There's a lot I could talk about regarding my recent trip to Isla Mujeres, an island off the coast of Cancun: poor attempts at speaking Spanish, uncomfortable airports, timeshare salesmen at the Cancun airport, tourist economies, how much I love the ocean, worldwide economic inequality, how amazing dolphins are, the charismatic kingpin, ocean plastic, waves, curses, botched snorkeling trips, how much I love the ocean (I know, I said it twice.)
But there's just one thing that I can talk about when I talk about Las Mujeres that I can't talk about when I talk about any other place in the world, and that is this: My misguided and hopeful attempt at swimming with a whale shark, the largest known fish in the world, it's speckled body reaching anywhere from 20 to 40 feet long.
So I'll just get right to it. This is what you have to do to swim with a whale shark in Las Mujeres.
You've got to wake up at 5 a.m. before the sun rises. If you're staying on Las Mujeres, you've got to find your tour guides. Or at least, we had to find our tour guides. That involved hailing a taxi at 5:30 in the morning and jumping on the first ferry of the day at 6 a.m. just so that we didn't risk somehow missing the second ferry, which left at 6:30 a.m. It's about a 25 minute journey from Las Mujeres to Cancun, so we docked at 6:25, in search of something at the ferry dock or next to the ferry dock called "API at 7:00 a.m." (Or at least, that's how the emailed instructions told us we were supposed to find our guides.) We walked around the ferry dock for 30 minutes, searching for a sign or building or business or polo shirt that said "API" or "Pro Dive International," to no avail. Eventually, we were asking everyone on the dock if they knew what API meant, if they knew where Pro Dive International picked up their clients, if they'd heard of Pro Dive International, if they happened to have our names on their lists. Nobody knew anything. A couple people really tried to help us out - one of the guys who worked for the AquaWorld whale shark tour and one of the guys who worked at the information booth for the ferry - but nobody from our tour came, that I know of.
It was pretty frustrating, because this trip so far had been one missed opportunity and disappointment after another (though to be fair - we were still on a beach, on vacation, exploring a foreign island town, so I'm obviously using "disappointment" in a very "white people problems" way). We had canceled one snorkeling tour we'd signed up for upon discovering it was part of a timeshare deal; another snorkeling tour we'd signed up for had been canceled due to rain; another one had been so murky that I couldn't even see my hand when I was swimming. So an entire trip planned for snorkeling and sea life experiences had been coming up nearly empty so far. I didn't want to miss out on this last experience — billed as "an adventure of a lifetime" — too.
So I wound up paying the extremely helpful AquaWorld employee to include us on their tour at the very last minute. They had space because two of their passengers had just cancelled minutes earlier since the girlfriend was sick with a migraine.
It's a smart thing they canceled (though if it'd been me canceling, just the thought of missing out would have made myself even more miserable). Starting this journey off at anything less than 100 percent is a mistake, kind of like going all in with pocket twos against two players who already hit sets is a mistake. I felt like I was at 100 percent — I had gotten a good night's sleep, woken up excited, gotten there early, seen the sun rise. But it wasn't enough.
I started off strong. There's an hour and a half boat ride across choppy ocean waters (something I've been fine with before) until your boat and about 20 other boats – mostly small speed boats like ours - all meet out somewhere in the ocean and start circling the waters just to have a better shot at spotting one. The boat ride there is either wet because you're sitting in the back, getting sprayed by every single wave, or choppy, because you're sitting on the front and you're crashing against the waves. At first, it's not so bad. You keep your eyes on the horizon and just watch as the water does it's thing. You take it all in.
But eventually, someone from the front gets sea sick and comes to the back. They stare at the floor and just the look of them does you in; now you're staring at the floor even though you KNOW better, and you're sick, too. And even though you've only been in the boat for an hour, you've got a long ways to go. You're going to be on that boat, rocking back and forth under the sun for hours.
Because it's not like these fish have their own caves, their own homes where they just stay all the time. No, they have a range and it is wide and it is hidden, so you have to find them. Well, you and the 20 other boats that are in the ocean out there with you. You're all slowly circling the waters in search of these fish; they are all that matters.
At first, it looks almost hopeless. The ocean reveals nothing; I don't see anything except the waves, coming at us like some kind of strange clockwork. What you're looking for, it turns out, is for spots in the ocean where the water is moving the wrong way, but for all the ocean's rhythm, there is no pattern, at least not that I can see. Everything looks suspect - and so nothing looks suspect.
Eventually, one of the boats does spot the fish. A singular fish, about 30 feet long, give or take. It could've been much bigger, but this one seems smaller than average, maybe younger than average, and it's not in a pod, that anyone can see. It's just by itself.
