Swimming in the Sink

by Lynne Cox

  The day the navies selected—January 13, 1990—was perfect. The water mirrored the bright blue heavens and Hector Alvarez, a captain in the Argentine navy, said, “It is the calmest I have ever seen the Beagle Channel. God has blessed the waters for your swim.”

  Dr. Keatinge, Dr. Penny Neild, his colleague from the University of London, and Barry Binder, my friend from California, climbed onto the Chilean ship. Ross Roseman, another friend from California, got on a paddleboard beside me.

  We started from Argentina and I swam between the two naval ships. The water was a cold 42 degrees Fahrenheit (5.5 degrees centigrade) and the currents were strong, but I swam fast and knew I was creating more heat than I was losing. I looked at the faces of the men on the ships. They were tense.

  They knew the water was dangerously cold. They never swam in the channel. But as I got into my pace, I could see their expressions change. They were surprised at my speed and they gained confidence in me. They looked at the shore and at me to measure the distance I needed to swim. They grinned when they realized that what I was attempting was possible. I felt their excitement. They were athletes and athleticism was the thing that connected us—the expression of the human heart and spirit, the thing that transcended differing politics and culture.

  Ross was paddling beside me and encouraging me. Dr. Keatinge, Dr. Neild, and Barry were watching and smiling. I asked Ross to tell everyone that seeing them beside me and their reflections in the water was one of the most beautiful things I had experienced. We were achieving the crossing together.

  The sea remained calm, but the currents grew strong, and I fought them and the cold and swam seven miles to Puerto Williams, Chile, in three hours and ten minutes. It was my longest, coldest swim, but, just as important, three years later the American ambassador to Bolivia would tell me that my Beagle Channel swim set a precedent for cooperation between Argentina and Chile: the presidents of Argentina and Chile met in the middle of the Strait of Magellan and signed a mineral rights treaty.

  My swims were far more than athletic achievements. My goal was to bring people and countries together in new ways and to improve relations between nations.

  Each time I completed a challenging swim I learned something, and I wanted to use what I had learned to take on even greater and more complex challenges.

  I spend months and even years preparing for each swim. I don’t always make progress during my training. Sometimes workouts are tedious, and I get bored, distracted, or tired. Most of the time I love to be in the water, but sometimes I don’t feel like working out. Sometimes I need to take time off to rest and recover before getting my mind and body back in the water.

  When I swim, I feel a spiritual connection to the oceans, to God, and to the universe. The ocean is the place I can always go when I am seeking solace and when I am happy. No matter where I travel in the world, the water feels like home.

  When I am swimming I feel like a musician discovering nuances in sound, color, and rhythm. My body is the instrument and the ocean is the symphony. I immerse myself in music and hear and feel the ocean’s movements. We create music together. I hear the driving beat of my arms and legs and the song of my breath and bubbles.

  Like a musician, I improvise. My stroke changes with the rise and fall of the seas, with the wind, water density, and current. The music shifts in harmony with the changing surface of the sea, the temperature of the water, the salinity, wind, current, tide, and the melody playing inside my mind. I am a part of the ocean. It is a part of me and we are playing a duet.

  In the ocean I feel the energy waves from the sun, moon, wind, and rotation of the planet, and I am surrounded by the energy of life from the tiniest plankton to fish, dolphins, seals, and enormous whales. Sometimes I hear their voices, and the song of the surf, the melody of the moon through her ebbing and flooding tides, and the wind blowing across the water. The ocean is always a musical and magical place.

  In the darkness of early morning, my arm strokes jostle millions of plankton. A chemical reaction occurs in their bodies. They turn the black water sparkling phosphorescent blue. I wonder about life, the universe, and my place in it. I feel the warmth in my body, the cold ocean surrounding me, and I watch fish swimming fathoms below me lighting the depths of the ocean like the stars and planets light the depths of the universe. I wonder how the stars can burn so bright without losing their heat to the frigid heavens.

