Water Sports

My first experience with swimming occurred when I was just 6 weeks old, and it has been difficult to pry me from the water ever since. Unnaturally comfortable holding my breath, I could spend hours snorkeling along the reefs, hovering just above it in a canoe or kayak, or splashing around in the surf. After one particularly bountiful snorkel off the coast of Isla Monserrat, in which I spent the bulk of my time below my fellow cruisers in deeper reefs, I resurfaced next to the zodiac. Our guide, who had also partaken in the snorkel, commented that I looked so comfortable in the water that he had half-expected me to grow gills and a tail. “I should have been a fish,” I told him. He nodded in agreement.

Throughout the week, I was occasionally lured away from the sea by burros and scenic hikes, but I always found my way back to my snorkel and fins. Whenever I travel, I do my best not to journey too far inland. Whether enjoying the company of whales, dolphins, sea lions, starfish, or moral eels, some of my favourite travel memories have occurred in the water.

"So that the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts, seemed consolingly to repeat over and over again…" -Virginia Woolf