Snorkel Day


  Oh man, I haven't snorkeled since we left Costa Rica in April. I'm still a beginner. Right now it's 2:21pm and I can not remember the last time I was this tired, physically. Maybe after some of those bike rides in Macedonia. Even walking around London all day was not as tiring as snorkeling for a few hours.
  Ron, of course, says he's not tired and it was just another snorkel trip. Wish I had been on so many that I could be so blase about it. We had to ride our bikes to the beach, and down the sandy beach, with the flippers and gear in my basket. Then we parked the bikes and walked to where the reef was. Then we did a lot of walking on uneven rocks, which a whole lot trickier than I imagined. The water was maybe calf deep. It was easier in the places where it was waist deep, then I didn't weigh as much (technically, thanks to the effects of gravity in water) and it was easier to keep my balance when I couldn't clearly see where I was putting my foot down.
  We finally put on the mask and fins, and then found we were blocked from where we wanted to go. The goal was to check out this reef on the way to checking out an island at the other end of our beach.
We were 100 feet from the island, when we walked across the top of the 100 foot long exposed rocks. We tried to make it, but there were waves, and there was me who was kinda nervous. So we turned back. On the way there it was low tide and all the waves were blocked. This part still had waves, and was so deep I couldn't see the bottom. Which is my favorite point of panic.
  We had our plan, with us each holding one end of the mesh bag for holding the fins. It almost worked. But my wise husband decided to turn around for my sake. I made it by just looking at profile as I swam. So that I couldn't look down and not see the floor of the ocean. Plus it felt like I was swimming hard and getting nowhere, which was also unnerving. My legs aren't used to the movements for using the fins well.
  It was still exhilarating. I like moments where the whole world stands still while in extreme motion. Moments where nothing exists except the sound of my own labored breathing through a plastic tube in the middle of a salty other-world. After a bit Ron just grabbed my hand, for reassurance. Which was great, even if it hampers my balance. He was probably also trying to remind me to use the flippers more. (The other day I was hoping for an out of my head experience. Today I went deep into my physical self the basics of wanting to breathe and see if my body could get me to dry land.)(I was doing better than that other snorkel trip, because I didn't feel the need to make any deals with God).
  Then we were back on the rocks in the middle of the cove.

I found a picture! We live on the very left side of the picture, and the island is shown here. During low tide there is a big portion of reef that appears every day. We snorkeled once from the tip of the mainland to the island, but had to head back right away, it was going to get dark. This time we didn't make it. But that didn't stop me from having a grand adventure.The whole beach is 3 miles long.
  So we were on the exposed rocks and there was a small and shallow tide pool. Inside were 2 amazing fish!
We didn't bring the Go-Pro camera, but thanks to the internet I can show you what they looked like. Black with very blue polka dots. So incredibly beautiful. They were big too, about the size of my 2 fists put together. Then we had to take off the fins and walk back to the beach on the rocks again. The water was knee deep for a few hundred feet. Good exercise, right?? It was so much easier when the sand started.
  And if all that wasn't enough, when we got to the reef the first time I lost my balance and fell from a reef of 2 feet of water, forward into a bit deeper water. I didn't scratch up my face, but my shins aren't too happy with me. The small cut on my hand is doing really well. But I had those scrapes during the whole adventure too. Then getting home again. Man I was dragging by the time I got off my bike at home!
  I found one more picture of the kinds of fish we saw.

Pretty cool right? They were 5-6 inches long. There was one other absolutely crazy fish. It was a bigger fish and we saw 2 of them at different times. I don't even know how to describe it. It just had this crazy mandala coloring book pattern with a full studio stacker set of colored markers with 156 colors to chose from. I tried to do a Google search for that one, but it left my wish unfulfilled.
  Maybe I will try again after my siesta.
Pura vida, y'all.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Problem isn't the problem

Image
The problem with terrible and tough things is that they don’t have to be so tough: if I would stop being so emotionally involved in them. The problem with deep trials is that they prove who my real friends are. They make me see what things are really important. They force me to reveal my true strength. They make me have to change, and grow. They challenge my ideas of what Love really needs to be. They compel me to Question Things. Darkness has a way of giving me a chance to shine, to learn about the light. I am learning. It's all about the blessons. The blessings in the lessons. This past month has been one wild ride.  Here is something I wrote on DAY 6: Every night around 7pm my legs start to ache. I don’t think it’s fair, I’ve been working so hard, and I should have lost about fifteen pounds by now. The big fancy scale in the garage says I’m still at the same weight as when we first arrived one month ago. Phooey. I don’t whose fault it is. I believe in the jun...
Read more

2 days of Nha Trang fun

Image
I finally felt functional so we went on the long anticipated cable car ride from Nha Trang to Vinpearl island. It's like a Disneyland. Or so I'm told, I've never been there. This was one cool island. Their water park looked pretty extensive in an impressive kind of way. It's so horribly hot during the day, we avoided most of it by heading over around 4pm. The cable car ride was pretty amazing. The water was such a pretty color. A tall ride over the South China Sea on a fun adventure. The ride was 12 minutes long. That's about quadruple the time it took us to stand in line in the evening just to get into one. There were no lines on the way there, and we had a romantic ride by ourselves. On the way back there were 8 of us hovering over the dark water on our way back. We did one ride that went all over the property in a kind of bumper car on a track. The first half of the ride was about going up and around and it was all automated. It went from where the cable cars l...
Read more

Love will win.

Image
   The more I write, the more I see the intricate psychology of writers. I love my writing community, and knowing that I belong.   What should I write about today? Isn't it supposed to be important to have something of value to say?? What has been my latest travels? That's always a favorite topic of mine. The last travel was the 7-8 hour drive from Apple Valley in California over to the coast and go north to Santa Barbara. Oh, it was such a nice day for a drive. We had the car packed perfectly. The ocean was beautiful. We saw some cool things like the city of Los Angeles, and a ship so big that in the distance Ron thought it was an island. I saw another gorgeous moon rise quickly followed by a sunset. The Joshua trees turned into weird shaped things that were filled in by a black permanent marker. The moon came up and traveled through the pink and purple layers of the sky as it faded from the light. It was amazing. Then we got a call to turn around, because the job we...
Read more