I have no problem with clichés
Vacation. Swirling fans and fluttering bougainvillea. Bicycles and old cars blasting music through open windows. Sand and sunburn and morning coffee. Here we are in Turks and Caicos, the Caribbean, feeling like we’ve just puddle jumped into a new state. The architecture, the massive resort buildings, the color blocks of each resort’s beach umbrellas, one after the other all the way down the miles of beach. It is pristine and endless, but the chain link fences preventing the wandering beach goer from crossing into the next new development reminds us that this bay is for developers and luxury real estate. Strip malls are hardly disguised with their low tin roofs and concrete entrance signs. It could be Boca Raton until an islander speaks pidgin English and a pickup truck rolls by with eight or ten men seated in the bed, all wearing safety vests and construction hard hats.
When Leah and I arrived, we were disappointed. We made sharp comparisons to other first impressions of places we’ve arrived at together. We have explored Johannesburg and Pretoria, the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe, stone town in Zanzibar, Paris and London and Lisbon and New York, Amalfi and Santorini, Tulum and San Miguel, St. Johns, a rural sheep and blueberry farm in Alentejo. Our friendship started over a banana tree in Harare, Zimbabwe when we were 20 years old, and we have had the past twenty years to hone our ability to adapt and thrive in very different places. So the fact that the driving is on the opposite side of the road in Turks and Caicos wasn’t nearly enough to make us feel like we’d truly left and gone somewhere different.
Still, this is an easy vacation. Within thirty minutes I booked massages, bought a sun hat, picked up a yoga class schedule, helped a local business owner send an email photo attachment, and bought top-shelf jalapeño margaritas in plastic cups to carry back to the beach. There are cold pressed juices, vegan options, beach bars and tiki torches. The islanders are exceedingly proud to call this home. They are friendly and helpful and laid back, and when Leah and I strolled up to the beach stand at a different beach’s only resort and asked if we could use their lounges (clearly marked with “Reserved for Hotel Guests” signs), we were greeted with smiles and told to hide our bright green towels in our bags so as to blend in with the actual hotel guests. Then we were promptly given chairs, heaps of clean white towels, and bottled water.
We once told each other that all of our vacations must be places where bougainvillea flourishes. Like the papery pink and purple flowering vines symbolized our souls’ happiest moments, which were in sun-drenched places either tropical or on the water. We have done a surprisingly good job keeping our promise, yet the fact is that we are happy simply when we are together, whether it is in a stinky Athens airport hotel, without power during a strike in Capri, in each other’s living rooms, or on an island. The old cliché rings true: it’s not where you are but who you are with that matters. I probably didn't get that entirely right, but it's something like that.
