Many years ago I began my bucket list, before I even knew of the term. I just called it ‘life’s list.’ I had broken up with a girlfriend, started a new job – the usual story of one big change leading to everything changing. I don’t know why I suddenly considered my mortality at that time, but I imagined myself at the end of my life determined that I will not look back with any regret, and so my list was born.
The first item on my list was to see the Grand Canyon. I didn’t have much money but it didn’t stop me being one of only three people in the tour group to seize the chance of flying in a helicopter and landing in the base for a three hour hike. Everyone else milled around on the rim before the group were whisked off to Las Vegas.
The colors I saw in the canyon were all shades of orange and brown. Their offset against the longer wavelength of the deep, clear blue sky, only eased my transportation to a more primeval and simpler time. Our merry group of adventurers were walking thousands of years into the past, and when I saw a waterfall I had no choice, I had to jump in and swim under the pounding cascade.
My plan was to tick one item off my list every 12 months. The following year I took myself off to Australia for a diving trip on the Great Barrier Reef. I think the U.K. may have some of the best scuba divers in the world. The waters around Britain can be cold and murky; if you’re a British diver then you really must have a fire inside you, quite literally. I was not a British diver. I was a Brit wanting to dive somewhere warm, somewhere pampered, somewhere I could see pretty stuff, like turtles and clown fish.
When I landed in Cairns I was met at the airport by the most entertaining of locals, who was to drive our group to the resort. In his thick Queensland accent he gave us the greatest of welcomes to his home state. (I should warn you that my Australian accent is completely atrocious and does a total disservice the warm hospitality bestowed upon me by everyone I met on my trip):
“Ladies un jennulmen! Welcome to Kehhhhnz. You’re now in the tropuks. And in the tropuks we have a different laaanguage for things. I’m gonna give you a brief lesson in the laaanguage of the tropuks, so you don’t get into trouble by offending any of the lokuls. Fuurstly we don’t have something that you might call ‘rain.’ ‘Rain’ is a four ledda word. We call it ‘precipitaayshun.’ Unless ‘precipitaayshun’ happens at night. When it happens at night we call it dew. Sometimes we get a lot of dew. Then we call it ‘heavy’ dew. In fact last night we had about 10 sennimeters of heavy dew…”
That man remains the best tour guide I have ever had, and I wish I had recorded his spiel, because it truly was a work of genius and joy.
I was only at his rustic resort for a few days. I had signed up for five days of diving, which began with two days of training in a pool followed by three days on a boat out at the reef. I had read that it can take about 30 minutes to get to the reef, but this wasn’t going to happen when you’re on a budget. The boat we clambered aboard on the sunny, but windy morning of day three was not a speedy catamaran, and instead reminded of the Popeye and Bluto cartoons. I was going to have a problem.
As soon as we cast off it was evident who was going to suffer with seasickness. They were lined up on the leeward side, near the back of the boat, and I wanted to be nowhere near them. I had never been good with any form of travel or motion sickness and I knew from bitter experience how these things can cascade. The back of the boat looked too much like vomit dominos, and I wanted to be away from that mess. Instead I took myself off to the windward side and sat in the entrance of the head, halfway up the length of the boat just as our craft entered its nearly two hour journey against the swell.
The exaggerated up and down motion of Bluto’s boat didn’t take long to make me heave. And heave again, and again. Within minutes my stomach was empty, but that didn’t stop my body’s determination to keep going. I avoid rollercoasters at fairgrounds for good reason. Sitting trapped on a topsy-turvy boat while getting sprayed with cold salt water, all while intermittently dry heaving into the toilet for over an hour was not as much fun as listening my jovial Queenslander from the airport.
When I suffer I prefer to do so alone. I don’t want to inflict my misery on others. In my shivering isolation I fell into a kind of trance and found myself saying, over and over,
“This is only temporary. Other people suffer more than this. I’ll be fine when we arrive.”
“This is only temporary. Other people suffer more than this. I’ll be fine when we arrive.”
“This is only temporary. Other people suffer more than this. I’ll be fine when we arrive.”
“This is only temporary. Other people suffer more than this. I’ll be fine when we arrive.”
…
When we finally arrived I was soaking and shaking. My stomach was raw. My body couldn’t help itself and still heaving I emitted the dregs of what looked like blood into the clear, still waters at the reef, and watched my first reef fish swim up to feast on what was left of my stomach lining. I took a bottle of still water to try to get something bland back into my body and threw it up immediately. In the end I went to sleep in the warmth of the day.
Two hours later I was diving on the reef. I struck up a friendship with the first person to throw up on the boat. She kept telling me how she had never felt so bad. I kept trying to encourage her that a lot of it was state of mind, and that she should just venture into the water. By the morning of day three that poor lady had never left the boat.
I had enjoyed six dives myself by that point, although I had been paired with a gentleman from Santa Barbara who struggled to make his air last; many of our trips were short-lived. We ended our final dive after 20 minutes, and as I surfaced I saw that seasick lady finally jump into the water — a pod of about 18 dolphins had stopped to play and say hello. Our instructor had made over 1,000 dives and had never seen them that side of the reef. Only a handful of us got to jump in the water with them — the better divers came back so excited that they had seen a turtle.
I’m convinced my incantation got me into the water faster. I was completely miserable through the seasickness but was 100% certain of its temporary nature. I compare my situation that of the poor seasick lady. But whichever way you cut it, we both got to swim with dolphins.
