It’s been a few weeks since I’ve pressed send on an article, and I’m back to share my latest adventure with you. It’s in two parts, with the second part to follow. I hope you enjoy it.
‘Do you remember that day we were on the beach?’, my friend asked recently, with little more of a prompt than reference to the other friend who was with us.
How on earth could I remember one day, you might wonder, surely there have been many beach days? Yet I immediately knew which day she was talking about. There have been surprisingly few days where we just head to the beach, sunbathe, and do nothing- this is the difference between going on holiday and living in the Caribbean, I guess!
Not quite what a beach umbrella is designed for, but thankfully effective…
It was a day that started out gloriously sunny, but suddenly we found ourselves huddled under an umbrella with rain lashing all around. Although it was warm, it was not welcome.
A smile lingered on my face whilst I replayed the memory in my mind. The game we played, our new-to-island excitement together on that tiny patch of sand. It was strange to remember back, seemingly so long ago, but not yet a full year. Once again, I wondered what this summer season would bring, appreciating the reminder, and pleasure in sharing the memory again. Without that prompt, the memory probably would’ve stayed stacked in the filing cabinet of my brain, unlikely to be retrieved on it’s own. How do we keep remembering?
With photos, stories, and the act of sharing.
In my first month on the island I braved the humidity to walk the mile along the road to the beautiful area of Smith Cove. This is more eventful than you might imagine. Walking a mile along the road in the UK is generally pretty easy. Unless you’re in a rural area, or alongside a main highway typically there are pavements separating you from the traffic. Here they are a rare and unreliable thing. Typically there will be no pavement at all, then all of a sudden a constructed walkway will appear in front of you, easing you into relative comfort in separation from the whizzing traffic, only for this path to just as suddenly stop about a hundred meters along. For a body acclimatising to the heat, a mile feels like a very long way. The ocean is a worthy reward.
Smith Cove is a popular day and night spot, with picnic benches, palm trees, and bottle tops dotted amongst the sand. The water is typically calm and safe to swim, and a great snorkelling site. The weather in September, in the second half of hurricane season, is unpredictable and soon after arriving at the beach, I found myself sheltering beneath a tree, trying to find a dry spot amongst the tree roots to leave my stuff. Swimming doesn’t stop for a rain shower, unless it’s accompanied by high winds and lightning. I was standing near to a slightly older couple who were also getting ready to swim, wondering if there would be a pause in the rain. We started chatting, and one of the first questions people ask each other here is where they are from, and how long they’ve lived here. I told them I’d recently moved to the island and we talked about sea swimming, and the places to go. The woman enthusiastically told me about something I would repeatedly misremember for weeks as the Rose Sea Swim. I grinned back at her as she told me about the mile long swim event, with famously generous raffle prizes, won by all those successful in making the 75 minute cut off time.
‘Sign up quick’, she said. ‘The tickets sell out fast’.
June seemed such a long way away. The transition to life in the Caribbean was not easy, and I had no idea if I would make it that far. And June was hurricane season, would the weather be kind? There was no way of knowing, but it became a goal to work towards. I committed to it there and then.
In Training
I checked Flowers Sea Swim website many many times before they finally opened for entries at the start of January.
Pre-Caribbean readers of Willow Blooms may recall that in my UK life I enjoyed open water swimming. Living inland, my regular swims were typically in enclosed fresh water venues, and sea swimming was rare, and limited to holidays. I needed to practice in the sea, learning to spot, to pace, and manage the waves. Whilst the picture postcard images of Grand Cayman show perfectly flat blue sea, sometimes the water is cloudy, and more than a little bumpy. I needed to train for the conditions.
With a pool at the apartments, it was easy to swim almost every morning before work. Not for a mile, but to build up my water time in the pool. At weekends I took to the sea, gradually increasing the time spent swimming along Seven Mile Beach, the calmest water on the island. With no fancy watch, I had to guess how far I was swimming, judging it by the number of buoys I passed, and when these ran out, getting to the next beach umbrellas, and hotels. I was never sure whether I was close to the target mile, and just added an extra marker each time. My training gave me experiences I’d never have had otherwise.
One weekend the seas were rough, and I was one of the only bodies in the water. A friend came to join me. This kind of sea was very familiar to the Cornish-girl, albeit significantly warmer. We were thrashed about by the waves, and whilst I marked it off as great practice for less than optimum conditions on the day, I wondered whether the event would even go ahead if it were like this.
Another time, I swam for 10 minutes in one direction, and turned around to find the going much harder going back. The current had unknowingly assisted me, and it took me twenty minutes to return to my start point, kicking harder all the way. The course goes in one direction. It would be difficult if the wind, or current was going the opposite way!
One Sunday we heard the call of a woman, telling her friend there was a turtle. The woman did not hear, but I took a breath and dunked my head into the water, scanning beneath. Little limbs poked from a small green shell, gracefully moving just above the sea floor. I swam above it, soaking up the sight of my first turtle. It slowly rose, and a little head poked above the surface, neck taut as it reached up. Once, then twice, presumably taking a couple of breaths before diving down again. With my head back in the water, I watched it slip away.
The Event
Suddenly 14th June was here.
Part two of the adventure to follow…
The Good Life
Moving thousands of miles away from people who have known and loved you for years, can unsurprisingly feel lonely at times. It takes time to build relationships and a familiar routine, and in the gap it’s easy to think about what you’re missing, rather than what seeds are growing.
November 16th 2024
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