My challenge for this short contest piece was 50-100 words. No more, no less. My travel adventure was a scary situation which lasted several hours. How could I tell it in only 100 words. Not easy but I did. Whew!
Ballestas Islands, Paracus, Peru
7 July, 2016
My husband Doug and I joined fellow travelers for an early breakfast in the hotel restaurant in order to be at the Paracas Port at 8:00 AM sharp and board the first fleet of sightseeing speedboats leaving for a tour of the Ballestas Islands. A group of rocky islands known for their abundant wildlife, the Ballestas are a protected home to thousands of birds and mammals including sea lions, Inca terns, the Humboldt penguins, and pelicans.
Visited by wildlife lovers from around the world, the Ballestas Islands are often referred to as Peru’s Galapagos. Tourists are not allowed to walk on the islands or swim with the animals but the sightseeing boats get you up close for a unique viewing of an important sanctuary for marine flora and fauna.
I recalled how my mom taught me the ‘handy’ way to distinguish the difference. ‘Flora sounds like a flower and fauna like a fawn.’ Plant life. Animal life. It did help me keep them straight on science tests. Snap. My mother was smart.
Our guide assured us that the 8 AM tour was the best possible time for good weather conditions and wildlife spotting. She said that winds and waves tend to get stronger later in the day and for this reason tours only leave in the morning when sea conditions are calmer. If the seas are too rough, the Navy closes the port and NO boats are permitted to leave.
Last minute, before boarding our bus for the dock, Doug reminded me to take my wind breaker with hood, in case it got chilly on the boat. We both took cameras hoping to see hundreds of sea lions and penguins, thousands of birds, and if lucky we might even see dolphins and take a dozen or so great photos.
We waited in a long line to board the waiting boats. I imagined calm waters and no wind. Perfect travel conditions. When the line began moving forward, I watched tourists load onto the first boat and was relieved to see life vests being secured for every passenger getting on board.
I touched Doug and pointed to the life jackets. “Remember Venezuela?”
He nodded. “Yep!”
I remembered the details. As author and illustrator of books for children, we were invited to speak and present writing and drawing workshops at the International School in Caracas in 1998.
Following our fun presentations in the school, we decided to join friends on a dive ship off the Caribbean coast of Venezuela and explore La Tortuga Island. It was named La Tortuga because marine turtles returned each year to lay their eggs on its long sandy beaches. Other than the seasonal fishermen the island was uninhabited. Untouched. Pristine.
Doug seemed surprised that I agreed to go along. After the harrowing crossing of the Indian Ocean in monsoon season in 1975, I hesitated to board any boat taking me too far from the safety of a shore. I decided it was time to let go of the fear.
The line moved forward and I inched back into today’s reality. Speedboats revved their engines when they left the pier and raced out to sea. The waters remained calm. Lucky us! We moved forward again and were directed down steps leading to a waiting boat.
Life Happens. Live it!
So very proud of my friend Jake French. I knew him when he was a young lad hunting, fishing, snowboarding and chopping wood. His family lived near us in rural Oregon. He was a non-stop active kid with an amazing ‘I can do anything’ smile. He still has that smile, even after a tragic accident paralyzed him from the collarbone down in 2008. His life happened and he is living proof one can live life to its fullest, infused with optimism, no matter the daily obstacles one encounters. Go Jake! You’re my hero!
Rave Reviews Book Club—2016 Book & Blog Party
Buen día from Atlantida, Uruguay, South America! It’s winter in the southern hemisphere.
I’m delighted to participate in this event featuring talented authors from all literary genres—from all over the world.
Four winners will win eBooks for this stop. Your choice of:
The Lullaby Illusion: A Journey of Awakening
OR
Good Morning Diego Garcia: A Journey of Discovery
In order to win, you must comment on this post. Be sure to visit other blogs on the tour to be eligible for more prizes.
Born in Los Angeles, I spent most of my childhood in Tucson, Arizona and returned to LA as a young working woman. Inspired as a child by postcards from my globe-trotting great aunt, I left the United States at age 20 to see the “great big wonder-full” world.
I planned on being gone for a year, but ended up living my 20s and 30s in Europe and the Middle East. A Jill of all trades, I worked as a secretary and a freelance writer, taught computer classes, wrote songs, and became an accomplished artist while writing my first children’s book, Peel, the Extraordinary Elephant. A charming man who I met at a dinner party in Germany illustrated my book and later became my husband. Serendipitous events showed us that Universe had plans for us together.
