Catalina - Shore Trip

Our first shore excursion was to Santa Catalina Island, a small island off the coast of California. With no harbour capable of accommodating the Paradise, we were shuttled on tender boats into the postcard town of Avalon.

Catalina in January is astonishingly clean, quiet and empty. Patricia and I spent the day swanning around picturesque streets and basking in the mild winter sunshine. Almost every house we passed was a holiday rental. The year round population of Avalon is plainly puny, but in the summer months the town must be packed to the rafters with thousands of tourists, diving by day and drinking by night.

My imagined vision of peak season Avalon made our day seem all the more languid. Even the 2,000 Paradise passengers who wandered through the town slipped naturally into a gentler rhythm: a patient, almost tidal drifting.

The predominance in local traffic of golf carts rather than cars contributes much to the quaintness, quietness and cleanness of Avalon. It’s also hard to hurry too much, or take yourself too seriously, driving a golf cart downtown. In this supermarket parking lot I suddenly understood that golf carts exist on a scale somehow more human and less industrial than anything in my normal environment. Although I am an urban animal, the casual intimacy of Avalon triggered a sudden longing for community, for a village. Fortunately we wandered out of the town itself before I started to compose an “Ode to a Golf Cart.”


We walked along this path towards this distinctive Catalina landmark. Known as “the Casino,” it was constructed by Mr William Wrigley, the chewing gum millionaire and prominent Catalina resident for the purpose of holding huge dance parties. People were ferried across from the mainland to attend big band extravaganzas. These proved so popular that the large Casino you see here today had to be built to replace the smaller original structure which proved inadequate for the crowds.

From here you can look down into water so clear that you can see the fish wave hello.

The sea birds pose for photographs on the rocks and the passive motion of the moored boats beckons.

Or you can look out towards the mainland, where the orange haze of the Los Angeles smog looms like an unwholesome mist pressing against a windowpane. It’s like peering out from inside a shady oasis into the shimmering glare of a desert. Catalina Island is a place you can dream of escaping to.

The peace and quiet tugged at my mind, whispering promises of comfort for a restless soul. I conceived a yearning to stay, to take a small room in one of the guest houses and sit in a sunny window for the winter months. I thought I could sleep soundly here. I thought I could write a great novel and paint bad pictures. It seemed that here perhaps I could trade overstimulation for genuine fulfilment.

It’s such an easy thing to say, but if I had a million dollars just lying around, I might well buy a house here, and a golf cart. I’d set aside a couple of modest rooms for myself, spend a few months each winter in Avalon and rent out the rest of the house in the tourist season while I return to my real life in whatever city I end up in. The lives we fantasise can sometimes be more telling and true than the ones we live. I’ll let you decide what this fantasy reveals about me.