Snorkeling - the beautiful and scary world of truth !!!
I was lucky to visit Florida last X'mas with my friends. Everyone were interested in some or other adventurous activity - para sailing, para gliding, snorkeling, scuba diving....Scuba diving was out of the list in first few seconds as we need to know swimming for this and in our group of four , only one knew swimming. Next in the list was snorkeling. We inquired at one place and came to know that we should know swimming for that too. All were a bit disappointed, but the ray of hope came when the lady in charge at the second place told that swimming is not necessary!!! I was also very happy (i really don't have any idea what i was thinking then!!!). To tell the truth, I had not given much thought into what is snorkeling/scuba diving or rather i did not care!! I was just getting excited about doing something adventurous with friends (silly me!!!).
I do not know anything about swimming and tends to panic in water. When we reached the place for snorkeling and started putting on the outfits, tension started to sink in. I started becoming nervous at the thought of going into the water all on my own! Even though my friends did not know swimming much, they were very excited (or at least they wanted us to believe so ;) ) . So I tried to take it with a smile, but Sree could make out my tension and tried to comfort me. Finally our turn came to jump into the water and my heart started beating fast (yes......butterflies in stomach). I climbed down the steps of the boat and sat on the side bar and put on my snorkeling fins and slowly tried to slide into the water(scary!). I was in water by then, but still was holding the bar and was hanging there with my head fully above water. I didn’t get the courage to leave it and go. Sree tried to make me leave my hand from the bar and balance my body in water, but all i did was go under water and come up in panic with salt water in my mouth, nose and ears!!!!
After all these panic episodes, the people in charge (realizing my pathetic condition!!) decided to give me some additional support by providing me a body surfboard. Even after so many trials, I was not able to balance on that board and stay in the same position and float on top of water!!!Then they came up with something called a swimming noodle, which I can use to float along with some one else….however i still managed to take in a very good amount of salt water(even with all that safety mask and gear !). Finally they gave me a boogie board (more like toddler stuff!) on which I can lie down properly and it also has a rope that can be pulled by another person(yes yes…he was pulling me in water like a man jogging with a dog!!)..I was feeling so embarrassed that i decided to give up and go back, but somehow got on top of the boogie board and Sree guided me through the water with the rope attached to it(that's how i finally did snorkeling ;))…He had a very tough time with me , out there….. I was concentrating more on different ways to panic rather than balancing!!!
The view under sea was amazing after all that hard work. It was worth every second of the effort we did to keep myself afloat!!…I recommend it to every one who does not panic in water(oh it really doesn't matter ;), go ahead and give it a try!).…its beautiful!! Amidst all these confusions, we still managed to take our snaps of snorkeling ..check out the two snaps here… one the 'picture perfect' snorkeling snap of us.
And another, truth behind the first snap!!!
~Luv
Resh
