Dominik - Jellyfish

Jellyfish

“Wake up, the sun is out, the sun is out!” I woke up to Davis' voice, still laying with my head facedown pressed into my pillow. “Yeah, I know”, I said still halfway asleep not realizing what Davis hadjust told me. “Dude, did you not hear, the sun is out!”, “I know” mumbled I, then I realized what wasso exciting about the sun being out in the morning. The sun, after 2 rainy days had actually decided tocome out. I jumped out of the bed in a heartbeat, slung open the door to the back porch and steppedoutside. A bright ray of sunlight blinded me for a second and then I saw the beautiful blue sky. Not asingle cloud could be seen anywhere. Only a soft sound of the slight breeze hovering over the calmsurface of the ocean could be heard. The water was clear as if there was only a thin layer of waterwhere the surface was. I could see the bottom with all its plants and even little fish swimming in thewater two feet away from where I was standing. This was even better than I had pictured Roatànbefore our arrival. This was definitely going to be a great day.

Since my group, McD, Bethany, Wes and I didn't really get to do our dive the day before, Lief took usand four others with him today. We went to the little island again, where the other group wasintroduced to the equipment, the same way we did the day before. Since the four of us had alreadylearned the basics we decided to go snorkeling around the close reef until the other group was done.

But before we even got to the reef, I decided to dive deep into the water swimming just above theocean floor. When I came back up out of the water, I felt a burning, stinging pain shooting throughmy arm. A few expressions signalizing my pain came out of my mouth until the others realized thatsomething was wrong. “What's wrong?” Bethany asked. “I don't know”, I said, “I just went underwater and when I came back up my left arm was burning like crazy”. I lifted up my arm as if asked todo so, and there it was, a huge red bumpy rash reaching from my wrist almost all the way to theelbow.

“It probably was a jellyfish”, Wes said. The next thing I heard was Bethany saying: “You need to peeon it”. “Pee on it?”, I asked. “Yes”, she said “it's supposed to help when you get stung by ajellyfish.” I must admit, I've heard this before, yet I didn't know if it was just a rumor or actually afact. After thinking this over for a few seconds, the pain convinced me to try it, I mean it couldn'tmake it any worse, could it?

So I swam back to the island where I spent what seemed like an eternity to take off my wetsuit. Ipulled down my swimming trunks and tried to urinate on my own arm, which in theory seemed a loteasier than it actually was. But I managed it with perfection and against my prior doubts it actuallyworked. The itching and burning started fading away immediately to a level where it was actually notfeeling too bad anymore. Another lesson learned, I thought, and thanked my friends for their tip afterwhich we took off and started snorkeling around the reef.