Belize's Warrior of the Reef

I love the water. Swimming sends my heart skipping, especially when I get to explore large bodies of water. Sunken ships, coral reefs, I’m your girl! Diving beneath the waves is like entering into another realm of existence. A silent, beautiful world always in motion. As a kid, I used to spend a lot of time bobbing up and down in the pool trying to hold my breath longer and longer. Now, just hand me a snorkel and a pair of fins and I am gone.

The day I stepped onto the sands of Belize, my family almost never saw me again. The perfect Caribbean waters, fish zipping the waves, vibrant corral, and oh the sharks! Do not even get me started on the sleek design of sharks and their ability to navigate the sea floor magnetically. Good thing I traveled with a group of friends who all but dragged me back to the mainland.

We charted a boat that took us out to a little island just off the coast of Belize. Limon was tiny! It took less than 5 minutes to walk the circumference of the island. I was ecstatic to set up a hammock and tent for the night. In the morning, I rolled right off my mat and into the water.

I lapped the island several times adventuring further out. Barracudas, sea turtles, crabs, corral, anemones, schools of fish, scores of colorful starfish moving along the bottom. Every now and again, I would tread water to get my bearings and then dive right back under wishing I had gills. Probably should have been a marine biologist…

Down I dived. I looked up to see something slapping at the water and a hand signaling me to surface. There was an old blonde Swedish woman sitting in a kayak.

“¡Te he estado viendo bucear! Realmente te gusta nadar.”

“¡Me encanta! I really do.” I replied.

“Oh, English! I thought you might have been a local.” She smiled. “Forgive me, I have not spoken English in a long time.”

“If you prefer Spanish then…”

“No, no, I want to practice my English!”

Her name was Karin and we got to talking about our love of being in the water, all the while I was treading. Karin was kayaking between the islands and had been for decades. She knew the tides, the currents, could read the weather before it even hinted of wind or a drop of rain. I told her I would love to hear more of her story and invited her to the island that night for dinner.

“Yes, and you can tell me how you make swimming look so easy. It’s like you are just standing in water not moving...”

I shrugged and we laughed. She said she would pop by for dinner and paddled off.

I came in four hours later. The captain of our boat was sitting in a plastic chair overlooking the water. “I thought I was going to have to call the coast guard. I did not think you were ever coming back.”

“I’m back!” I announced. “And hungry.”

I ate, downed a ton of fresh water, then went back into the ocean.

As the sun set over the horizon, the fire was lit, and the days catch started to cook. I made a sea turtle in the sand wanting so very bad to be back in the water—my body had its limits. Karin paddled in bringing a bottle of the best rum I had ever tasted. She regaled me with stories of her life. Dinner quickly turned into a party with music and dancing. That night, the coast guard did come to the island and ended up joining in the revelry. As they arrived, Karin nodded at me then slipped her kayak into the water and disappeared into the night. I would never see her again.

The captain cleared his throat, “Ladies and Gentleman, may I have your attention. Tonight, I would like to honor our little warrior of the reef. In all my days I have never seen anyone out in the water for that long, still itching to discover more when they came back to shore.” Everyone began to clap. He pulled out a scuba shirt and handed it to me.

“Wow! Thank you?” I was embarrassed at the attention, but took a bow and put on the shirt.

“You know,” one of the coast guard guys nudged my shoulder. “That woman you were talking to, the Swede…”

I nodded.

“…she is a legend in these waters. Not too friendly to coast guard, but we respect her.” He proceeded to tell me a story of how she came to the islands as young woman in love. How impactful her work was on conserving and restoring the environmental habitats of the reefs, and then how the man Karin loved drowned horribly, tragically. She became a recluse and poured her life into her work. The coast guard stopped seeing her on land, and only caught glimpses of her in the kayak on the water.

“Does she still work in conservation?” I asked.

“Unofficially. She started causing problems with tour boats, we kept getting calls that some blonde lady was sabotaging them…I think she lost funding then and now just does her own thing. Nobody seems to know where she lives, or how she is surviving.”

I was blown away. Before leaving, Karin had me take one last shot of rum with her. We toasted the ocean and all its creatures. I saw in her a kindred being. I felt honored to have been able to listen to her stories. At the end of the night, I sat on the beach with my friends watching an army of hermit crabs take our small little island. In the sound of the waves, beneath the stars, I buried my toes in the sand wondering about the Swedish woman in the kayak. She was the real warrior of the reef.