On Safari
“But those two drinks,” the woman said, peering into the depths of her gargantuan glass. “Are they both in here?”
No, they were not. The 37 cents’ worth of Hawaiian Punch and 52 cents’ worth of cheap rum that passed for sangria and retailed for $13.95 actually came with the promise of a free refill. You might say that the second gallon of rum-laced high fructose corn syrup is your reward for getting through the first one.
That’s how I rationalized it, anyway. Eventually I sucked down the last of my maraschino cherries and got up unsteadily to catch the final shuttle back to my hotel. On the way out of the bar I saw a sign posted on the beach, next to the wavejammer rental stand. “Turtle Nesting Beach,” it read. “Street lights off/reduced March through October.”
Turtles? On the beach? I realized, with the kind of clarity that only 2-for-1 Giant Sangrias can deliver, that even the reptiles were suffering under an illusion. Just turn down the lights and maybe the turtles would overlook the Bubba Gump Fish Shack, the Midwesterners in their “I Pee in Pools” T-shirts, and the disaffected German waiters staring across the ocean to their homeland. The turtles were expected to go on, against the odds, to find a place in the sand to lay their eggs. Whether they were being swindled or saved, I couldn’t be sure.
This was not much of a habitat for turtles, and it was certainly no habitat for me. I was so grateful to see the hotel shuttle bus driver, a Cuban who had brought me to the beach a few hours earlier, that I gave him all the loose bills in my pocket for a tip, as if I was leaving a foreign country and handing over the last of the money I wouldn’t be able to use once I got home.
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STAFF PICK / outdoors / 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Meet at Pacific Union School. Help remove non-native invasives at the Lanphere Dunes Unit of the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Tools and gloves provided, wear work clothes and bring water. Carpool to the protected site. 444-1397.
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