Saturday was snorkel day! In the morning we headed to Santa
Pola to collect our snorkeling gear from Scuba Elx and get fitted for wetsuits.
Trying on the wetsuits was the hardest part because no one originally got one
that fit them. Everyone what struggling to pull them on, suck in their body,
and zip up the zipper. Some of the wetsuits were actually still wet which did
not help AT ALL. It just made the situation worse. Low and behold, everyone
accepted a wetsuit whether it was a tad too small or awkwardly big leaving a
lot of room in the crotch. Most of the wetsuits had jackets, which I had never
seen before. My wetsuit literally looked like it was 10 years old and faded
from being washed/worn too many times.
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| Faded Wetsuit |
The original plan was to get fitted for
a suit and then take it off to carry on the ferry to Tabarca Island. I would
say 95% of us just kept the things on because it wasn’t worth all the sweat and
aggravation to unchanged and change back again. Wearing wetsuits on the ferry was pretty comical.
At least there was a big group of us! On the island we snorkeled around the
marine reserve. Luckily for us, the weather was beautiful and the water was
clear to see what was roaming around the ocean. We saw things like fish, Neptune
grass, enemy, scorpion fish, jellyfish, algae balls, and much more.
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| Neptune Grass |
We spent SO
much time swimming around and actually traveled pretty far out. Getting used to
the snorkel took a little while even though I have snorkeled before. After a
few hours my wetsuit started choking me too from sliding up but I didn’t want
to drag it along in the ocean so I kept it on. Keeping it on was an EXTREMELY
good thing because when we started swimming back to shore, we ran into a
jellyfish infestation. One person in my group, John, all of a sudden was stung
on his lips by a jellyfish tentacle. He quickly stood up and touched his mouth
saying to my teacher, “I think I just got stung by something!?” My teacher,
Monica, told him it was probably a jellyfish, he got out of the water where the
closest land was. The rest of us kept swimming to the “real” shoreline. I kept
thinking to myself, jeez that stinks, it probably won’t happen to anyone else. Not
even five minutes later I get stung on the hand. The sting burned so bad and
felt like I was shocked by something. When I lifted my hand out of the water,
there were reddish brownish spots which were the dye from the jellyfish’s tentacle.
While I was looking at the sting and showing my teacher/people around me, I got
stung AGAIN on the other hand that I left in the water. At this point I was
almost in tears because I could not believe I got stung not once but TWICE
within 30 seconds of each other. I suppose this makes sense because after all, I
am a Gemini and things happen in two’s! Once I was painfully stung, I started
swimming with both of my hands out of the water so they would not get stung
again. This lasted a whole 2 min. I then decided it made more sense to swim
with my face in the water so I can see where the jellyfish are and swim past
them. People pointed out jellyfish every two seconds saying, “Jellyfish over
here!”, “Big one there!”, “Don’t swim in this area!” Believe me, the jellyfish
took over the ocean semi close to shore. I felt like I was in the movie Finding
Nemo when Dory and Marlin run into a ton of jellyfish. We did not have this
jellyfish problem when we were swimming out into the ocean so I think it was
caused by the time of day (feeding time). No one else got stung, but I had to
get stung twice.
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| Only skin shown besides my hands available to get stung |
Meanwhile, John went to the medic and received a shot. Once I made
it to land, our chaperone, Kristin, took me to the medic. I was not able to
take the shot for medical reasons but the doctor said this was okay because my
stings were on the tops of my hands. I definitely got stung by two different
jellyfish because the two stings were totally different. One was spotted, and
the other was more like a rash. After snorkeling it was time for a yummy paella
lunch at one of the restaurants along the shoreline. Stray cats were everywhere
in Tabarca, but mostly alongside the outdoor tables begging for food. Our time
on Tabarca Island came to a close and we headed back to the scuba shop to
return our gear. While driving home, my
class stopped at the salt flats in Torrevieja. We were supposed to watch the
sun set but we arrived a little too early, so we walked around the paths and
then headed home. As we were leaving the park, we spotted a man getting ready
to take off from a field in a one seat plane type thing with a parachute
attached. The bus driver stopped as a result of our reaction, but the man didn’t
take off right in front of us. He took off once we left the salt flat’s premises.
We all figured this would happen but at least we got to see him in the air
using the small contraption! Nothing else really happened the rest of the day.
My friend, Zach, turned 21 at midnight so we all went back to the Norwegian bar
to celebrate including my teacher! This was a great end to a busy, painful, but
fun day.
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