Chapter 3: Discovery!

As we prepared our breakfast, I asked Ron if he had had any strange dreams the previous evening. He replied that he had been so tired and happy that it would have been too much work to have dreams! Not being a believer in the "reality" of dreams, I shook mine off and put it down to having an active imagination. The plan of the day was to explore our paradise from stem to stern. We decided to start on the north side of the island beach and hike all the way around it if we could. The day was as pleasant as could be... warm but not hot, and with a steady sea breeze that cooled us off constantly. It was during one of our many breaks that something strange occurred. I was half-dozing in the sun with my eyes closed, letting my mind wander, when I could swear that I heard a soft feminine voice murmur in my ear. I couldn't be sure, but I thought it had said something like, "We're here," and "Find us!" I immediately opened my eyes and sat up, but all I saw was Ron sipping a drink and the beautiful horizon of sea and sand. He looked at me curiously and raised his eyebrows questioningly. Not wanting to appear a total fool, I told him that a mosquito had bitten me and let it go at that. He nodded and said that we should probably get started again.

As I strapped on my pack with the woman's voice still reverberating in my head, I looked inland at the forest. Something about it looked familiar.

As if by pure instinct, I motioned to Ron and suggested that we explore the inland for a while. He agreed, and we veered away from the beach into the forest. Though the undergrowth was thick, we both expressed surprise that it was not nearly as inaccessible as on the other side of the island. In fact, it was almost as if there had once been a path along the route we were taking!

As the trees began to hide the sun, the forest took on a mysterious look.

Ghostly shadows hung from everywhere, and the absolute silence made us feel as if we were in an arboreal cathedral. Again, I was struck by the familiarity of it all... I was certain I had been here before, when of course, I could not have been. As we walked along experiencing the wonder of this hauntingly beautiful place, it suddenly dawned on me that this was place I had visited in my dream! It was enough to make me think again about my disbelief in the "psychic" nature of dreams. I had had deja vu before, but never anything like this. I took over the lead from Ron and felt as if my feet had taken on a life of their own and were guiding me to a specific place. Sure enough, after only a few minutes, we came to the clearing in the forest that I so vividly remembered from my dream. There was the rock garden that I had kissed my fantasy woman on, and there was the ledge that she had so nimbly jumped atop. Ron sat down, his eyes moving back and forth over the fantastic scenery. "Wow! Look at this place!" he said, "I could sit here forever and look at this!" "You do that," I said, "I'm gonna take a look up here." I climbed up onto the ledge, knowing what I would find.

There it was; the view, the rocks, the cave... everything from my dream. I knew what I had to do. I took out my flashlight and brushed away the cobwebs from the entrance of the cave. The opening was a tight squeeze, but I managed it, and with a little effort, I found myself able to stand upright in a small room. I shone my flashlight against the wall and saw with delight the faded cave paintings there. They were expertly drawn, but the ages and their time underwater had reduced them to bare outlines. I looked closely at one of the murals and could make out a group of wonderfully drawn beautiful women dressed in colorful costumes. Another showed two naked women embracing each other passionately. I was just about to shout for Ron when my beam played upon small half-buried metal box in the corner of the cave room. Excitedly, I ran over to it and dug it out of the sand. The top of it was worn to perfect smoothness and badly tarnished, but I realized that it must have been made of silver. The clasp was rusted, but with a bang of my flashlight, it came off. I opened it up and gently dumped out the sand that had gathered inside of it. As the sand fell to the ground, my beam hit upon something that glinted merrily in the light. There, lit by my flashlight was a pair of beautiful gold earrings. They were small, but the delicate metal sculpting was astonishing! On each one, there was a carving of the head of a beautiful Indian woman in a sort of helmet-like headdress.