Well, I went and came back, and I want to let the folks who gave so much good advice how it went. Also, I'm posting in case someone else who doesn't swim well finds this thread. I may have to post in several installments because I only have so much time at this library computer.
Belize is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. I'm not the most well-traveled person, and I only went to Ambergris Caye and Caye Caulker, but I think even a globe trotter would be impressed with the color of the water, the beauty of the beach, and the hospitality of the denizens. Sure, you may not want to linger in Belize City when you arrive at BZE airport, but I knew I was in headed to paradise as I flew over the Caribbean in a Cessna Caravan with 13 other passengers and a pilot. I looked down at the varying color of the water - sometimes lighter, sometimes darker, revealing different depths and I thought possibly reef. I didn't know exactly. Wait, would my boyfriend placed in the copilot's seat be able to see the Blue Hole over the propeller, I wondered. Geography was never my strong point, but flight crew had seated me too far from him to ask. How ever badly I mess up my boyfriend's vacation by being a weak swimmer, I knew at least I was fulfilling a useful purpose as a counterweight on the plane. I was thrilled on the short plane ride by the view from where I was. If I were not afraid of being over water at this height, then why was I so afraid of being in the same open water? Fears don't always make sense, I thought, as we stopped to let off a single passenger at smaller, quieter Caye Caulker.
Our first full day in, we did not snorkel. A relative had an emergency back at home and we were hesitant to be away from the phone for a few hours. After we received good news from home, we couldn't find enough people to venture out with us to fill out a tour. Although I was excited, I was still really anxious. My anxiety, no doubt, was heightened by the drama at home, but still very much worried about not being able to handle being in open water. I practiced snorkeling in a pool with a snorkel vest on and discovered my mask did not seal as well as I thought it did. So, I borrowed a child sized mask and snorkel from the hotel.
A tour finally could accommodate us and we were on our way to Hol Chan and Shark Ray Alley. As I boarded the boat, I wondered what my boyfriend would do if I stayed on board when it came time to jump. We were 11 snorkelers total and we had two guides. The guides explained the most important rule of not touching anything and said they split us into two groups - advanced and beginners. The guides well knew of my phobias and lack of water competence, but they put me with the advanced people and kept a smaller family together, which seemed perfectly reasonable. He asked everyone else who was a very good swimmer and 3 people including my boyfriend raised their hands. On the boat, I noticed everyone had longer fins than the relatively short, stiff ones I used. That must be what MAKO was saying, I thought.
A little slower than everyone else, I jumped off the boat with a life vest attached to me. I felt weird adjusting to fins when I was vertical but then felt much better horizontal. There was a moment when I thought my snorkeling career would be over in a matter of minutes because THE BOTTOM of the child-sized snorkel filled with sea water repeatedly. I guess I have a big mouth and wasn't sealing it right. I alternated between dumping it out from the bottom and shooting the water from the top like Patoux01 suggested. somehow I decided drinking seawater was worth it and I persisted.
And I'm so glad that I did.
I couldn't even begin to describe everything I saw at Hol Chan. The guide said the currents were in our favor so we crossed the cut and did things he said he didn't normally do. But I'll leave that for now to tell other non-swimmer or weak swimmers what happened with swimming.
1) It's easy to float with a vest. To clear my mask, I leaned against the vest instead of going vertical to try to tread. I spent almost no time vertical and flattened myself to avoid touching reef. Surprisingly, one of the people who said he was a good swimmer spent a lot of time vertical bicycling with his head out. I swam away from him to avoid kicks.
2) Staying still is better than moving around a lot. I had to stay with the guide but even so thrashing is no good.
3) I felt safer in deeper water than shallow because then I knew I wasn't going to touch coral.
4) 2airishuman is right that you don't have to be a good swimmer at all in a group with a life vest and someone else judging the current. At one point, the avowed good swimmer left the life ring somewhere and I happily volunteered to take it instead. I will say I was particularly lucky because my boyfriend, who at this point understood my fear of not being able to keep up or clear my head from the water, held my hand sometimes and even half-towed me. None of that was necessary at the end, but a life vest or something to help buoyancy is if you cannot tread water like me.
5) My swim lessons probably DID help me, though, because I was less nervous, wasn't a thrasher, and could kick for a long while without tiring. Still, I was happy I didn't have to test my skills with strong current.
6) I would definitely snorkel again, but I would take great care if I was snorkeling without a guide, even off shore. I would defer to other people's warnings about currents. Young people, don't let your friends pressure you into doing something you don't feel right about.
7) Each time became easier. The first site I was anxious. Then the second site I jumped into deeper water teeming with nurse sharks. [Tip: Hold your mask to your face with one hand while you jump or roll in. Mine came dislodged on the second jump in and I almost missed the sharks.] The next day at the third site, Mexico Rocks, I felt even more comfortable and we were swimming for I'd guess an hour and a half. The fourth time, I'll have to write about separately because there's too much to tell.
8) And you know, there kind of was a 5th time on our last evening before sunset when I pulled on the child-sized mask a last time and hung off a pier. I didn't swim at all that time or see much more than a crab, some bait, and some young sergeant majors I watched so closely I felt they befriended me. The stillness that came from just observing quietly brought a calm over me that changed me inside, possibly more than swimming with a shark, green sea turtle and rays. After what I thought was about five minutes, I pulled myself up from the dock to find my boyfriend half-asleep counting boats pass by. A dozen, he said, which seemed impossible in five minutes. Actually, for more than 45 minutes I had hung off the dock with no sense of time.
9) On the way home, on the reverse short flight to BZE with 14 passengers, I tried to crane to look out a window at the water. A chatty woman sat beside me breaking my trance. She was kind and very friendly when she heard that I had feared open water. She couldn't relate too much because she had grown up swimming. It occurred to me her talkativeness might be partially due to a former fear of heights or flying. Fears of any kind, both founded and unfounded, are pretty common, no matter how silly you might feel.
When I returned from Belize, I had one swim class left. Because I still didn't know how to swim freestyle or breathe to the side or tread water for a minute, I still can't pass the swim test. (You're not allowed to flip on your back to breathe, and they don't care how long you can float on your back, you need to tread for a minute.) I'll continue with swim lessons and hope to snorkel without so much help in the future. Anyway, at my final swim class, the instructor said that for the first time, we could use fins. There's nothing to look at in a pool so I shot across whenever I could so I wouldn't have to flip to my back to breathe. I was so fast that the teacher was wondering what happened to me.
I'll post again if I ever go snorkeling again or if I ever get a cool camera that can take pictures under water. But even if I don't, thank you to everyone who posted. I'm still afraid. I still can't swim freestyle or tread, but I did something I would not have done without your advice.
. You only need it when you're face down.