After many years of writing and editing children’s books, the 2013 release of my first memoir, The Lullaby Illusion: A Journey of Awakening, represented a profound personal transformation and a new phase in my career. My second book in the ‘Journey’ series, Good Morning Diego Garcia: A Journey of Discovery is a psychological and psychic exploration forged in the chaos of horrendous storms in the Indian Ocean during monsoon season. Following the loss of a child, war in Cyprus, and with growing suspicions that my husband has a secret life, I confronted the elements, and viscerally realized that nothing is as it seems.
My third memoir is about soul connections and the force of pure energy which moves us to the unique place we belong in the universe, and how we fit into the bigger picture of life.
Doug and I love to explore different countries and cultures, learn about their history, and enjoy their distinct traditions and cuisines. We’ve just returned from a trip to Peru and Bolivia where we visited ancient civilization sites, saw alien skulls, and the mysterious Nazca lines in southern Peru.
Thanks for stopping by. Hope our paths meet again.
Susan Joyce
Alien Skulls?
Our flight from Montevideo, Uruguay to Lima, Peru was a short four and a half hours, but leaving for the airport at 2:30 AM on 05 July 2016 meant little sleep the night before. No sleep on the plane and none after we arrived because our tour to explore “Lost Ancient Technologies and Consciousness Of The Ancients” started upon our arrival as we (my husband Doug and I) introduced ourselves to other fellow explorers and experts from around the globe. We were there to learn more about advanced technologies and view dozens of artifacts found in ancient Peruvian ruins now displayed in local museums. By seeing them with our own eyes, we would know if the evidence presented rang true for us.
Doug was aware of my two UFO sightings. One occurred on the island of Cyprus shortly before the Turks invaded in July of 1974 while I sat dining with friends at an outside table in the Kyrenia Harbor. Another happened when I was nine years old and living with my family on the outskirts of Tucson, Arizona. Fascinated with aliens and UFOs as a child, I became even more hooked after a silvery, metallic disk swooped down and hovered mid-air near my personal observation post on a flat hot rock. The alien ship was illuminated with bright colored flashing lights (reminded me of a child’s spinning toy top) and floated so close I could see two gray pilots with extra large, long foreheads and big saucer eyes. My dog Brownie never uttered a sound. In fact we were so shocked we couldn’t speak or move until the lights intensified and the craft lifted and disappeared.
When I asked Doug what piqued his curiosity about aliens and ancient civilizations, he mentioned Frank Edwards, an American writer and broadcaster who wrote a book called Stranger then Science —a collection of stories about strange happenings that science can’t explain.
The following morning, bright and early, we were on our way to Paracas, Peru to see strange things that science has yet to explain to my satisfaction.
As we left our renovated mansion hotel in the manicured, upscale Miraflores neighborhood of Lima, I noticed a sudden change of scenery from bright blue, green, and purple walls to lean-to tin slum dwellings. Next came rows of faded containers in the industrial section and our guide Brien explained that Peru is a self-sufficient country which produces everything but cars and electronics. Piles of rock and sand dotted the landscape waiting to be made into concrete for buildings, roads, and bridges. A green park at the next exit announced an approaching cemetery. Nice to see a spot of green grass and trees. We had left the bustling metropolis of Lima far behind and were heading south to Paracus to see elongated skulls in a local museum. En route, Brien told us a brief history of the Incas and presented interesting information about the elongated skulls cranial volume (25% larger than human skulls) and weight (60% more than human skulls).
Upon our arrival in Paracas, we checked into our resort hotel overlooking the Pacific Ocean and then boarded the bus to visit the small, private Paracas History Museum. This unusual museum had a superb collection of Peruvian elongated skulls, the star child skull, human remains, and a couple of mummies. I remembered first seeing elongated skulls in the anthropological museum, Museo de Antropología de Xalapa, in eastern Mexico in 2005.
As I looked closely at the skulls on display, a fellow traveler asked me for my opinion on whether they looked human or alien.
“Alien to me,” I answered. “I’m no expert, but I have seen aliens.”
“You’ve seen aliens in a UFO?” she asked. “I’m so jealous.”
“Yes. Twice.”
“Where? Did you have witnesses?”
“My dog was my only witness the first time in the Arizona desert.” I laughed. “The second time was on the island of Cyprus and two of my friends watched it with me. The strange looking pilots had extra large, long foreheads and big saucer eyes. Like these.” I pointed to the elongated skulls on display.
“Brilliant!” she smiled.
Later that evening over dinner in the hotel restaurant, I heard others in our tour discuss our guide Brien’s latest revelation about new genetic tests showing the elongated skulls contain extraterrestrial DNA—DNA previously unknown in any human, primate, or animal known so far.
“Very impressive,” I said. “I wonder if National Geographic will report it that way.”
Someone commented, “National Geographic views are like getting news from the Daily Mail.”
