Everything’s better on vacation. Beers taste better when they are called cervezas and the margaritas flow with salt, both around your glass and on your eyelash. On this past New Year’s Day, a trip to Nicaragua with my family took a strange turn when two locals nearly drowned at Colorados. We had danced through the night and into the New Year. My brother met a nice girl that night, starting off his 2016 right. When we woke up the next day there were waves and I saved a life.
We’d had a late start that day. Colorados was on the map and the resort almost didn’t let us in. An ambulance passed us while we waited outside and we were told someone drowned. The surf was head high and we had the beach mostly to ourselves until sundown. At one point, two local teenagers started struggling forty yards away from the lineup. I had been keeping my eye on them for a while, preparing for the worst. Then I noticed a stand up paddler make a move in their direction. I looked back to the beach and saw a group of people pointing toward the swimmers. I immediately knew something was wrong.
As I paddled toward where the teenagers had been swimming, I saw one victim climbing the latter – a sure sign that he was a distressed swimmer. When I finally got to them, oddly, the stand up board had been flipped over. One victim was floating on the flipped over board while the other floated faced down in the water, unconscious and not breathing. Lifeguard instincts kicked in and I pulled him onto the paddleboard. I brought him back to the beach where another man was waiting to help. I proceeded to do thirty compressions in the sand with beer and salt water spewing out of him. Finally, I stopped when I saw his nose flare open. He’d taken a breath!
The boy was in rough shape. His mother was on the beach, hysterical after watching her son fight through a near death experience. A nurse, also on vacation, had been close by and she stepped in to help monitor the boy. Unlike the commotion we’d been greeted by when we arrived at Colorados, there was no ambulance coming this time, so a local bartender drove the boy to the hospital. The dust had finally settled and I was left soaking in what had just happened; this was one of the heaviest experienced of my life. And it all happened while still feeling the effects of those margaritas and just in time to see the first sunset of 2016.
I never did see that kid again, but I did receive a thank you the next day from a local lady who had recognized us from the beach. The whole experience was humbling. It reminded me that sometimes you are in the right place at the right time, and you’ll never known when you might need the help of a complete stranger.
So that’s how I kicked off 2016. It was a lesson that carried me through the year and still holds true as we start another trip around the sun. Enjoy the little things in life and be opportunistic in 2017.
