“Seriously?” I exclaimed upon opening the envelope
left on the desk by our cabin steward.
“What?” my friend and cabin-mate Ann asked.
“They are asking for our height, weight and shoe
size for snorkeling in Corsica. There were no weight restrictions in the
excursion description. Even better, they want it in centimeters, kilograms and
European shoe size.”
“I’m sure they just need to have the correct
equipment waiting for us,” Ann replied, unusually optimistic for her.
“What did we do before smart phones?” I chirped,
doing a search on pound to kilogram conversion.
The port in Corsica was packed with people. Though
we were the only large cruise ship in the port, there was excursion stands set
up everywhere. We took the three-block walk into the town square to have lunch
before our snorkeling trip. The town was filled with the most incredible
farmer’s market I’ve ever been in. Spanish olives in every shape, size and hue
packed brightly colored carts. Meats, cheeses and produce rounded out the
cornucopia. I purchased a half-kilogram of my favorite olives and we sat down
to enjoy a crusty sandwich and people watch.
Most of the excursion stands were gone or
unoccupied when we returned back to the dock. It took much asking around in
broken French to figure out which small piece of fence we needed to be lined up
by.
A slight, very tanned women in her late-sixties
wearing a wetsuit halfway pulled down to her waist approached us with a
clipboard. When she was satisfied that everyone was accounted for, we took the
long walk to the other side of the port.
Once there they commenced handing out wetsuits and flippers.
I looked at the black piece of neoprene in
disbelief. I wasn’t going to squeeze into that if my life depended on it. After several attempts, I finally called the
attention of our tour guide, who was busy helping everyone, including my friend
into their suits.
“This is not going to fit me,” I told her. This
elicited a litany of French, none of which I understood.
“Voila,” a man exited the tiny shack with what
looked like Andre the Giant’s wetsuit. It was a full suit, long sleeves and
pants and at least 6’5” long.
I shook my head and tears filled my eyes.
“They knew my height and weight, if I was too fat
to snorkel why didn’t they tell me instead of humiliating me like this?” I
asked my friend, who had just finished squeezing into her suit.
The cute athletic girl next to me tried to comfort
me, although sweet, just made me feel even worse.
The tour operator was at a loss. Between my broken
French and her broken English I finally figured out that the wetsuits were not
for the cold, but for buoyancy.
“Can’t I just wear a life preserver?” I asked.
“Ah, oui,” she sung and disappeared into the
little shack and reemerged with this giant orange half circle, which I stuck
around my waist making me look like a child at the pool with a big floatie
around their waist.
As we approached the dock we pass nice power boat
after power boat until we came to what I now know is called a hard bottom
inflatable. Just like it sounds, it’s an inflatable boat with no seats, just a
floor. You sit on the sides of the boat and hang on to a rope that runs along
the top.
(I did not take this picture, found it on google for reference)
“Anyone who get sea sick stay in the back,” our
tour guide instructed. This should have been my first clue. My friend, who is
prone to seasickness sat at the back of the boat next to the pilot and held on
to the metal stairs. I sat on the other side of the stairs, as close as I could
get to them with this big orange piece of foam around my waist.
All was fine and dandy until we left the harbor
and were out in open water. The boat would hit one of the five-foot swells, go
airborne and then hit the water with an incredible force, bouncing us in the
air, one rope the only thing stopping us from being tossed into the sea. The
boat sped up and the waves came at us faster and faster until there was only a
few second break between crashes. I gripped the rope as tight as possible, even
though with every crash my knuckle scraped the rubber. Boom… Boom… Boom… Boom...
“How long is the ride?” one of the passengers
asked.
“40 minutes,” our guide answered.
I looked around. Some faces registered fear, some
annoyance, one poor girl in her early twenties was already green, sitting on
the floor, a baseball cap pulled over her head, her younger sister trying to
comfort her. I was feeling something
between fear and annoyance.
“There’s something wrong with the boat,” my friend
half-whispered, half-yelled over the sounds of the engine and ocean.
Our pilot, who was probably in his seventies, was
pushing buttons and pulling levers while our tour guide was on her cell phone,
presumably trying to figure out what was wrong with the boat and when or if
they could get a replacement out there. The engine cut out and we were bobbing
up and down in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. My annoyance/fear ratio
suddenly shifted all the way to the fear side. What if a storm came up? What if
there was a rogue wave? What if they didn’t have another ship? We were almost a
half hour from shore. And what about this poor girl who I was sure was going to
be heaving over the side any moment.
After bobbing around for 20 or so minutes it was a
discovered that the 9-year-old boy that had been crawling around the floor of
the boat, actually messed with one of the switches on the engine and that was
why we stopped. With great relief they put whatever switch it was back in its
correct position, turned the key and the engine came back to life.
Another 15 minutes of BoomBoom and we made it to
the spot and weighed anchor. When I jumped into the salt water the knuckle that
had been rubbed raw scraping on the boat, stung so bad I never noticed how cold
the water was. I tooled around, my GroPro pointed towards the cool reefs, rock
formations and what few fish were out there.
Soon it was time to climb in the boom boom boat and head back.
The trip back, although hard on the finger and the
nerves was uneventful. I loved the actual snorkeling part. If I would have
known what I’d have to go through, not to mention the humiliation for no apparent
reason, I’m not sure I would have done it. But it was an experience and I’m
always grateful for new experiences.
