Into the Wild

If it weren’t for Coyote, none of this might have happened. We met him at Ponta do Ouro in Mozambique, where he had tied up for a while to work as a diving instructor. Coyote was about forty then, and had, since he was a teenager, only stayed in one place as long as his visa allowed. Coyote had enough skills to make himself needed wherever he went. He had worked on crab boats, oyster boats and many other things that float. His ambition was to save enough money to buy a catamaran and sail it to the Andaman Sea. There he would charter the boat to discerning divers and live the life of Reilly.

We weren’t exactly couch potatoes. We used our spare time to the full, skiing once a year, diving at every opportunity and travelling the world when we could afford it. And neither of us were tied to desks. Our office was the flight deck of a 737, flying for a regional airline. But there was no escaping suburbia; no avoiding the daily grind to and from work, dodging Johannesburg’s taxis that barge and shove like nightclub bouncers.

It was over some fajitas and a pot of re-refried beans that everything changed. He sensed our interest, knew of a boat in Nosey Bey in Madagascar. It was an epiphany, not quite like the one on the road to Damascus, but still an epiphany. We didn’t buy that boat, but for the first time in a long time we looked beyond the horizon.