Snorkel and swim

This was a huge accomplishment for me. Sure, I've snorkeled my fair share of times in Hawaii and the Caribbean. Sure, I love the ocean and spend plenty of time at the beach. Sure, I'm a California girl both at heart and according to the United States government. But you guys, the California coast scares the living daylights out of me.

Maybe it's because when we first moved to California when I was a little kid, we played at the empty beach all day and then saw the "Caution: Great White Sighting Yesterday" sign as we were leaving. Or maybe it's because the California coast is freezing and murky and, oh yes, full of great white sharks. Or maybe it's because I've watched Shark Week and have also googled all of the shark attacks off the coast of California in the last five decades. Okay, probably all of those reasons. So while I love to go to the beach and play in the waves, the shore is my friend and actually swimming in California's little piece of the Pacific Ocean is entirely out of the question. Except for when we go to Catalina for the weekend, apparently.

I don't know what came over me, but snorkeling was actually my idea. Word on the street was that Lover's Cove had some fantastic fishies and I am very easily persuaded when it comes to travel and adventure. Next thing I knew, we were renting wetsuits and heading out into the deep blue. The wetsuits were amazingly warm, but unfortunately don't cover your face ski-mask style, which was quite the shock when I first dipped my face into the water. The cold combined with the realization that I was in 20-plus-feet-deep open ocean water (likely full of sharks, natch) may have required me to take a minute to compose myself before enjoying the underwater wildlife.

In the end, we were amazed by how many pretty fish we saw (bummer that our underwater camera died before we could capture them), how creepy-cool it is to navigate around seaweed (potentially deadly maze), how clear the ocean actually gets when you get deep enough (yikes!), and how few sharks we came in contact with (zero). (Thank goodness.)

A few hours after our ocean swim, we enjoyed a relaxing dip in our hotel pool. Let's all breathe a sigh of relief, shall we? No sharks in the swimming pool! Jakey got in on the action this time and, happily, liked the pool much better than his first time. He even learned how to splash in the pool! (He splashes in the tub all the time, but the pool is a bit more intimidating, apparently.) So fun.