(Probably written in 1983)
If I were asked to pinpoint “my place in Paradise”, I would likely say, Tahiti, because of the idyllic picture I carry in my mind of that tiny island in the Pacific Ocean, for I have never seen Tahiti except through the eyes of those who have been there.
To visualize it, I must close my eyes and clear, blue-green water appears, encircled with tropical palms, white sandy beaches, and a carefree people with nothing on their minds but keeping their islands peaceful and trouble-free; protecting them from the ravages of man inhabiting the rest of the world, so Tahiti will remain a Paradise forever. I see women, the natives, living on exotic fruit, dancing sensuous rhythms to primitive music with orchids pinned behind their ears. I see dark-skinned, muscular men, going about their business with little on their minds but improving the livability of the islands and well-being of their families. The islands are void of theft, murder, greed, corporate business, traffic and pollution. Dress is simple. Comfort is the mode. Sun and surf are the gods to worship. Life’s goal was peace and contentment.
But since I have not seen Tahiti firsthand and have to rely on travel brochures or the handful of people I have talked to who have been there, I must assume these are exaggerations, and my own Paradise on Earth, by reason of economics and practicality must be closer at hand. I am keeping Tahiti in mind, however, and perhaps, someday, after I’ve visited it, Tahiti will be number ONE.
In the meantime, however, I have checked out a few other places, and I will now name my own place in Paradise based on actual experience.
It stands out as the most beautiful place I have ever seen. I wonder if I will ever get back. Even if I don’t, nothing can take away the memory of that beautiful spot. When I saw it, I was there for only a matter of minutes, yet those minutes seemed an eternity, and I was immediately emersed in its silent, incomparable beauty.
There was no sound to distract me, and I was helpless to do more than feast my eyes silently on the magnificent masterpiece before me. God’s most original creation. I saw it through my face mask, sixty feet deep in the Mexican Gulf. It was the famed Palancar Reef, off the cost of the tiny island of Cozumel, Mexico. Unfortunately, the name becomes more familiar every day. All one has to do is pick up a page of the travel section of the local newspaper and there it is: Cozumel, 4 nights, 3 days, double occupancy, Galapagos Hotel, only $400. Tax included, all amenities, dive package include. PLEASE! Please keep it a secret for a little longer. Don’t let it be spoiled before I get back.
Several years ago, about twelve years to be exact, before scuba diving became so popular, I signed up for a course at the Dad’s Club YMCA. I heard it was the best course in town. I had always considered myself to be a pretty good swimmer and had been a lifeguard in college. Some years had passed since then, about twenty-five, but I hadn’t really noticed how many. I had called up the Y and found they had the course with the ‘best instructor in Houston’, Mike Holt.
My daughter, at that time had just turned eighteen, went with me. It was summer, and it was a nice summer activity for her, too, and her presence gave me courage. My twelve-year-old son, perhaps the impetus for me, had completed a scuba course himself and had been so enthusiastic, our appetites were wettened. I had visions of all of us going on scuba trips around the world, forgetting for the moment that it is one of the most expensive of sports, and out of the question in all practicality for us, since we were not in the economic strata, and I was barely self-supporting. But that didn’t matter. One thing at a time was my motto.
The first night when I heard the requirements for the course, as Mike listed the requirements for passing the course, I began to have some doubts. I shrugged them off before the next lesson, which would be in the water. The first lesson was all lectures. We bought our books, our masks, snorkels, fins and rented the rest from the Y to include regulators, tanks, and vests. The first water lesson was discouraging, having to lug my own tank nearly did me in, much less putting it all together, attaching the regulator. What on earth were all those valves for? We didn’t use the tanks the first night in the water but learned all about them. We were told in no uncertain terms that we had to take care of our own tank, and that it would never, ever, be carried for us, or even put on for us. We had to learn to do it alone. But that point was way ahead. First, we had to swim underwater, sans tank for fifty feet. Then we had to tread water for five minutes, no hands. The list went on and on. Dive in twelve feet of water with face mask, snorkel and clear it. A few people were disqualified the first two or three lessons. I was one of the last ones to be able to swim underwater that far. In fact, I couldn’t do it the first night. I was mortified! We had three lessons a week, one classroom lecture and two in the water. I came to dread those nights in the water, in spite of my love for the water. I learned to fear the water. I learned to fear the depths. I learned to think about burst lungs, nitrogen sickness, bubbles in my blood stream, decompression, poisonous fish, poisonous coral, sharks, and other underwater horrors. I learned that I was to be given no special concessions because I was a woman, or because I was older than most students. I spent weekends practicing “ditch and recovery” with my twelve-year-old son giving me encouragement in a neighbor’s pool. This involves downing all gear, including weight belt and jumping in the deep end of the pool, sitting on the bottom, turning off the air, surfacing, get out of the water and then dive in, retrieving it all, and putting all of it back on. I developed an earache because I practiced with a bathing cap, about which I had been warned against in class. I avoided going to my own ear specialist and sought out the famous ear specialist, Dr. Reuter, who is also a famous underwater photographer and who invented the current underwater table used universally by divers. I knew my own doctor would ground me, and I wouldn’t get to finish with my class. Dr. Reuter cured me and although I had to “observe” class for two weeks, I was able to catch up and resume the lessons without difficulty.
