An Amazing Underwater paradise in Mexico

Nov 6, 2016

By Brie Sherow

An Amazing Underwater paradise in Mexico

Grains of sand as soft and fine as powdery snow covered my toes as I tried to name all of the different shades of neon blue in the water. Turquoise, Aquamarine, Slate, Navy, Cerulean, Azure, Cornflower, Tiffany Blue. Sails on the yachts in front of me fluttered in the light sea breeze and the smell of coconut oil wafted by. Juice dripped down my fingers as I took a bite of the fresh cut pineapple. I was on the island paradise of Isla Mujeres in the Mexican Caribbean and I was in tears.

Down by the Belize border I burst into tears in Mahahual, swinging on a hammock suspended above the water. The sea was so clear that I could see the trumpet fish zig-zagging below me and even distinguish the individual grains in the rippled sand below. After that I cried at Santa Fe beach in Tulum, tears sliding down my face and into the fresh coconut I was drinking with a straw as I gazed up at the Mayan ruins on the cliff above.

A newly certified Dive Instructor, I’d been planning this move to the tropics for two years. I’d quit my job, gotten rid of my furniture, told my friends goodbye and made no promises to return. Now here I was in tropical paradise wondering if I could ask my Dad to stay in his spare room for a few months while I sorted my life out. Because my move to paradise was not going as planned.

The tourists around me were having a great time. They were on holiday, having adventures. I would come back to the hostel exhausted from a day walking in the blistering heat, hunting for a job and an apartment. Every day the tourists went swimming with whale sharks. Every day I followed false leads and faced new rejections.

Everything on the streets seemed strange. A man on a tricycle circled town with a loudspeaker blaring “…windows, refrigerators, doors, all you need, tables, chimneys, bathtubs, call me,” followed by a phone number. An eight year old boy leaned out of a truck window to wolf whistle at me. A woman tried to sell me a hand puppet shaped like a chicken.

“What is this place?” I called my Dad for advice. “I’m so tired, I don’t know if I can do this!”

“I have no doubt that you can make a life for yourself anywhere in the world,” my Dad said. “You’ve done it before.”

“I know I can make it here,” I said. “But I don’t know if I want to!”

“Give it another week.”

The next week I got a call from a dive shop offering me an instructor position. “It’s only confirmed for two months,” my new boss said, “but if it works out then you can stay through high season. The catch is that you’ll need to house-sit the apartment above the dive shop until we get the hurricane shutters installed. I hope that we can work this out.”

Needless to say, I took the job and the beachfront apartment. As soon as I was in the ocean I was in charge again; teaching people to breathe underwater, calming their fears about the equipment and the environment, introducing them to the reef ecosystem. I love taking people underwater for the first time, to see them experience the thrill of flying above the corals or encounter a creature that they didn’t even know existed. To see them face to face with a giant turtle, inside a tornado school of giant trevally, or hovering in place while manta rays do flips around them.

Life on land is still confusing, but I’m not crying anymore. I’m settling in to my new town and I’m enjoying the slow pace of life in the tropics. But underwater I have my freedom. The environment is so foreign that you can’t help but immerse yourself in the experience. You can’t feel tears underwater, you’re already totally wet.

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About the Author

Brie Sherow

Brie Sherow is a dive instructor and freelance writer. Her fiction has been published by Takaheē, Yen Magazine and Flash Frontier. Her non-fiction has been published by Freerange Press and Pantograph Punch. She is currently recording her adventures in food, drinks, people and places on her blog; Taste Transfixed.

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