Giggles from EU residents seated nearby told me they also questioned National Geographic for accurate information.
I smiled remembering when as a kid I believed every word in each month’s issue to be gospel and truth about everything National Geo reported. It was well respected then. Not sensational. “I’m sure they reject the idea of alien heads.”
Conversation continued around the table as we discussed the scientific theory of binding the head and flattening it to make it grow a certain way. Artificial Cranial Deformation. And how changing the shape doesn’t increase the weight or size of a skull.
Remembering the side by side comparison of a real human skull next to the ancient elongated skull we had viewed in the museum earlier that day, I nodded. “For me, seeing is believing. Definitely alien. Cosmic!”
Living Life to the Fullest
Featured Author of the Day
Susan Joyce is an exceptional woman and creative author whose life story reads like riveting fiction. She has done it all – travelled the world, lived in several countries, experienced a war up close and personal and lived to tell her story. Today, Joyce chats with us about culture shocks, how she discovered after nine years of marriage that her husband wasn’t who he pretended to be and how dreams serve her in life.
The Lullaby Illusion id on promo 10-13 June 2016 Only.99
AMAZON .COM LINK: www.amazon.com/dp/B00FHBBSO4
2016 Finalist Next Generation Indie Book Awards
Finalist—E-Book Non-Fiction
Good Morning Diego Garcia by Susan Joyce
First Place! 2016 San Francisco Book Festival
(Gotta love the runner-up 😉 )
http://www.sanfranciscobookfestival.com/winners_2016.htm
First Place San Francisco Book Festival!
BIOGRAPHY/AUTOBIOGRAPHY
WINNER: “Good Morning Diego Garcia” – Susan Joyce
RUNNER-UP: “A Perfect Spy” – Francis Hamit
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
- “Running for my Life – Winning for CMT” – Christine Wodke
- “Nothing Ever Goes On Here” – Ellen Newhouse
- “Surreality: Strange Tales of a Man Sitting Down the Bar From You” – J.D. Bradley
- “A Connisseur’s Journey” – Dr. Jeffrey Lant
- “Through the Woods” – Margie Mack
- “Letters from a Soldier” – Susan Mowry
- “The Sibold Effect” – J.D. Miller
- “A Chick in the Cockpit” – Erika Armstrong
- “Silent No More” – Christine Orenic-Ward
The Lullaby Illusion–FAB Review!
The Lullaby Illusion–FAB Review!
Thanks Diane Donovan for reading and reviewing my book!
Good Morning Diego Garcia—Excerpt Chapter 16
“I watched Alon and Dylan take in sails and lower the speed.
Another storm! More bashing waves. I sighed. Wish I could flap my wings and fly to the closest strand of land. Best to grab my book and move back inside to stay safe.
“We’ll ride them,” I heard Dylan say as I went below.
I returned to our room. Charles was nowhere in sight. He must be using the bathroom. I waited.
Wild waves hit us from all different directions and thrashed the boat about. I sat on my bed and listened to the alarming bashing sounds. Would the hull hold up? With all this stress?
I heard a gagging sound coming from the bathroom. Charles was retching. “Heaven help us,” I said out loud. Poor Charles! Bad enough to be depressed. Being sick on top of it all? I waited to see if I could help him.
After more vomiting, he staggered out of the bathroom looking pale.
“Can I get you anything?” I asked. “Ginger tea is good for the stomach.”
He waved me away and crawled back into his bunk.
I waited and watched the violent storm spin around us from our porthole window. It slapped us side to side with blasts of wind and pounded us with mountains of waves. My perspective shifted and in an instant I saw myself and the world in a different way. Perhaps I wasn’t atop an ocean on planet earth. Perhaps instead I sat in a turbulent area outside the atmosphere of earth? Perhaps in a vast field of past and present time in deep space. And how did my soul fit into this grand scheme called life?
Dust to dust took on a new meaning. I saw myself as a tiny speck of matter temporarily filling a space while living on earth. Absolutely scared to death, I felt more alive than I had ever felt. My senses were heightened to a whole new level; a new and different perspective of my finite reality. I felt a unique awareness beyond the normal five senses; an awareness on a higher level of understanding.
I thought of my upbringing; raised in a religious home, my parents instructed me to ask God for guidance for everything. Now I found myself asking myself for guidance. A voice told me to shine a positive light of energy around the boat to protect us. The message rang true. So I did.
In that moment, when everything looked upside-down and inside out, I sensed that everything was fine—just the way it was meant to be. Would this ‘positive energy’ be my savior?
By facing reality head on, I was discovering the meaning of living life to its fullest with senses wide open to listening and learning. Being aware, I felt empowered by the hum of nature and collective unconsciousness. It was a soothing song.