I read one of the old Posts that asked the question:
"When were you most scared while on Active Duty?"
And that thread was filled with scary stories! Even in Peace Time, you can fall out of a helicopter, have trouble with your chute, have a "cook off" go bad, or accidentally get run over by a Tank, Humvee, or find yourself with Heat Stroke, or Hypothermia. And the Combat situations...holy crap! Those fears were relentless.
So I thought when I have I been really scared as a Civilian? And that doesn't happen often. Sure I was scared of bullies when I was little...but I knew what was coming and I was more mad than afraid.
But life can change in a minute. And you are caught off guard by the truly unexpected...and you go from happy and having fun, to scared out of your mind in the blink of an eye.
And that happened to me in Mexico, way down South on the Pacific Side. There is a river that meanders lazily down from the mountains, all the way to the ocean. It is like tubing down in San Marcos Texas, except there are Monkeys, gators, and assorted birds everywhere. But still you paddle along with strokes of the paddle as lazy as the river itself.
Because nobody in all three rubber rafts, were under the age of fifty ...and some were pushing eighty...nobody was really paddling hard. The river did most of the work. And then we came to a long bend in the river. In the distance we heard a faint roar. Like a waterfall.
The Guides were getting a bit anxious. Standing up and trying to see around the next bend. The roar got louder. Suddenly the rafts picked up speed, and when we came around the bend, in front of us were huge rolling waves, a good eight feet tall, rumbling in from the Ocean to meet the outgoing river. It was a maelstrom! Crashing waves, whiripools galore, and the sound was deafening.
We were headed right for it.
The Guides screamed in English, German and Spanish, all saying the same thing...paddle to the shore like your life depended on it...because...well, it did. As you can see in the second picture...we made it to the shore, and even there the water was turbulent enough to knock old people off their feet.
Everyone who could stand was either trying to get old guys and gals onto the beach...or keep the boats from being sucked out into the turbulent water.
The last picture is of me, hauling the boats way up the beach. Everyone else was to exhausted, or were on the phone to their loved ones.
Forty five minutes later the Mexican Navy, and Rescue Teams showed up. The owner of the little bar where we were supposed to have lunch, had called them and told them a whole bunch of tourists were about to drown. He never expected us old folks to be able to fight the current to the shore. And he knew if we hit those waves and whirlpools...we wouldn't have a chance.
So a few folks were treated for sprains, or shock, and we all waited for busses to come get us and take us back to Port.
It turns out, because we were delayed for so long at the beginning of the trip down the river- which takes four hours...they got the tides wrong. What should have been going out...was coming in...and man oh man, does that make for some trouble waters.
I didn't get scared until it was all over, and fifty Senior Citizens were laying in the sand like beached whales...some had given all they had to paddle. Some couldn't do much more than just sit while we dragged them ashore in the boats.
It was a very quiet bus ride back.
A beautiful four hour float down a lazy river, culminated in three or four minutes of giving it all you had...or risk being swept out to sea. And only the Guides were under fifty!
It was a close call. And I got scared on the way home. To stupid to know the danger when it was happening, but well aware of the danger afterwords.
Next time I was on a river, I made sure it didn't to an ocean!