The big night came when we had our final swim exam, and it was rough. We had aluminum foil in our masks and had to stay under water for thirty minutes, swimming, no matter what. We were harassed the entire time by the instructor or his assistants, although we could see nothing. The diving assistants slipped up on us and turned off our air, unclamped our tanks, yanked off our masks, pulled the mouthpiece away. It was unbelievably horrible and scary, but if we surfaced, we failed the test. During this time, we were even forced to buddy breathe, with them for a short period. We all passed. I will never forget it, nor will my daughter, who was in tears when it was over. The test was to test our ability to react from emergency situations and to discover whether or not any of us would panic.
The written test was the next hurdle. “If you fail even one part of the math, you fail the course.” “Fail the course, after all this work?” A resounding “Yes!” from Mike. He was firm! Alas, math had always been the weak point in my existence. However, I had come this far and was not about to give up. I found the son of a friend who had majored in math and was also a scuba diver. I persuaded him to drill my daughter and me an entire weekend. My son was also on hand to help. How could that twelve-year-old twirp understand something that difficult with such clarity?
The big night came. With fingers crossed, we took the exam. Most of it was a snap, because we had been drilled so long and studied so hard. We were scared to death. The math section! Dear God, help me. He did, and the hours of study and practice on hypothetical problems helped, too. We both passed. Hooray! But we still had an open water dive to complete. We met the group at Lake Travis in Austin. I was scared to death, as was my daughter. My son came along to observe. How could we possibly be scared? But we were. One by on Mike and his expert assistants took us down. Finally, it was my turn. I got Mike! He gave me last minute instruction and off we went into the dark blue-black depths yonder, and DOWN to the bottom. I forgot my fear...even Lake Travis was beautiful, and I was immediately thrust into another world.
He tapped me and showed me that we were almost to the bottom, and the depth was thirty feet. I had had a few twinges of pain in my ears, but the practice in the deep YMCA pool and taught me to clear my ears. I was amazed when my big flippers stood me up on the sandy hard bottom of the lake. We went through our exercises, removing the mask, replacing it, buddy breathing, sharing the one link to life, air. I could feel my heart pounding. A few more situations, like taking off our tanks and putting them back on. Releasing the last of the air from our vests which had been trapped there, then inflating slightly to get the feel. Then he indicated it was time to start up. He removed my mouthpiece and as preplanned, we both blew bubbles and started up, hands pointed above us. He reached over and forced his fingers in my mouth, indicating that I should open wider and blow more bubbles. How could my air possibly last? It did, and we popped to the surface. We had been warned, by now hundreds of times, that if we didn’t exhale that compressed air, our lungs would burst, even if we were in five feet of water.
We all passed. But I learned later that it was not at all unusual for several students to fail and have to take the test again with the next class after attending the next class again in the areas needing help.
But alas, even though I joined the Houston Underwater Club, my family commitments, my job, and lack of cash, made me put off my first dive trip. My son had several trips with the dive club, a friend’s father took him along. But neither my daughter nor I were able to continue the pursuit of our newest interest, though we read all we could on the subject. She was still in college and had not time, nor money either, for this pursuit.
By the time I felt I was able to take a dive trip, I realized I couldn’t remember enough to go without a refresher course. I called Mike Holt and talked to him about it. My plight was not that unusual, and he was starting a refresher course for people like me, who had not dived recently, or at all, except in a class situation. He said he had added something new. He was now taking each class, or at least giving them the opportunity to dive with him in Cozumel, once a month. And not only that, but he also took them the cheapest way possible. We didn’t stay in the big hotels, but in some favorites he knew in the downtown section. “No luxurious hotel on the beach, but its clean, and you’ll like it.” He enrolled me in a class that lasted three weeks, and we went over every detail. I was amazed at how quickly it all came back to me. After completing the refresher course, I said, “Count me in Mike. I’m going with you to Cozumel.” While waiting for the trip, I trained in the Spring Branch Pool which is eighteen feet deep. I met the other two students at the pool after work, and we went through our scuba exercises, i.e. clearing the ear, ditch and recover, buddy breathing, ascent, etc. Before long, we were all at ease in the water again. I would be ready to go at the end of those three more weeks.
