mati is a triathlete and having her on this trip pushes me to exercise
more. i wake up at 6 am and she’s already ran around the island 4
times. i go to the gym, she’s already leaving. i’m taking an afternoon
nap, she’s swimming. so when we talked about swimming to the island
across the channel, there was no turning back. we planned it last
night. i only had 2 drinks and had an early sleep because you have to
be 100% to do something like this. see the island off to the right?
it’s pretty far, and the raging current going out to see in the deep
blue water doesn’t make it easy. once you start and go off the ledge
into the deep blue channel, your on your own. you can’t see bottom so
have no feel of what the current is doing. i kept on looking up and
kept on seeing myself getting pulled way off my mark. kind of scary
because if you miss the island, your gone!
i get up at 6am, watch the sunset, and study the ocean for an hour. i
see the current going to the left at about 5 mph. i know with the
incoming time, it’s just going to get stronger and stronger. mati gets
the kayak from the other side of our island and we meet at 8:30am. we
make a plan. i swim to the island, she paddles the kayak escorting me
on the side so no boats run me over. we do the opposite on the way
back. i jump off the deck of my villa and i start swimming. i aim for
the middle of the island so the current won’t suck us out to sea. i
swim there and end up at the far left side of the island in about 25
minutes. i get on the kayak as it’s mati’s turn to swim back. we were
supposed to walk on the beach back down current and start back. but in
the maldives, you can’t just pull up to an island without permission.
and we didn’t have permission. so we leave the wrong side of the
island. not a wise choice. mati swimming and i start paddling the
kayak back, i can see the current getting stronger. mati swims and
swims as the current gets stronger and stronger. a speedboat with 2
staff from the other island speed our way to see what the heck we were
doing out there. they ask me if i was ok, i said “yes, we’re ok.” the
look at us like we are stupid. inside, i was thinking, “we better make
it back!” i could see the current sucking out to see faster and faster
so i got a little worried. it was pretty dangerous coming back but
somehow we finally make it back in little over an hour. it felt pretty
rewarding, it felt, energizing, and it felt challenging.
we have lunch and mati looks at another island on the opposite side and
says, “hey, let’s swim to that island tomorrow.” i’ll have to think
about that one. haha.
