Thursday, July 5, Komazi

Vis is an island in the Adriatic off Split. It has two towns, Vis and Komaji. I'm staying at the latter. You can see what kind of a place it is. You get here by a 2.5 hour ferry ride. Tomorrow I'm scheduled to visit the big local tourist attraction, the Blue Cave. 

Imagine a stack of granite blocks. Each block is rectangular, about six to ten feet on each side. Stack these blocks as high as a New York skyscraper. Now make another pile of blocks. Between these two stacks run a river. The river is only about thirty yards wide. The river bed is made up of more blocks, worn somewhat smooth by ages of water flow. The river runs through these blocks, sometimes wide enough to allow you to float for five minutes or so. But much of the bed is navigated by stepping carefully from block to block. 

This is called 'canyoning' in Split. I signed up for a three hour hike through the canyon. First we descended slowly down the canyon. That took about 15 minutes. (I couldn't bring a camera as we were going to get very wet). They dressed us in wetsuits and life vests so that we wouldn't freeze in the cold water and could float through those occasional pools of water. 

To walk the canyon, though, took intense concentration. Each step was potential disaster. Some were slippery, some sharp edged, some submerged in the river so that you couldn't really judge how deep they were. It was exhausting work. The scene was beautiful but there wasn't much time to admire the view. My group had about a dozen young folks in it (a Norwegian couple, a man and wife from Scotland, two Australians, a Croatian family with two small children, and others). There was only one geezer, me. All I could think of at first was how do I keep up? 

It was the last few minutes that scared me. As we hiked up the last rise to get to the vans that were to take us back to Split I started feeling a tightness around my chest. Was I having a coronary? I wasn't sure. My two concerns weren't about death. 

I didn't want to embarrass myself by collapsing and forcing the guides to rescue me.

I didn't want to think that my days of nature trekking were over. Was this the official end of my ability to participate is these adventures? 

But I wasn't sure if I was really ill. The damned wetsuit and life vest had been tightly gripping my chest for three hours. Could that be the source of my pain. My shoulders and chest hurt like hell from climbing in and out of the water and from trying to propel my weak little body down river. Could my tightness be just that? 

Then I started feeling some acid reflux. Didn't I read somewhere that when you have a heart attack this is one of the symptoms? I couldn't remember for sure. 

And I was terribly dehydrated despite the drinkable river water. so maybe that was another complication. 

I still don't know what the true cause was. When I took off my wetsuit my tightness went away--but, of course, that was also when we stopped climbing. I had to wait till we got back to Split to find something to drink. I chugged down some Sprite and headed for my room. It took four hours of lieing prostrate to get me back to near normal. But even today I'm not quite fully recovered.