Tortuga: Getting to the Boat



This is a picture of a couple of people being carried to our boat

While my group was in Haiti, we got the chance to visit Tortuga (an island about 5 miles from the coast of where we were staying). In order to get to Tortuga, we had to take a boat. I was a little hesitant to begin this journey because the only boats I had ever been on were canoes and paddleboats; I wasn’t sure what to expect, or worse yet, if I would get seasick. When we reached the beach we saw the boat a little ways of in the water. It was a plain wooden sailboat, nothing really fancy, but it would work. We had been standing there for a little bit just looking at the boat when a thought came to my mind: How are we going to get on the boat? There wasn’t a dock and the boat was a little ways off in the water, were we just going to walk out to the boat? Not quite. My question was answered a little bit later when I noticed a big Haitian guy go up to someone and I watched as he picked the person up and put them on his shoulders and start carrying the person out to the boat. Next thing I knew, I was the one that was being picked up and carried out to the boat. At first, I was okay but when we got further into the water where the guy was walking against the waves, I got a little nervous that I would throw off his balance. My first reaction was to cling to his head but in doing so I was making it so he couldn't see which he naturally didn't like. So I concentrated on keeping my balance as we slowly made it to the boat.