On a warm October day on the gorgeous Greek island of Santorini I conquered another fear. Now some may be laughing as they read that the fear I faced this day was birthed by an event that many would jump at the opportunity to experience. However, for those who have known me for any length of time know that I am absolutely and irrationally terrified of sharks. Now this has never kept me from going in the Ocean or surfing (despite the random trails of thoughts that leave me imagining my leg suddenly disappearing into the terrifying clenches of a shark’s jaw), but Greece presented a whole new adventure: scuba diving.
I again realize that you may now be chuckling that I would really be afraid of seeing a shark in the Mediterranean Sea, and this is exactly how I convinced myself to sign up for such an absurd endeavor. I just continued to tell myself, “There aren’t any sharks in the Mediterranean,” and somehow this brought me enough courage to pay the high fee that would allow me to experience the underwater world. But just as I had myself nearly deceived that I was actually excited for this adventure, my oh so loving and humorous brother decided to text me and remind me just how terrified of sharks I am. I laughed back at him and told him that he could tease me all he wanted, but I am safe on that front. There are no sharks in the Mediterranean. Wrong. The next text message I get is a lovely article from google about how they just caught a shark in the Mediterranean. Well, there goes all my worked up courage. Thank you Preston for bringing me back to square one: sheer terror. But at this point, I had already signed up. So here goes nothing.
On that Tuesday morning at 9:00am sharp an ambient Greek man showed up to drive terrified Rylie and her ecstatic friend Aubrey to the diving school. Before I could even get out a proper greeting and shut the van’s door, the words, “Are there any sharks?” flew out of my mouth. He smirked in the rearview mirror and responded, “Yes, they eat people all the time. But don’t worry, they only eat Chinese.” (This was his attempt at making jokes about the absurd amount of Chinese tourists that come to Greece at this time of year). We all laughed, my laughter being more forced and interlaced with nervous giggles, and before we knew it, we had arrived at the diving school.
We pulled up and met out hilariously insane scuba instructor, Demetrius, just as he was walking out with those alien-looking breathing devices. As soon as I remembered I would be breathing out of a tube and that my life would be dependent on an oxygen tanks ability to function properly, I about bolted straight out of there. However, the combination of my pride and stubbornness in facing my own fears kept me rooted in place with a forced smile and increased heart-rate. Without taking notice to my anxiety, Demetrius prepared the gear, started making jokes, and informed us we were the only two divers of the day. With this new information I decided it might actually be a cool experience to see some fish underwater, as long as they weren’t accompanied by any sharks or 70-foot whales. He gave us the run-though of how to clean our goggles underwater, how to breath through that snake-like tub, and how to maneuver in the water. Before I had a chance to change my mind, he piled us into the van with our beyond-heavy oxygen tanks, and we began our descent down the cliff to the little private cove where we would get to explore a foreign, underwater world.
When we reached the sandy shore, he asked us to repeat back to him the rules of diving, helped us suit up, and then attached the weight belts, oxygen tanks, and countless other random instruments to our nervous but excited bodies. And then, it was time. My moment of truth. Could I actually do this?
We followed him into the water, where we struggled to balance on one leg under the weight of the oxygen tank as we tried to put on our fins. After a couple failed attempts, we were successful at our mission. And now, the moment had come to say goodbye to everything humanly familiar, including our ability to breath on our own, and go below the surface to discover an underwater wonderland. We followed our instructor until we were about five feet below the surface, and he had us all sit in a circle on our knees. It may have looked like a comical underwater tea party to anyone who could have watched us, but to uncoordinated and slightly-panicked Rylie (who could not get used to the idea of only being able to breath through her mouth into a tube that was sustaining her life) it took all will-power to refrain from bolting to the surface. However, my mind was somehow composed enough to grasp that against all logic I was, in fact, breathing underwater.
As our instructor had us practice how to retrieve our breathing tubes and clean out our goggles, I talked myself out of the fear and was finally able to take in the swaying underwater plants that continued to birth colorful fish out of their slow-motioned dancing. Our instructor apparently decided that we were now experienced enough to go into deeper water, so we pushed off into a horizontal position and began kicking down along the sand. Finally back in my comfort zone of swimming horizontally (despite the fact that I was 15 feet underwater) and growing accustomed to slower breathing, I began to really enjoy myself.
We made a short tour of the green underwater plants and spastic fish, which flitted in every which direction if you tried to touch them, before coming back out of the water for our break. Our instructor informed me that I have the buoyancy of a diver with 15-17 dives, so apparently my four years of swim team and doing underwater, no-breathers across the pool did me some good. We re-hydrated and warmed ourselves in the sun before suiting back up for our second and final dive, which would take us up to 12 meters (40 feet). This time we knew the drill, so our instructor, carrying a loaf of bread to feed the fish, led the way that would take us to the reef.
We plunged back under the water, this time excited and with much anticipation to see “Finding Nemo” in real life. We kicked more rapidly and I would occasionally flip over to look up and see the sun shining through the surface that continued to retreat farther and farther into the distance. I would also catch glimpses of Aubrey and had to contain my laughter at the sight of her kicking through the water with hundreds of various fish swimming close behind her. Now that’s an image of your friend you don’t get to see every day.
Before we knew it, we had come to one of the most beautiful and surreal scenes I have ever laid eyes on: the reef. It is so full of life and color and crevices that you could probably spend months exploring it and still not discover all that has perfectly come together to make its home in the reef. Our instructor would occasionally dive down deeper to touch strange sea life, and we would follow suit, all the while trying to register that this wasn’t just some crazy dream (that still hasn’t fully registered). It was an inexplainable sensation to see something in the reef ten feet below you, and then just dive down to touch it, not only with no need to take a breath but with a constant flow of oxygen available to you.
After exploring the reef and looking amidst crevices to find wild life, we again swam up to shallower water, knelt down on the sand, and pulled out the loaf of bread. Before I could even process what was happening, I was sitting amidst hundreds of fish who were happily swimming about me to come eat the bread from my fingers. Occasionally a fish would miss and kiss my hand instead, and as their hunger distracted them from the unidentifiable, terrifying being that was I all clad in scuba gear, I was able to pet and touch the fish with my bare hands. After about five minutes of being encircled in underwater sea life, our instructor led our ascent to shallower water.
As we swam back up I continued to discover more life in the sand, even stealing away a couple abandoned shells as a memory of my trip to the bottom of the sea. All too soon, our exploration came to an end, though our scuba instructor informed us that most other beginners make it about 12 meters down (40 feet), but he took us down to 26 meters (about 85 feet). We carried our scuba gear back to the van, bewilderment and thrill still strewn across our faces. As we said goodbye to our instructor, he encouraged us to continue with scuba diving and get our certifications. All I can say is that this no longer an outlandish idea for me. This girl is hooked…. as long as there are no sharks.
When In Rome 