Our trip to Coronado Island began with us all bundled in all our layers questioning our choice to snorkel in this chilly weather. We were joined by an Argentinian family that was on their summer vacation. Our guide, Necky, skillfully provided info in Spanish and English. Since the water is quite cold this time of year we were provided wetsuits to snorkel in. Carol and I were both a bit nervous about snorkeling in chilly water but were excited about the opportunity to swim with sea lions and see colorful fish. We arrived at the island after a thirty minute boat ride and indeed there were a bunch of sea lions awaiting our arrival.
Our Argentinian friends were the first in the water and seemed to be doing ok. We wiggled our way into our wetsuits. This was a first time for me to wear a full wetsuit and I found it quite awkward. Carol finally psyched herself up enough to jump in and I was the last to leave the boat. I have always found breathing through a snorkel quite awkward and this time was no different.
My main problem is that I don't trust that the snorkel will actually work. I finally got the nerve to jump out of the boat into the water and was pleased that while the water was cold, the wetsuit seemed to be doing its job keeping me warm. Now the hard part, putting the snorkel in my mouth and my head in the water. My heart started racing from the thought of it. I knew I needed to stop thinking about it and just do it. I practiced with my head outs of the water and soon put my head in. After a couple minutes of breathing rapidly and nervously I finally settled down and enjoyed seeing fish and swimming with the sea lions. They weren't quite as playful with us as we had hoped but it probably reflected our lack of playfulness on our first day out snorkeling in wetsuits. After about 15 minutes of snorkeling we got back in the boat to get a ride to our next snorkeling spot.
Our day was about to take a different direction. As we were prepping to get back in the water, our Argentinian friend - the mom (whose name is escaping me right now) was having trouble getting swinging her legs with flippers over the side of the boat. Her daughter, Pia, in an effort to help her mom get in the water lifted one of her mom's legs which caused her to fall backwards and hit her head on an edge of the boat. ....hard enough to cause quite a bit of bleeding. After a moment of shock, we got a towel for to hold to her head and got Pia's dad back in the boat and headed immediately back to the mainland. Thankfully the bleeding subsided and we were all pleased that she was still lucid.
We were met by a team paramedics at the dock. She got carried off on a stretcher and her family followed. We were glad to see her get safely ashore and also happy to go back to our room to get hot showers. On a walk later that afternoon, we ran into the dad and daughter on the main plaza. They were happy to let us know she was fine. She had to have four stitches to close the wound and all she needed was a little rest. We were surprised that they were also ready to go back out on the water the next day to finish out our aborted tour and hoped we would join them!....so we did, see Carol's entry to hear how that went.
No comments:
Post a Comment