This morning we all woke up excited for our snorkeling adventure. My roommate, Julia, and I woke up early to go get coffee before we had to catch our bus at 8:45 in the morning because we don’t function without it. We all boarded the bus in our attire for warm weather and swimming and took off to the port. When we got there and got off the bus, many of us quickly noticed how windy it was. We covered up with towels and threw on our jackets in cold misery as we listened to Peter Nicolaides (the “tour guide” of our little excursion) explain what we would be doing before we got on the boat. 
It was when Peter mentioned that we would watch the sunset…. at 5 in the evening that we got a little skeptical about the whole deal. Keep in mind that the sun sets here about 8:30 at night. Once we were all on the boat, along with some other random tourists that we weren’t expecting (we are now at a total of about 25 on this small boat), we were off on our adventure to the Aegean Sea.
We all curled up in our towels and sweatshirts on the boat, freezing from all the harsh wind. We arrived at our first destination and I began to wonder what exactly we were going to be exploring there. Some people readily jumped in the water to swim to the small island they had intended to show us while others, like myself, stayed in the boat, saving ourselves for the snorkeling we had been anticipating since we got here. As it turned out, all that was on the small island was limestone. Just limestone. We didn’t spend very long at the stops so shortly after they swam over, they were on their way back to the boat.
Out of nowhere, I hear a girl screaming the word “help”. 
At this point, I was below the boat using the tiny restroom and suddenly became frantic to get back to the upper level to see what this was all about. As you can imagine, hearing someone yelling for help in the middle of an ocean, my mind instantly jumped to sharks, stingrays, and other dangerous sea creatures. When I got up to see what was going on, I saw a man and his daughter in the water struggling to stay afloat. Apparently, he had gotten a cramp, the daughter was yelling for help, and everyone on the boat was frozen. Nobody was doing anything! This is when we found out that there were barely any floatation devices on the boat and unlike in our culture, you are kind of expected to save yourself and hope for the best here. 
A pool noodle was eventually thrown to the heavier set man and he made it back to the boat safely. You can imagine how livid they both were that not one person came to the rescue and it was minutes before any floatation device was provided. This put a little damper on our morning, but it was soon forgotten after the family was so displeased that they got off the boat at a random stop at a port.
We continued our adventure by going to some beautiful caves….that we had already toured on our previous trip to Despotiko. To my surprise, as well as everyone else’s, we actually made an impromptu stop at Despotiko. The students were somewhat bored since we knew more than our tour guide did about the island. The archaeologist at Despotiko, Yannos, was mad that “we” brought so many random people with us to the archaeological site. We headed back to the boat after around half an hour.
We were excited for lunch, hoping it would turn this odd spectacle around. We stopped at a port where a couple other boats were docked, and sat and waited for our promised barbecue meal. It was actually pretty good! We had pork, sausage, potatoes, vegetables, bread, and wine. Some of our trash flew into the water from the wind being so strong. 
Thomas decided to be a hero and jumped into the water to retrieve all that flew away. We excitedly boarded the boat knowing that our next destination was what we had been waiting for. We took off and soon we were at the site where we would snorkel. We quickly dressed in our wet suits and flippers and were rushed off the boat because apparently the crew goes by a very strict schedule.
We all jumped in with our snorkels and masks giddy with excitement. We followed Peter to where he wants us to “explore” the floor of the ocean. We got to the area and he said there is a well below us. I slid my mask over my eyes and looked below me and there it was. A well. That’s it. Other students claim that they saw some kind of wall, but I saw nothing of the sort. When you think of snorkeling, beautiful coral and marine life come to mind. We saw some seaweed. While all of this sounds absolutely terrible, I was cracking up along with everyone else at how ridiculous we looked and how ridiculous the whole thing was. An adventure gone completely wrong can turn around and be a good memory with lots of laughter if you do it with the right people. The bell sounded (this was our annoying signal to get back in the boat to leave that typically occurred no more than 15 minutes after we have stopped) and we all scurried back to the boat. We curled back up into our towels and endure the roughest, coldest, and longest boat ride of our lives.
We got back to the port with an hour and a half to wait for our bus to come. We all sat down on a small porch of a store and laugh about how ridiculous the whole day was while we wait. We were sunburnt, sea sick, and covered in dried up salt from the water. We finally boarded the bus and laughed at the hideous pictures of ourselves in our snorkeling gear the whole way back to the bus stop. We walked back to the villa and took on our typical fight for hot water we endure every evening before dinner, and decided on a small Japanese restaurant to celebrate Wen’s birthday. We got a number of delicious dishes and I even tried my first bite of sushi. We ended the dinner by singing happy birthday to Wen and making a scene like we do just about anywhere we go.
Today may have been a mess, but I wouldn’t have wanted to endure it with anyone but these crazy people!
-Ashley Broyles