An adventure
Senior Liam O'Sullivan vlogs about his two weeks in Ecuador.
Kicker Rock is a massive boulder in the middle of the ocean off the coast of the Galapagos. Just a gigantic rock. Huge. Big.
The water is blue, clear and none too calm. My breathing is heavy and not from exertion. Seeing things that take my breath away while snorkeling makes the endeavor difficult enough that I surfaced more than I’d have liked to. In the future, I’d ask all natural beauties to be at least 30 percent less breathtaking just so I can look at them without suffocating.
There were sharks, rays, turtles and fish I’d never seen before. Maybe it reflects on my meager research before heading to the Galapagos, but I had no idea hammerheads lived in the archipelago. In retrospect, adequate preparation might have made the experience less memorable if I’d known what to expect. The lesson I’ve learned from this is, obviously, that homework is for chumps.
Being in open water among sharks, known in Western media to be as toothy as they are ferocious, is a much different experience than seeing one at an aquarium. “Jaws” wasn’t a documentary, however, and I’m happy to say I wasn’t shredded to chum like a hapless beachgoer in that film. Regardless, it had me reflecting on “minimum safe distances” from the sharks of Kicker Rock. In any swimming contest with any amount of a head start, I’m going to lose to a shark, but my curiosity bid me to get closer.
By the end of the experience, I was left with two observations: 1) Sharks are cool as hell, and 2) I wish someone brought their GoPro.