A Trip to Remember
Bruno Luis Ingegneri Brandt
It was a nice sunny morning in Cancun, it was almost our last day there as a family group of five. Our group included my father, stepmother, grandmother, brother, and myself. Naturally, my father had something special planned, and by special, I mean something we all advised him against, but he went with it anyway. As we drove out to the beach, we were approached by a group of sketchy individuals, who offered a trip to Isla Mujeres. First red flag. Although the island was beautiful, We all knew to stay away from sketchy offers, except for my father who was in search for adventure. My father agreed to the trip, so we got in the car and followed these two men to the port. When we arrived, they showed us an old, small, red, and yellow wooden boat, it could roughly fit the captain, crewmate, and us. Second red flag. “Let’s leave while we still can” said Gabriel, my younger brother. I gave him a nervous smile but decided to go along with it. We took a deep breath and got in the boat. My grandmother, who is known in our family as the person that does not know when to stop talking, started complaining. “Wow this boat is older than me”, she said as she stepped on. She turns to my dad and says, “If you wanted to kill me early you could just tell me”, my brother laughs, but quickly stops as he doesn’t realize whether it was a joke or not. Till this day no one knows. Other than having my grandmother complaining the whole time, the trip to Isla Mujeres was surprisingly calm. I think we were all just grateful that we didn’t get kidnapped or something around those lines. Once we got there, we stopped at Playa Norte, the green-blue shimmering water from the ocean made us forget about the stress we felt earlier. After being there for an hour, my grandmother started complaining that she was hungry, so we got on the boat, which took us to a sea-food restaurant. A few minutes after we had finished eating, rain started pouring uncontrollably, I faced my father, who looked very worried, and he told me that we didn’t have a lot of time to make it back as the port closed at 1700 and it was 1600, so we were going to have to run back to the boat in the rain. As we ran through the paving stone road, the stone was slippery, which led me to almost slip a few times and believe that this was going to be the worst of it, but I was very wrong. As we were approaching the boat, we all hopped in very quickly, my grandmother almost fell while trying to make the jump, I think my dad pushed her, not sure. When we were all sitting down the crewmate pushed the boat away from the dock, turned on the engine and we were off. The waves were crashing on the boat as we were speeding through, hoping to make it back in time, when we were heading toward the open sea, we realized that we had our priorities all wrong, it wasn’t about making it back in time, but instead making it back alive. As the waves crashed, I turned around to see the captain’s face, the combination of the waves and the rain made it seem like he had his eyes closed, and even though I do not have a lot of experience driving boats, I know that the first step should be having our eyes open, needless to say my anxiety went off the charts. I turn to look at my grandmother, who had spent most of the day talking, as per usual. This time, she was surprisingly quiet, I thought she had swallowed a fish, but I guess not. The fear in her eyes spoke for itself, same thing with my little brother and my father, who was trying to act brave in a difficult situation, but in reality, we were all terrified. The waves still crashing, the rain still pouring, the loud noise from the waves hitting the wooden boat sounded like the roar of a lion intimidating its prey. What was the most shocking was that during the entire ride back, my grandmother didn’t say a single thing. Absolute silence. From this we learned that the only thing that will get her to stop, even for a small period of time, is a near death experience. Twenty horrifying minutes later, we were approaching the port, I gave my brother a hug, our clothes were soaking wet, the look of fear left our eyes and we were speechless and full of joy for having made it out alive. My grandmother turns to everyone and says “Wow, that was scary.”
Bruno Luis Ingegneri Brandt is an International college cadet from São Paulo, Brazil. He has been at NMMI since he was a junior in High School, and pretends to get a degree in Business Marketing.