Finally, it was time to go. Mexico at last! We boarded the Aero Mexico flight to Cozumel and arrived at the tiny airport on the island and departed by taxi to the hotel downtown. That evening our group of twenty met at El Palomar for a fish dinner, then early to bed. We met the next morning in the small lobby and had breakfast together before heading off to the beach. We went to the dock where our boat was waiting to take us to our destination.
The first day we went to Punta Sur where we had an open water checkout in thirty feet of water. It was lovely. Beautiful seaweed waving to and fro in the shallow water, colorful shells, small fish, all the things I had seen in National Geographic and books and articles on undersea explorations. And it was so easy. We checked our dive tables, enjoyed the sun when we came out for it was surprisingly cool in the water. “Tomorrow we will dive Palancar,” Mike said, satisfied we were all prepared and ready. We reviewed our tables again. All our equipment checked out. Mike advised us to wear blue jeans, t-shirt, gloves and rubber shoes. He warned us about the sharp coral and the danger of stingrays. He told us to get a good night’s sleep.
The next day we were off, about an hour’s ride to the wondrous spot in the deep blue ocean, several miles off the coast, and blue it was! I was the last one in the water after staggering to the edge of the boat with my heavy tank, mask, snorkel, fins, regulator and life vest in place. As instructed, I held my mask close to my face as I flipped backwards off the rail, sure I would drown! It took all of my courage to fall in backwards off that boat. When I recovered enough to realize I was actually breathing with the regulator, I opened my eyes and there it was, 100 feet below me, Palancar Reef. I was dizzy with excitement and breathing very rapidly, my mouth felt dry. The other divers were at least twenty feet below me, and I was only a few feet beneath the surface. Above me was the hull of the boat. My colleagues’ bubbles were floating up to meet me, so I hurried down to catch them.
As I descended, a piercing pain in my ears stopped me. I remembered Mike’s words, “Keep up with the others, even if your ears don’t clear. Swim above us and keep up. We have to stay together.” I grabbed my nose through the mask and blew, swallowed, pain. I tried again. Finally, the pain was relieved, and I sank another ten feet. Then I had to go through the entire process again, squeeze and blow. Finally, I reached the others, and the pain was finally gone.
I was sinking fast and had to inflate my vest to keep from going to the bottom. I looked at my depth gauge and saw we were already at sixty feet. Color was all around us, giant coral reefs, blue bottom depths, large and small fish, of all colors swimming up to our face masks, a huge turtle swam past, so close I reached out and stroked his shell, a stingray “flew by” flapping his graceful fins, so beautiful I forgot to be scared. I felt like a fish myself. Huge mushroom shaped plants on the bottom loomed upwards. Mike would point out things for us to notice, and when he wanted our attention, he tapped his knife on his tank to get our attention.
The many things we had learned in the course came back. The signs for “O.K.” were the most reassuring. He constantly checked each of us, our air, our depth, the time. It was a world of silence, of indescribable beauty. My only regret was that I couldn’t express myself, couldn’t take pictures. A new discovery was around every corner. Deep caves and crevices dropped below us, into unseen depths. It was like a silent city, beckoning us to come further, to see the beautiful secrets in store for us. I had read about nitrogen sickness when swimmers would become drunk with nitrogen, and swim away into the depths of the ocean. How easy to keep going down, down, down. There was a shelf and dark blue into nothingness thousands of feet down. We had hit ninety feet and at this depth everything was the same color, blue. We started back up, slowly ascending. A huge fish swam by. I was so excited and heard myself squeal. I was constantly tapping my buddy’s shoulder to show him something. We had been warned to stay with our buddy the entire trip. Finally, Mike stopped in front of us, pointed to his watch and pointed upwards. We all ascended slowly, careful to blow bubbles as we went.
One by one, we popped up to the surface, and there was our boat which had been following our bubbles. As we took turns climbing up the ladder, after first removing our weight belts, then our tanks, handing them to the sailors abroad, we were all talking at once about the sights we had seen on our first dive. We would have another dive that day unless someone wanted to go in from the beach. Mike said that was all we would do at Palancar. “Too deep,” he said. “We can’t do that one twice today.”
We headed for the beach two miles away. While we had been diving, the deckhands aboard that boat had been diving for conch shells with which they would cook a feast for us. We slept most of the way back on board the boat. Once ashore we alternately sang and discussed our adventure as we ate our delicious meal. Heading back to our hotel, the conversation was about our dive the next day. I knew that it, too, would be exciting. But nothing could take away the memory of my first dive in the paradise of that silent world, certainly the most beautiful spot on Earth. I will never forget it!