Swimming with the Olympic Team

 

One morning, there’s a message left under our hotel room door in Mazatlán.  The message in Spanish and in English invites hotel guests to join the Mexican Olympic Swim Team on a swim out in front of the hotel.  We decided to eat a lighter than usual breakfast and join them on the swim.  I’ve always been a swimmer, not a great one, but have been swimming most of my life.  Susan was, at that time, swimming several times a week at the local YMCA pool, so we were ready.

We went down to the water at the reported time, perhaps a couple minutes late.  There were no swimmers on shore and no one out on the beach as it was still rather early in the day.    After a couple minutes we spotted a group of swimmers out perhaps a one hundred yards swimming south.  So, we set out to join them.

As we got out to about where we had seen swimmers, they had moved on.  And being low in the ocean made it impossible to see that very far.  We did spot an island further offshore but reachable.  It did not seem so very far, and wanting to swim further, Susan suggested we swim out to it.  As we moved out into the open ocean the current kept pushing us off course.  We figured out we had to swim in a direction north of the island to hit the island.  Swimming straight towards the island would not work. 

What seemed like an hour went by and we were still not at the island.  Susan continued to have a wonderful stroke and would wait for me to catch up.  I would take rests floating on my back.  The trouble with that was that the onshore breeze and current would push me back away from the island meaning I had to do just that much more work.  I decided not to float but to at least dog paddle forward when I was not swimming. 

Boats appeared close to us.  Some boats were pulling water skiers.  Some had people fishing.  Still others seem to just be near to watch us.  Susan figured out later that they were probably there in case I went under and needed help.  I was struggling now but not giving up, after all, it was too far to go back, and the island was looking close by.  I would see some beautiful white sand ahead on this deserted island.

I was feeling now that I could make it.  Being very close to the island was good in that the onshore breeze was shadowed by the island rock making the swim much easier.  Knowing boats were nearby relieved my fear.  And it seemed that perhaps even the water’s current had died making that last little bit tolerable.  I was not going to die after all!  And this beautiful island with sand and palm trees all to ourselves. 

We’re now perhaps two minutes from the island.  I hear the roar of something behind us coming our way from the mainland.  It’s an amphibious craft, probably a leftover from the D-Day invasion in Europe of something. It zooms past driving up on the sandy beach.  A boatload of people disembarks at almost the same instant that we reach shore.    No longer a deserted tropical island, it now had a large group of loud people excited about spending the day on the rock.

Susan talks with a member of the crew.  They are returning to the mainland to pick up more tourists.  Would we like a ride back?  My answer is quick in coming.  “Yes.  Take us home!”  We quickly boarded the boat.  The boat zooms back to shore in about five minutes and the tropical paradise of white sands quickly disappears at our back. 

When we get back to the room, we again look at the letter.  Susan pulls out the English/Spanish Dictionary.  What the note under our door actually said: “please come watch the Mexican Olympic Swim team as they practice this morning.”