I'm on a boat, Part 9: Painting the giraffe-ramp stripe.

We arrived back at the boat an hour before the mandatory 3PM be-back-or-be-left-behind time.  We were told that the previous week, a couple had arrived at 3:45, to find the boat a speck in the distance.

Maybe this happens once on every cruise, because well past 3 PM the PA system was paging a pair of passengers.  They were paged again and again, and then finally, at exactly 3:45, the boat drifted away from the pier.

In the meantime, I sat in our room and watched a man paint a yellow stripe near a giraffe-patterned ramp at the military base next to the pier.

The painter (man in sailor cap), received a lot of creative input from the men in the beige and white uniforms.

 "Amarillo!"

He stood back patiently and allowed them to explain their vision of the stripe.  First from one end.

"Blanco!"

And then from the other end. (Yes, almost all the Spanish I know is from watching Dora.)

Then two more men were summoned, with stripes on their arms, likely the base stripe specialists.

And of course, someone obtained something to lean on while watching another person work.  And that's when the combined genius became apparent.  A two-tone stripe!

You would think a ramp painted like a giraffe would be taller.

The painter and his associates left, the stripe was done, and off we floated, two people lighter.

Next...