Christmas Island

Yes, there is a Christmas Island. It's very close to Western Australia and was discovered by William Mynors in 1643. He discovered it on Christmas day when sailing past.

 

We sailed across the Indian Ocean to a little island called Christmas Island. At first, I thought this would be wonderful. I would finally get to meet Santa Clause, Mrs. Clause, and the elves. I’d be able to see reindeer and Rudolph! Rudolph! The reindeer with the red nose. No other reindeer in the world had such a nose. On Christmas Island, it would be Christmas every day! Sadly, we were only staying for a week, but I decided that when I was an adult and out of the house, I would go to Christmas Island every summer. We’d have two Christmases, one in winter and one in summer.

            “Are you ready, Chloe?” my mom asked, as we drew closer to the island.

            “Yeah,” I cried, excitement lit up in my face. My blue eyes were almost bulging out of their sockets. I was a child, an 8-year-old child, who was about to see Santa Clause. Of course I was ecstatic.

            My dad smiled as we got closer and closer to the island.

            “It’s going to fun,” he said. “Christmas Island, now how many kids can say they’ve been there?”

            “Not many,” I said. I was so excited. We had left Perth that morning and it took about weeks to get to the island by boat. The cruise ship we were on was MASSIVE! And I thought it would take a year to get there given all the weight, but it seemed the ship lasted pretty well. My family and I were on the front deck, and every so often the sudden impact of the hull hitting the waves, sprayed us with water. Though, I was really out there to see dolphins. Unfortunately, I hadn’t seen any yet. But I was too jittered that if dolphins appeared, I wouldn’t have noticed. I was too excited to see Santa Clause. When I heard the announcement that we were docking soon, I ran to the front of the bow, so I could get an excellent view of the island. My red hair whipped back behind me from the strength of the wind as I calmly�"well, as much patience as I could muster�"waited to see this beautiful island blanketed in snow. But what I saw sincerely disappointed me. There was no snow, in fact, there didn’t seem that there was ever an evidence of snow. No elves greeted us when we docked and I couldn’t see flying reindeer anywhere.

            “Mom, Dad, I think we went to the wrong place,” I told my parents as I tried to forget what I had just seen.

            “No dear, this is Christmas Island,” said my mother softly,

            “But it can’t be!” I protested.

            “But it is.”

            “Well why isn’t Santa Clause there or the elves, or Mrs. Clause, or Rudolph, or�"”

            “Honey, relax, we’re not going to a theme park. It’s a resort like Jamaica or the Caribbean.

            “But-but-but�"”

            “Chloe, it’s alright. Your mother and I can see you’re disappointed. But just think how much fun we’ll have, just the three of us on a small island. How long do you think it will take before we were sick of each other?”

            But I didn’t answer. To be honest, I was crushed. My hopes and dreams shattered before my eyes. There was nothing Christmassy about this play except for the fact that it was green. But I could have gone to the cottage for that. So, as we grabbed our luggage, I was pouting the whole way as we headed off the cruise ship.

            “Chloe, don’t look so sad, you’ll have a great time,” reassured my father, but I just didn’t respond.

            “Why didn’t you tell me before?” I demanded.

            “Sweetie, we did,” said my mother.

            “Yeah, you told me we were going, but not exactly where. I never expected this.”

            “We thought you understood,” explained my father. “You’re eyes lit up when we mentioned it, we thought you knew.”

            “Well you thought wrong, “ I mumbled, but my dad didn’t say anything in response.

 

 

The first day I was quite pouty. We were staying in a nice hotel and my parents had this full day planned but I was just not interested. It looked the same as a park to me. It was green, it had trees, probably a rainforest, kangaroos, all that, there was nothing interesting about it. First on the list was the national park, which was supposed to be filled with all these interesting animals and plants. But again, I didn’t care, though my parents looked as excited as I had been when I thought we were going to Winter Wonderland. Their eyes lit up and told me about the plans of the day.

            “So we’re going to hike first and all carry backpacks,” said my mother. “Then, we’ll find a nice place to eat our lunch. After, to cool off, we may want to swim in the ocean, but be wary of the crabs.”

            “What crabs?” I suddenly asked.

            “Christmas Island has a huge red crab population, so you may see them migrating across the sand.”

            “Would they cut you and try to nip at you?”

            “I’m not so sure, but I wouldn’t want to find out.”

            I nodded. I was a bit curious about the crabs, but it wasn’t enough to make me ecstatic for the hike.

 

 

It didn’t help the situation when we began hiking, either. We hiked for about three hours in this dense rainforest before sitting down for lunch. We had arrived at Christmas Island at around 9 AM and we didn’t start eating lunch until noon. We found some large rocks to sit on and look out at the ocean down below. But I was still miserable. I munched on my tuna salad sandwich in silence as my parents jabbered on about how fascinating the hike was. Frankly, I thought it was stupid. All we had seen was large trees and a few small animals. I didn’t really care. I could have seen all that at home in Vancouver. It was already quite muggy anyway in this green place. It was just like Vancouver summers except with less rain. But it was supposed to rain today and rain it did. I felt the first droplet when we decided to head back. As miserable as I was, I couldn’t hide the sweat that was dripping from my brow or how tired I felt as we trudge our way through the forest. So when my parents told me we were heading back, I was quite relieved. All I really wanted to do was go home, lie down in my bed, and just sleep ‘til two weeks had passed. As I was thinking, it happened. A droplet. I felt it fall on my nose and looked up to see many falling right after. My parents stayed calm.

            “It’s alright,” said my father. “Let’s all put on our raincoats.” There was a large amount of shuffling as we zipped open our bags and threw our rain jackets on top of us. As soon as we were all standing up again, we heard thunder. My father still tried to look calm, but I could see the worriedness in his brown eyes. Then, lightning. It was almost immediately followed by thunder. That meant it was close. My father looked quite serious now. “Alright, everyone get under a tree.” We looked around and spotted a large tree about two metres away. We quickly rushed towards it, huddled together.

            My sense of poutiness had disappeared and a bit of fear began to creep into my brain.

            “Dad, how long are we going to be here?” I asked, as we all hugged each other close.

            “I don’t know, Chloe, but for a bit. That lightning was way too close.”

            At that moment another bolt shot from the sky.

            I shivered a bit and my mom gave me a heart-warming smile, touching my arm.

            “It’s going to be alright,” she assured me.

            But I wasn’t so sure.

 

 

I don’t really know how long we stayed under that tree but I’d guess about an hour. When the sky finally cleared up, we were heading to the hotel. There would be no swimming today and no red crabs. My whole mind had been wiped clean of negative thoughts and I was actually disappointed that our day had been cut so short. Stupid rain, I thought, once we were in our room.

            “So that was fun,” said my father, as he hung his coat in the bathroom to dry.

            “I wish we had seen the red crabs,” I said.

            “But honey, there would have been no Santa Clause guiding them,” my father mocked, but at 8, I couldn’t really tell.

            “I don’t care, I wanted to see red crabs.”

            My father laughed.

            “So maybe this trip wasn’t such a bad idea after all?”

            “Maybe not.”