July 9th, 2011 5:18pm—Free Catamaran, Free Beer

I awoke a few mornings later to screaming.
"Free catamaran! Free beer! Get your asses up!"
I heard cheering. I walked out to a mass of people shouting the glorious news. One of the British guys cried in a hammock.
"It's the best day ever," he sobbed.
I was as elated as on my seventh birthday, when my wildly intoxicated uncle gave me a hamster. He hadn't previously cleared it with my parents. 
I was still drunk from the night before (in Panama, not when I was seven), and the extent of my thought process was, free beer on a catamaran for a day in the Caribbean? Yes, please! 
I'd venture to say that of the twenty of us backpackers, one person knew passable Spanish. She was a goddess. She ordered things for me. She held conversations for me. She told me that some people were trying to start a catamaran tour that looped from Bocas down to San Blas and eventually to Colombia. They had recently acquired the catamaran and needed promo shots. We had to sit on the catamaran all day and drink free beer in exchange for some guy taking photos of us. It was as awesome as it sounds. 
A few of the backpackers were skeptical, but they got tossed into the boat by those of us who were looking forward to continuing the boozehound that had become our lives.
I can't tell you the catamaran's name, nor can I thank the company that enabled our alcoholic tendencies, because I don't remember. I do know that the name of the catamaran had something to do with San Francisco, CA. It may have been named San Francisco, CA. I had lived in the city for five years, and thus felt superior to everyone else on the catamaran.
"This is my boat!" I proudly announced to everyone, sipping my eighth Balboa.
"It's not a boat, Kara. It's a catamaran. And they own it." Someone pointed to a man and a woman. 
"Well, it's my city," I replied.
A guy threw me overboard. Luckily, the catamaran was anchored. I still almost drowned. I got thrown off the front, and the ladder to board was in the back. It was a big catamaran, and the only physical activity I had accomplished in the past few months was moving my arm from my drink to my mouth. Sadly, that doesn't build up much muscle. Or endurance.
Some of the girls in our group posed. Not for promotional shots, just for our own amusement. One of the Canadians did the "I'm the Queen of the World" pose. We tried a woman pyramid. I drank excessively while the Kiwi did backflips off the side. I could barely swim, so I was very impressed with Kiwi. He only landed on his head once. 
Kiwi got shown up by a small uni-sex child with curly blonde luscious locks. I say uni-sex because the three-year-old wasn't wearing a shirt, and was clearly too young for breasts to come in yet. It was either going to be a gorgeous woman or a smoking hot man. We weren't child molesters, so we weren't going to strip the daring little sexy baby. 
Instead we asked it determining questions like, "What's your favorite color, baby?"
"Green."
"Well, that doesn't bloody help. Do you like dolls or G.I. Joes?"
"Both."
"Hmmm. Do you want to be a mommy or a daddy someday?"
"I love my mommy and daddy!"
Clearly, we didn't get anywhere.
The kid was incredible. It did acrobatics in the air. It started out on the side of the catamaran in a hand stand, summersaulted in the air, completed what looked like a flying squirrel, summersaulted again, and dove without a splash. 
Granted, the tiny little body structure allowed for more air time to complete insane tumbling stunts, but I knew I was looking at a future Olympian diver. With my child obsession, you'd think through my drunken, happy haze that I would have at least gotten the kid's phone number. 

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