it planted in me a desire to come back to South Pacific.
Since I was really shaken about flying the military craft so soon again, especially since I know that our own Marine jets are old and held together on duck tape and chewing gum, I was glad to jump on a small slick looking medical jet only to find out that I was the only passenger there that wasn't on the verge of dying.