So you've got an enormous, wild, shy creature surrounded by 20 boats, each with 10 people on board plus crew members - we'll say one instructor per boat. So that's 220 people waiting to see this one fish up close. Now, immediately, on our boat at least, 2 out of 10 people have already decided they aren't getting in the water; they are too sick. So we'll say that's probably the case on every boat, so that's just 180 people waiting to see this one fish up close. About half the people are expecting to do it at least twice; for the fish, that's 270 visits while you're just trying to eat your lunch. Nobody's staying at a restaurant where they're getting that harassed for long.
It's at this point, or somewhere right after, that I realize this is not snorkeling, and definitely not in the traditional beginner sense. This is like extreme sprint snorkeling. I still don't know how to swim under water, let alone sprint through ocean waves.
Still, we've all paid good money for this "adventure of a lifetime" and we've come this far. We are doing it. There is literally no way I'm not at least attempting to get in that water. So the boats stall around the fish as two people from each boat wait in line to take their turn trying to catch up with the whale shark. The sheer numbers alone mean that each person's attempt must last only a minute or two. This is not for the slow or the hesitant. This is not for those who like to take their time. This is not an experience for examination or documentation. This is a frantic, chaotic, physical feat, an adrenaline rush. This is just to say, we did it.
I'm the first up to go in from my boat, because I was the only person already vomiting who still said I wanted to go in. It was basically vomit, spot whale shark, vomit, are you ready to go? Yes? Put on your fins and go, now now now NOW! They get you as close to the fish as possible and then you travel in a group of three to get to the fish as fast as possible, if possible. (There's a guy on board whose sole job seemed to be to push people off the boat when they hesitate because the slightest fraction of a second is costly time.)
It was disorienting, jumping into the ocean that fast. I didn't know which way was left, right, forward, backward. I couldn't see. I was sea sick. The waves were as tall as I was. The 35 seconds I had to prepare for this once we had found the fish from the boat hadn't been a lot of time to think things through, to collect myself. But still, I jumped. I had to try. I did not come all the way here for nothing.
I did see part of the whale shark for about 3 seconds, a mirage of it, maybe, the shadow of it flickering by, moving away from me. It could have been an hallucination, the hope of it. But quickly, between the waves and the sea sickness and the distance and the low visibility and my lack of swimming chops, I wasn't going to be able to do it, to really get close enough to honestly say I saw anything but the top of it from the boat. And before I knew it, my 2 minutes in the ocean was up and the boat had circled back to get us.
Getting back on the boat is just as frantic as jumping off. More people are waiting their turn. The clock is against us. Nature is against us. This fish is onto us, and it's planning on getting away for the day.
As the minutes tick on, the sea sickness gets worse. Sitting in the rolling waves, rocking back and forth, up and down, while moving around the boat, trying to get fins on and taking equipment off — it's a challenge all by itself. Half the boat's passengers are vomiting or immobile. I'm so sick I can't even take any pictures, though I do stand and watch as everyone gets their turn.
Nick, he's sick too, but he rallies. He gets back in for a second swim, a second chance, and this time he's determined. He knows how much I wanted video of it, just to see it, so he's back in the water, tearing through the waves like a knife. Everyone on the boat is cheering him on, telling his group which way to go. "To the Left! To the Left!" And then he does it. His entire group does it, all three of them, they are close enough to the fish that they can see it, it just emerges in front of them, a hidden giant.
For 30 seconds, Nick and this girl and their guide swim beside the whale shark. And then it's over. The giant creature has moved too far, too fast and the boats are all changing positions, circling to surround it again so that more people can get their first, second, even third turns.
Eventually, the whale shark leaves and we are all done. We're on the boat for another 40 minutes until we dock at Las Mujeres, and it's a pretty rough 40 minutes. I'm fighting seasickness, disappointment and failure, sitting in the wettest seat in the boat, getting plummeted by water the whole way, listening as the healthy half of the boat laughs, cheers, drinks, applauds at what they experienced. At one point, I was vomiting off the side when I got sprayed so hard that my glasses came off. (Luckily, Nick caught them.) And of course, being sick on a boat, there's just no where to go. There's no privacy, there's no way to get more comfortable, there's no way to make the experience go faster, other than drowning. I thought about that, just flinging myself off, giving myself to the water. But I figured I'd be chopped up by the propeller faster than I'd drown and that wasn't appealing at all.
All that being said, while I may not do it again a second time, I would do it all over again for the first time. I appreciate just having the story, the memory, of trying. And I always think it's better to try something and to know what something is actually like than to stay at home, guessing at how awesome it might be. I guess that's the fear of missing out, curiosity killing the cat, the desire to just experience whatever I can without dying.
And I do wonder how much the experience would change if I hadn't gotten seasick or if it'd been in the height of the whale shark season, instead of just the beginning. Would there have been 20 boats for 100 whale sharks? Or 300 boats for 100 whale sharks? Would the boats spread out more or would they work together in the same way, focusing their attention on just three or four sharks? Would you get more than 2 minutes in the ocean at a time, or would the frantic pace still exist as the fish tried to swim away? It's hard for me to say.