There is a funny rubber taste in my mouth and I struggle to be able to breathe. That, together with my slight tendency toward claustrophobia make me “chicken out”, so I stop and come up. It is my first time ever snorkeling and I have not yet gotten the hang of it. After three further attempts and lots of salt water, I
finally keep my head under water and breathe. My heart is still racing, so it takes a few more minutes before I quiet down, inside and out. For the first few minutes all I can see is muddy water, and my hands…but as I begin to focus, I detect movement. A bl
ue tiny fish is doing his little dance, about 3 inches in front of my nose: his back is deep blue, with bright yellow stripes. Soon he is joined by three others, and then smaller pink ones further down, and a much larger yellow one, and on and on. I just cannot believe my eyes: shapes and colours pass in front of me and all I have to do is float. The waves take me here and there, some places deeper, some shallower, and wherever I look, I see fish, all beautiful, all seemingly minding their own business while twenty or so tourists blow bubbles while they are looking at them.
You guessed it: I am in the Pacific ocean, the Tortuga Islands off the Costa Rican coast to be precise, together with a crowd of German, Italian and Spanish tourists. We just had a beautiful lunch of grilled fish on t
he beach, a nap, and now we are floating in the water, on a super sunny day. I still cannot believe the unreality of it all: not only that I am here in Costa Rica at all, but the beauty of this place. My day began with me waking up to the typical sound of rainforest buzz, with crickets and other animals making an almost electric sound. As I sat at breakfast three large blue birds decided that I did not need sugar in my coffee and carried off the little sachets, to feed their young, I presume. While I ate my muesli a monkey was swinging dangerously close in a tree just above me. The little hotel I am staying in has a garden which seems on fire with all the bright orange and red flowers in the midst of lush greens and browns. If you take the time to look you can see any number of butterflies, many the size of my palm, blue, orange and bright yellow, all dancing around, for just a few days before they die. At night frogs make their appearance: they do not only sound funny, they look hilarious with their almost transparent fingers and their bright green bodies.
As I am stumbling in amazement from one animal or flower to another one thought keeps coming back: all this just happened by accident? Somehow evolution just brought this about, without any intelligent design? I don’t think so. Not only is this too beautiful to have just sprung into being, it works together in harmony. Some of these animals will never be seen by anybody, and yet they are beautiful, as if somebody cared. And some of them look funny, as if somebody had a sense of humour in the midst of it all. So yes, Darwin was wrong…and I am having the time of my life. To be continued!
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