Hola! Okay so before I get into the gritty details of my almost-drowning experience, I am going to talk about the good things first! My group and I decided to embark on our second beach trip to a city called Montanita. It is a beautiful beach, with clear blue water! As usual we left Thursday night and arrived early Friday. We had to take two different buses to arrive, totaling about 12 hours. It was a long ride haha. But the bus station where we changed buses is actually the largest bus station in all of South America! Que chevere.
Anyways, Friday we napped and hung out at the beach all day. I tried to catch crabs, but failed because those little things are so fast. We didn't hang out in the water much because although the water was beautiful, the waves were much larger and stronger than most of us were accustomed too. Friday night we went out dancing and just had a great time.
Saturday quite the adventure. We bought tickets to an excursion that began super early in the morning. After a short bus ride to another city, we hopped on a boat and set out to the open sea. The first part of the excursion was whale watching, which was absolutely phenomenal. It was awesome seeing whales and more exciting than I expected since the whales were so plentiful. But what made the whale watching experience worth it was when a whale jumped out of the water, twice. It was beautiful...although the whale nearly landed on a boat nearby haha. After whale watching we went snorkeling. It was my first time snorkeling so it took a while for me to get used to the whole breathing under water concept haha. After finally getting a hang of it, my friends and I would sometimes dive under to where the fish were and hang out with them as they actually weren't extremely shy and it was easy to be close to them. After eating some fruit and sun bathing on the boat, a few of us went kayaking, which also was a first for me. Overall Saturday was a great, but exhausting day. Most of us came back to the room and passed out until 9 p.m. at night. After all that sleep though we stayed up pretty late, until nearly 4 am. Montanita is a crazy little town. The clubs were playing music until 8 am in the morning haha. Don't know how these coastal people do it, but they dance all night long, literally.
Here is a street in Montanita. This was early because in the afternoon and night the streets are all lit up and filled with people as well as street vendors.
They had signs like this all over. I found it kind of comical and took a picture. I did too love Montanita, until Sunday.
My friend running into the beach. It wasn't extremely sunny so you cant tell how blue and pretty the water actually is.
Whale fin! (Picture from my friends camera because I didn't bring mine in the excursion. Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures of the whale actually jumping)
So, Sunday was interesting to say the least. Our bus didn't leave until four so a few of us decided to go boogie boarding before we left. The waves here are much larger and powerful than I am used to (I go boogie boarding a lot in Galveston), but it wasn't too terrible in the beginning. After a while it was just my friend Kyle and I boogie boarding. We noticed this man who was screaming and was really far out, but the beach was pretty busy so we thought he was telling his friends to come hang out. A few minutes later Kyle decided to check out to see if the man was okay and I continued to boogie board. Well, a few things went down. As Kyle ventured far out, past where the waves break, to check on the man, I nearly drowned. All of a sudden the waves became much larger and powerful than they already were. I was stuck in a rip tide. The first wave crashed over me, which I had have happened before, but was much stronger and held me underwater longer than the others. Whenever I tried to go up for air, my boogie board held me down since it was stuck in the currently and I was attached to it. When I was finally able to come up for air, I took a big gasp which turned to be terrible since at that moment, a second wave crashed over me and I drank a lot of seawater without getting oxygen. This wave was just as powerful as the first and kept me under the water a very very long time. I was panicking, unable to go anywhere because the tide was so strong, and legitimately thought I wasn't going to make it since I had ran out of oxygen before the second wave even hit. When I pushed myself up to the surface, a third wave crashed on me, once again, without me being able to get much oxygen, also causing me to swallow a lot of water. I blacked out, and don't remember being underwater for this. It could have been because I had drank water, had lack of oxygen or straight up had a panic attack. Either way, somehow, I managed to make it to the surface and my first memory is gasping for air. I must have been under that third wave for a while because rather than the wave just pushing me underwater, it sent me really far from shore, past where the waves break. I found myself near Kyle and the man who was yelling earlier. I was very light headed, dizzy and started seeing stars. I told Kyle I was about to pass out and nearly drowned. He somehow was patient and talked me through it, probably because the man he ended up helping was way worse than me. This man had no boogie board, couldn't swim and had blood coming from his mouth. Kyle gave him his boogie board but the man was a dead weight, going in and out of consciousness. We were out so far that the waves were not breaking, so I floated on my boogie board for a long time, regaining my breath, so I could hopefully paddle to shore and get help for the man and Kyle (It was really hard for Kyle to bring the man back to shore since he was a dead weight and the current was so strong). After a while I tried to paddle to shore, but completely failed. THANKFULLY three life guards quickly appeared and helped us. Never in my life have I had to be helped by a lifeguard, but I am so thankful they came. With me on the verge of passing out and the other man, literally drowning, we were in a terrible situation. It took a very long time to get back to shore, especially with the current being so strong, but we all made it back alive. Kyle literally saved that mans life, which is absolutely amazing. He also stopped me from passing out so he gets hero of the week award haha.
So that was just about the scariest thing to ever happen to me. I really didn't think I was going to live through that while I was stuck under the second wave. I also was beat pretty badly by my board or the sea bottom. My stomach, thighs and the back of my legs are scratched up. Also my head was throbbing for a solid twenty hours. Either my board hit me in the head when I was blacked out, or it was extremely deprived of oxygen. BUT, now everything is well. I slept for 15 hours today, FIFTEEN! Completely revived.
I am off to do homework, but next blog should be pretty cool (and will have more pictures) as we are planning on doing a Quito weekend where we will visit the equator, go to the Quito market and go to a soccer game! Should be a safe/injury free weekend. Yay for being alive. Chau!
No comments:
Post a Comment