I love water. I love the sound of water, the way it looks, the way it tastes and mostly the way it feels when you dive in on a hot summer’s day. This time last year I was spending most of my day in and out of the aquamarine and sapphire waters the Indian Ocean in Mauritius. Working as a volunteer for the Mauritius Marine Conservation Society for a month last year, I had to spend my daylight hours swimming after dolphins, creeping alongside Sperm Whales in the deepest blue and snorkelling around in the La Preneuse lagoon and shoreline. This is when I realised that water has the ability to give me a Utopian sense of happiness. Perhaps it is because we begin our lives surrounded by water.
Water goes hand in hand with my state of mind or happiness. When the impact of making the right decision for your soul is deafeningly evident while you are sitting on a speedboat just after sunrise staring out over the ocean collecting the spray on your cheeks you know water has something to do with it. Here I found myself thinking, “two weeks ago I was sitting behind a desk for 8 hours a day wanting to tear my hair out and now look where I am!”. It released the most unadulterated feeling of freedom that it was difficult not to shout out loud. In fact I did on a few occasions and the type of people I was hanging out with just looked across and casually smiled at me knowingly. Here I knew I needed a constant and easy to swim in supply of sea water everyday.
A year later I find myself yearning for those turquoise trips, azure dives, golden sunset swims and the salty skin that goes with it. So on Saturday we made our way down to the famous gulley at Nature’s Valley in search of a swim worth mentioning. The cold water here makes swimming a quick exercise in order to prevent brain freeze or general body numbness. So as the day dawned clear and full of summer we clambered up the rocks in our flip flops to be met with a perfect glassy, aquamarine channel. Whooping like children we stripped down to our cozzies and threw ourselves off into the inviting waters. Despite the shock of the cool water I felt a warmth come over me and I dived under the surface, opened my eyes and smiled deep into the corners of my soul. We swam around for ages looking at the layers of mussels, oysters and red bait jostling for space on the cliff-like edges exclaiming how wonderful it is to see life flourishing in our fragile ocean. This section of the beach is part of the nature reserve so it is protected and wonderfully untouchable to the ocean rapers of our planet, making it even more an ideal swimming spot.
We swam and swam and swam like kids on our first sunny day of the holiday, climbing onto the rocks over and over to jump off into the deep blue passage. We queued behind one another for our turn to jump off the rocks as we giggled and joked like 10 year olds. Exhausted and satisfied we eventually dragged ourselves away to head home for a late breakfast. As we walked along the beach we kept glancing over our shoulders with longing looks and mental promises to return tomorrow and the next day and the next day….
A glorious soul satisfying swim. When is the last time you found the perfect swimming spot?