Unless you live in the Southern Hemisphere, once the champagne has lost its fizz, all that’s left is putting away the holiday decorations, rounding up the tax stuff, and...winter. As our focus shifts from the holidays into the new year, those of us in the Northern Hemisphere long for a distraction from all that winter.
For me, that means my thoughts turn to warmer climates, beaches, and my favorite sport, snorkeling. During one of those long days in December, when I was wrestling with shopping and holiday prep, I started daydreaming about blue water, sunshine, and snorkeling. Somehow, that morphed into thoughts of beaches I have known and places I have snorkeled.
Since I’m not inspired by either skiing or snowboarding, despite the proximity of such activities, I have decided to write about beaches I have known and great snorkeling experiences I have had. As much as I love a good lake, those beaches tend to be much different from ocean beaches, and lake snorkeling is murky at best, so this series is limited to sites on the ocean.
As they say, start at the beginning.
I really don’t remember my first beach experience but I am certain that it occurred somewhere in Florida. You see, my father grew up in Cuba until he was sixteen. That was when his family sold their Cuban ranch and moved to Miami. They lived in Miami during the depression and into the early years of World War II. Altogether, they lived there a little under a decade before buying a ranch in Montana and relocating to a vastly different climate. Even after the war ended, Dad had many friends in strung throughout Florida, but it wasn’t until 1959, when Fidel Castro became dictator and began dictating, that Florida became reunion central for my dad.
The first trip that I remember was when I was four years old. My parents had an up-and-coming agriculture biz that allowed them to decide just how much vacation time they could take. That year they took a bunch. I think it was several weeks because I remember that we stayed in Key Largo, Florida, a place without real beaches. Even back then, it was a mecca for docking big boats and yachts. We were there long enough for me to develop relationships with the everyone who lived the in the marina, particularly the dog owners. I clearly recall dragging my mother from dock-to-dock, investigating boats, their owners, and most of all, their dogs. We were there long enough that my daily rounds occupied us from after breakfast until lunch on the days when my father was out, tracking down leads to find old friends who had made their way to Florida from Cuba. On those days, travel to the beach was not going to happen. Once Dad began locating people, he had time to socialize with friends and family, both newly located, and long-time Floridians. Since Floridians love their boats and their beaches, my social visits dwindled, but in exchange, I discovered beaches.
Most of the beaches from that trip blur together in my memory, but one experience stands out. It was long before my first snorkeling experience, which is too bad because I’m certain that it would have rivaled any other since. Why? Beaches like I found on that trip have vanished as the population has grown. You see, the best part of that visit, the part that I will always remember, started on a small boat, the size of one that you would water-ski behind, with an uncle or a cousin at the helm. I wish I could remember, but for now, who it was simply escapes me. The trip, the beaches I visited constitute the important part.
That sunny morning, we left Key Largo heading into the open ocean. We didn’t go far as our destination was “The Keys” which are, to the uninitiated, hundreds, if not thousands of tiny islands sprinkled along Florida’s coastline. That day, we visited a myriad of keys, all were uninhabited, and each was surrounded by clear, turquoise waters. Every key contained a treasure trove of undiscovered, pristine, little beaches that were dotted with perfect shells and speckled with half-buried, bottles, many older than America herself. Many of the things that we found had lain untouched by human hands for centuries. My mother called it “beach combing,” this hunt for beach treasure. It truly was treasure that we found, as many of the bottles that my mother collected, were later appraised and and found to be quite old and valuable. One was found to be from the era when Columbus and his contemporaries first sailed the Caribbean. The beaches were littered with bits of this and a few old coins, but for me, the value was in the shells. I found giant conch shells, empty, and unmarred, littering every beach. Between the bottles and the shells, we filled the boat that day.
Beaches such as those are long gone, but my memory of them will always constitute my first, and in many ways, my best beach experience. Their memory is what drives me to look for new places and search out treasure everywhere I go.
Those keys from long ago haunted my dreams and in many ways, I was searching for them so two years ago, when we took our “grandmonkies” to Florida, we also made time to visit The Keys, ostensibly to teach the boys how to snorkel. I think that, in my heart, I still believed it was possible to find my way back to those pristine, uninhabited, little beaches, but once there, I had to accept the truth in their passing. While it was fun and the boys learned to snorkel spectacularly, we never, ever saw a glimpse of an untouched stretch of beach.
Sadly, those beaches only live on in my memory, but once upon a time, they were real and as perfect as a dream. While they are gone, I do have some recommendations about beaches and snorkeling spots that you can visit, but I am saving those for future installments in this blog. Until then, stay warm!
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