San Nicolás
On the west of Gran Canaria is San Nicolás and it’s remote. We’d been a few times, but it was always too rough to dive. We drove down out of the mountains and I could see the ocean raging against the land, but I knew it wouldn’t matter. Peter was not a patient man. There was a jetty where you could enter the water, but with a 40ft swell and waves crashing over our entry point I was a tad nervous.
We donned our wetsuits and walked down to our departure point. An old man shouted “Loco.” Once in the water I swam hard to get away from the wall. Peter had instructed me to stay with him, I lost sight of him within 5 mins.😂 After an hour or so I had a few fish, and decided on one last dive and then I was done. We liked to dive holes, rocks on top of each other formed little caves where fish would lay. I found one and slid into it. On my way out I felt something snag above me, and realised my weight (backpack) was stuck. Peter had told me the only thing that can kill you underwater is panic. So, although I was really keen to re-surface and breathe, I wriggled back inside, dropped down and tried again. I was jolly well relieved when I got out of there, I can tell you😂 Now I had to swim back!
It appeared I had drifted a fair way out. I was beyond the headland and could barely make out the jetty. But, I got my head down, kept finning, and eventually I’d made progress. I saw Peter as I neared the shore and he told me it’d be tricky getting out, and he would take my gear and fish in for me. He told me not to come in until he waved me in. The idea being that a big wave would drop me onto the jetty rather than smash me on the rocks, as he put it. 😂 It worked!
As we walked back to the van a crowd gathered, one of them was the local landlord and he offered to buy our fish. He said he’d take them to the bar and if we called there after we’d changed he’d pay us. Which we did.
He paid us immediately and offered us a beer. There were a few fishermen in the bar who were obviously impressed, not only because we had ventured into that broiling mass, but that we actually survived 😂 A few moments later the landlords wife came from the kitchen with our fish on a large platter. Her husband told us to choose one each and she disappeared again, returning a little later with two cooked fish and those wonderful garlic potatoes the Spanish do so well.
We stayed a while, drank beer, laughed with the locals and revelled in the kudos. Eventually Peter asked for the bill and the landlord waved us away, Apparently we were to pay nothing. Outside the bar the old man who had shouted “Loco” approached me and placed his hand on my shoulder. He said something in Spanish, I looked at Peter with my usual teenage blank expression, he had some knowledge of the language. A rough translation was “Today you have learned not to fear the sea. You must never fear the sea. But you must always respect her, and never underestimate her. You are young and today you maybe underestimated her. Maybe you showed her disrespect, that it is not for me to say. Whatever you did today, she forgave you. Be careful young one. She does not forgive often and never, will she forgive twice.” He squeezed my shoulder, gave me a grin and walked away.
It appeared I had learned yet another lesson. A few years ago I turned this experience into a short story and was shortlisted for the Olga Sinclair prize and published in an anthology Tales From The Tide.
Happy Trails, Folks x
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