Afterwards, to hear Ross tell the story, he recounts thinking that I must have been being attacked by a shark, so shrill were the sounds coming out of my mouth. To be fair, I can’t tell you that I accurately remember that part. What I do remember is that I knew I had very little time left to get myself safely to shore before I inevitably died from the poison or drowned from the shock of the excruciating pain of the stings.
People have asked me what it felt like and the only way I can describe it is imagine yourself being stung by a bee or a jelly fish. Now multiply that by 1000 bees or jellyfish. It’s a sensation that is hard to describe, but I literally could feel the venom coursing through my blood stream as I kicked and shredded my way back to shore while screaming my head off.
Ross describes that when I got to shore, a large purple, stringy mass was attached to my body, “Getitoff, GETITOFF! GET IT OFF!” I shrieked over and over and over again, no sense of time or space or people around me as I half stumbled to shore.
Ross took one look at what was causing my pain and responded, “Oh hell no I am not touching that thing.” And trotted off to get help. Seems selfish I know, but actually we needed help.
Did you know that the Portuguese man-o-war continues to shoot venom into its prey until it is physically scraped off of the surface to which it has become attached, in this case my left arm and my legs.
I lay writhing on the shore when Ross came back with a bottle of vinegar.
A crowd had formed and someone suggested Ross pee on me. “Please no,” I whimpered, “Don’t pee on me.” The world was a blur, but the vinegar was no help and did nothing buy make the stings feel more intense. I grabbed sand and tried rubbing the animal off of my skin, but every time I touched it, it also stung my on my other hand. Ross ran off to get help again and then I don’t remember seeing him for a while.
Later I was told he ran down the beach to where our group was sitting and arrived like David Hasselhoff in Baywatch, “Jen was stung by a manowar!” He then grabbed my sarong and ran off, leaving his wife, her sisters and my friend Perry to look confusedly at one another thinking, “What the heck is a man-o-war?”
Meanwhile back at Attack from the Creature of the Black Lagoon central, two EMTs were working on me, one talking to me and taking my vitals while the other literally scraped the purple sea animal off of my body and applied hot and cold backs to my burned skin.
“What’s your name?”
“J-J-Je- Jen_Jennifer.” I stuttered unable to stop my teeth from shattering.
“Got quite a souvenir from Miami now didn’t ya?” he joked trying to slow my pulse and breathing to avoid transporting me to the hospital.
And what a souvenir it was. I have always loved swimming. In pools, lakes, oceans. You name it, I love to swim in it. And actually, while I am never going to win the olympics, I can hold my own at swimming. I can swim for over an hour without stopping and I like it to boot.
But now as I enter the ocean, especially warm oceans, where there are clear waters, coral and . . .yep you got it – animals that can sting or bite or kill you, I am reminded of my souvenir from Miami beach. Where technically Man-o-Wars don’t actually live, but since global warming is warming up the seas, they are finding more and more of them these days in parts of the world where they had previously not existed. Lucky me.
So the last few days in Koh Lipe were been interesting. The water is this incredible turquoise blue, with dark spots where clusters of coral sit on the ocean floor. The waters is calm and water and beckons you from where you sit on the hot, sunny beach. Islands off the coast are so close you could easily swim to them in 20 minutes or so and the water is so shallow that even if you tired, you can touch the bottom for hundreds of feet from shore.
But as I enter the water, I remember the man-o-war and I ask at the bar, “Are there jellyfish or Manowar here?” They shrug their shoulders and I don’t know if they don’t know or they don’t understand.
Out we go to the island, my new friend Lucrecia and I, swimming and stopping. “It’s like walking on the moon,” she says as we take a break and put our feet down careful not to step on the coral around us. White, translucent looking fish swim around our feet and seem like they are going to come up and kiss (or bite us), but they swim on.
We continue swimming and as I pick up my right leg, I jump up and let out a yelp! “Something bit me!” She shakes her head and says that maybe I just brushed against some coral or something ran into my leg by accident.
As we get closer to the island, there are more patches of coral and it’s so shallow that where there is coral, you can’t swim above it without touching it. We walk around the coral and continue on, both of us a little nervous. Towards the shore, there is more coral than water and we turn around satisfied by the little fish we have seen and pink and white coral that looks like another planet and begin to swim back. Sure enough as we stop again, something grabs on to my leg and I swipe it off, my heart in my throat. We arrive at the shore and I look down at my leg, a stream of blood runs down the back of my calf. “See Lucrecia! Something did bite me.”
But when I ask at the bar, they only laugh and smile. “Maybe a snake?” they offer seemingly unfazed and douse it with iodine and offer me a beer.
Later as the sun sinks low in the sky, we see a sting ray move slowly along the ocean floor and I think that for sure there are animals in these seas that are way more dangerous than just some Nemo fish and I am nervous about the snorkeling trip I have booked for the next day.
I know the trip has to be relatively safe as it is heavily booked on the island, but I can’t help thinking of how many people swim every day, all day long at South Beach in Miami and never even see a Man-o-War let along get tangled up in its arms.
The snorkeling trip is like being on another planet. Brown coral that looks like cooked cauliflower and green ones that look like brains from a science experiment. Sea urchins that seems to stare up at you from the ocean floor, daring you to put your feet down on their poisonous spikes.
Green and blue fish dart in and out of waving pink plants and a school of yellow and black fish head toward my face and then Y out as they approach me, seeming to open their mouths as they swim by, “Go back to shore!” they yell, “It’s dangerous out here.” And my heart thuds loudly in my chest as the sea envelopes all the noise around me and it is just me and the coral and the sea plants and the fish.
A barracuda close to the surface of the water is close enough to reach out and touch its pointy nose and I pick my head up for a moment, hoping the others from my boat are still close by.
The first snorkeling spot relaxes me. I survive the 30 minutes without being stung, bitten or mauled and we board the long tailed boat to motor off to the next spot. We continue on and visit a small island filled with black rocks and another snorkeling spot with deep cold water and I begin to relax and feel at home with my new fish friends. We eat on an island with white sands as far as the eye can see, large pieces of drift wood litter the shore.
The third spot is a white sand beach with warmer, more shallow water and I can feel my heart begin to race as I see some small white fish similar to the ones near my hotel. Maybe that’s what had bit me. Manowar live in warm waters. What if there are snakes? The nagging in my head is loud as I remind myself to look Fear right between the eyes and tell him where to go. But something brushes up against my skin and the sound of my heart in my ears is loud as I force myself to keep swimming. “Be at one with the sea,” I tell myself. But I am relieved when the driver of the boat tells us it is time to go and takes us to the last spot.
One of the guys on our boat, an American guy named Mitch, uses a stick and a plastic bag to collect sea urchins and eat them!? He is surprised when they tell him to stop – the area is a national park and the fish are protected. “There are literally thousands of them,” he says to me as he pries the spines away from the sea urchin’s body with a stick and pops the inside into his mouth.
“Yeah, but there are thousands of tourists too.” He nods and shrugs and tosses the remains into the sea where a feeding frenzy commences with blue and green fish edging out there slower black and yellow ones that compete for the now non venomous lunch he as tossed to them.
The German couple on the boat tells me I should try diving – that it is other wordly and I imagine myself 30 meters below the sea, oxygen strapped to my back, danger at every corner, under every layer of coral. There is no part of me that wants to try diving no matter how cool it is.
I close my eyes as the winds whip at my hair, my face a mixture of salt and sand as we head back to shore.
I am humbled by the sea and grateful that this time, she has been kind to me.
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