Archive for October, 2011
I’ve been an avid scuba diver for several years, so when I went snorkeling with my kids during our vacation last month, I didn’t give it a second thought. As we were exploring a coral reef a hundred feet from the shore, I experience a searing pain in my left hamstring. Usually I don’t get cramps, and this one definitely snuck up on me.
Luckily, I had insisted that my son and daughter wear vests when we went out-although I had foolishly neglected to put on myself. My son quickly took off his snorkel vest and gave it to me until the spasm has subsided. Needless to say, we were all a bit startled by the situation, and I will certainly be wearing a life jacket even on leisurely snorkeling trips from now on.
Before my wife and I had kids, we used to travel around the world SCUBA diving in exotic locations-from Australia and Fiji to Jamaica and the Mediterranean. Once the kids came along, however, it became increasingly difficult to find time to pursue our passion for diving. Now that the kids are a little older we’ve begun to travel once again, but opportunities to venture out on deep-sea dives are still scarce.
Our kids have begun to show a fascination for aquatic wildlife as well, so we decided to purchase them some kids snorkeling gear. My wife and I were skeptical about finding anything too exciting close to the coastline, but we were amazed at everything we saw when we went snorkeling with the kids for the first time in Hawaii. Venturing just a hundred feet or so from the coast, we saw rays, eels and even a couple of sea turtles!