Number One GAIAS Accomplishment: Learning to Survive Rip Currents

         I know that I still need to finish my epic blog post about the Amazon Rainforest and Tiputini, but this really crazy story happened to me last week and I knew I needed to share it. I want to tell this story not just to help myself kind of accept what happened, but to also let people know what to do if they get into a situation similar to this one. It was terrifying...but also something I'm proud of accomplishing. 

        




So it was the second day of our third GAIAS module…a class called Natural Resource Management and Communities. We were all really excited because this professor seemed so much cooler than the professor we had for our previous module. He decided that we should use our class time to go snorkeling at this place called La Loberia, which is this gorgeous, sandy beach with a tide pool area that’s perfect for snorkeling. When we all put our stuff down at the beach, our professor pointed out a line of boulders at the mouth of the tidal pool. He made sure we knew that going out past that pile of rocks was dangerous because the tide got very strong past that point. The water was so crystal clear and cool I had no trouble at all jumping in with my snorkel gear. There were so many beautiful fish hovering around the algae covered rocks…I loved seeing them float up and down with each wave. I went to catch up with the group that was swimming farther out because it looked like they had found something interesting. I figured that by staying close to our trusty professor I would avoid being tossed out past the line of rocks.

Wrong. Very wrong.

            The other group had found this enormous school of fish…like I’m talking thousands of these gorgeous, big fish with black stripes on their sides. I started to notice that these fish were moving back and forth about 5 feet with each new wave that came in. Suddenly, I heard some panicked yelling above water so I pulled my head up and whipped off my snorkel mask. As I was treading water and looking towards the shore, I saw my professor screaming the sentence that I never wanted to hear him yell, “We are too far out!!! WE NEED TO GET BACK TO SHORE!” As he was saying this I realized how dangerous this situation was. It was as if my time in the Galapagos was just the beginning of a super dramatic horror movie, and this was the part where the scary music came in and there’s a lot of close-ups on the main character’s panic-stricken face.

             While we were looking at fish a few minutes ago, we were oblivious to how strong the current that had pushed us toward the school of fish. Every wave that came hurtling towards us picked us up about 6 feet in the air as it passed. Some of the waves crested and broke right on our heads, dragging us under the water. One of these waves crashed down on me so hard that I flipped over at least three times underwater. I was so dizzy and exhausted that I couldn’t remember which way was up. I floated to the surface just in time for another wave to pick me up and drag me under again. Each time I tried to swim towards the shore, I would feel pull of the next wave dragging me back out again. One of the girls in the program had bought a boogie board along with her for snorkeling, and two other girls who were caught further out from me were holding onto it for dear life. One boy in my program had an asthma attack after about 10 minutes of struggling against the waves, and was fighting as hard as he could to stay above the waves. It was the worst feeling in the world to see how hard we all were swimming and to not see any progress at all. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life.

            Looking back on it, I suppose it was a real lesson in control. Like sometimes there really is nothing you can do to physically change the situation you are in, but you can work within the situation to make your life a bit easier. Calming down, for one thing, was the most important thing for us all to do in this situation. Luckily, one boy in my group was experienced with rip currents, and he tried to show us how to swim parallel to the shore to escape the worst of its pull. It was way too difficult for me to understand while we were out in the middle of those big waves, however. He eventually just swam to a part of the shore that had a ton of huge black boulders and was waving directions at us. Once I saw that he had made it to shore, I finally was able to calm down and follow his directions. Up until that point though, I honestly thought I wasn’t going to make it. I was loosing so much of my strength so quickly and the whole situation seemed so futile that I didn’t think I would be able to make it to shore. As I finally began to make progress toward the shore, I started calling out directions to my friends in the waves as well. That’s the point when I saw one of my girl friends floating on her back in the water, not even trying to swim (or, as she would like to say, "gave up on life"). I started freaking out again, calling her name to see if she was conscious. Finally we saw a surfer come up and pull her onto his surfboard, making sure she was all right.

            As we got really close to shore, the situation became a bit scary again. The entire shore was encircled with gigantic boulders. The black rocks were especially intimidating for someone who was being tossed around in the ocean for the last 40 minutes like a rag doll. As I was swimming, I watched the waves before me crash up onto the rocks at was seemed like a solid 15-20 miles per hour, sending spray up about 4 feet in the air. I was so scared of getting caught in a wave at the wrong time and slamming into the rocks. Then I thought to myself, “I would much rather die on those rocks than drown in the ocean,” so I kept booking it towards the shore. Luckily, the wave that brought me to a place I could stand wasn’t that strong, and I was able to clamber around the rocks to get into a good position to face the next wave. I was with my friend Taylor at this point, and when we both saw the next wave crashing toward us, she yelled,” DUCK!” We both plunged our heads underwater, gripping the rocks for dear life as the wave threatened to dislodge us. After it past, we finally scrambled up to the top of the rocks where the rest of our class was waiting for us.

            After this experience, I really wonder how I am going to live in the future. My favorite English teacher in high school always used to call moments like these “falling beam moments” (from the book The Maltese Falcon). These are the moments in life when people are forced to see everything in a drastically different light than they had before. For the hour that I was fighting against those waves, I was forced to prioritize my energies in ways I never thought I would have to. I had to accept the fact that I could not do anything to save my friends. I had to accept that the only person I could really save was myself, and that I almost wasn’t able to do that. I had to accept that there was no easy solution for my situation, and I had to resign myself to using every ounce of strength I had to survive. Seeing my problem (the waves) as an adversary, however, was a bad idea. If I had not fought so hard against the current, I would have kept my strength way longer. I feel like this has always been my survival strategy with the problems in my life. I demonize my problems and turn them into something I have to fight against rather than just accept them as being a part of my life. Honestly, after an experience like this, I really should take everything else in my life with a grain of salt. I know I get frustrated here all the time because of the asshole guys that creep on me and my friends, but honestly 1) I’m living in the Galapagos Islands and 2) I’m ALIVE in general. While I was in that water, I finally realized what it felt like to be completely mortal. I knew that my skin, bones, and intellect were the only resources I had to keep me alive. So many young people have never been in situations like that, and they don’t realize how much they have to loose. While I certainly don’t advocate forcing people to have these experiences, I am glad that I have been through something like this. And I do always enjoy having new stories to tell :)