  I watch the rosy sun rise from the dark blue ocean and see it change color and create waving rivers of crimson, orange, yellow, and white light. The onshore breeze wakes the world like a gentle morning kiss. When I train I think about my life, my passions, and what is in my heart. I list the things I need to do each day and the things I want to do. But I also dream about what I can do, and that makes life rich and exciting.

  I started to think about what else I could do. I was considering a swim that would be more challenging than the Beagle Channel. One that was colder, and higher, and had never been swum. I began to realize that when I attempted a swim, I was taking two journeys—one where I asked myself, Can I do it? and the other, a physical journey. It was the external challenge posed by the elements—the waves that toss you into the air, the currents that tangle you up and push you in every direction but the direction you want to go. And the winds that blow so hard they push you and your support boat far off course. You have to maintain a confident inner course, that you can and will accomplish your journey, and you have to maintain a powerful outer course, that you have the strength, power, and endurance to move through, across, and over the physical elements.

  I opened the atlas and decided I wanted to do something different. I studied the continents and saw Lake Titicaca. It is the highest navigable lake in the world. I contacted a friend at the State Department, made official contacts in Bolivia and Peru, and discovered that Lake Titicaca had never been swum.

  The lake is in the Andes Mountains in Bolivia and Peru, at 12,500 feet (3,810 meters).

  In 1983 I swam across three glacial lakes in New Zealand’s Southern Alps. Lake Tekapo is at 2,296 feet (700 meters). I swam 3.7 miles (6 kilometers) across the lake in one hour and twenty-six minutes. The combined effects of cold and altitude made the swim challenging. Lake Titicaca was more than 10,000 feet higher than Lake Tekapo, but I remembered that Sir Edmund Hillary trained to become the first person to climb Mount Everest by hiking around Lake Tekapo and climbing 12,218 feet (3,724 meters) to Mount Cook’s summit.

  A friend put me in touch with Dr. Robert “Brownie” Schoene, a pulmonary specialist and researcher who was a member of the 1981 American team that summited Mount Everest. Brownie was intrigued with this challenge and the associated research and suggested that I meet him in Colorado so he could guide me through my acclimatization process. He would observe me to make sure I didn’t experience altitude sickness or high-altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE), a life-threatening condition in which fluid accumulates in the lungs.

  Brownie met me at the Denver airport. He was lean, medium height, had wavy brown hair, dark brown eyes, and a deep, calm voice. We drove to Montezuma, a town at an altitude of 10,312 feet (3,143 meters). It was a place where he did research and clinical work, rock climbed, and trained to climb mountains. During the drive I asked him why I felt colder during my Mount Cook swims than when I swam at sea level. Brownie’s eyes lit up. He was a kindred spirit. He loved exploring the limits of human ability and answering questions. He explained that wind and water moving over the body’s surface wick heat away faster than any other method. And air at altitude tended to be drier and therefore able to facilitate heat loss by evaporation. Breathing cold air also caused heat loss.

  For two days I walked and rested. During the exercise periods, I breathed harder and my heart beat faster, but I didn’t show any signs of altitude sickness—I didn’t experience headaches or have difficulty breathing, so Brownie drove us to 8,000 feet (2,438 meters). We hiked along a mountain road for a couple of hours, and I did fine, so we drove to 9,000
feet (2,743 meters) and looked for an alpine lake where I could swim, but they were all frozen. Brownie thought if I could ski, exercising at altitude would help me acclimate, but I was not a good skier. I had a stretch cord—a long resistance band—and if I attached one end to a tree and put my hand in each handhold I could lean over and pull my arms like I was swimming.

  We agreed that I’d use my stretch cord to exercise at the top of the mountain. As I rode up the ski lift, I watched the earth drop below. I felt my heart beating faster and realized that this was the start of another great adventure.

  A man helped me off the chairlift and looked at me like I was strange. I wasn’t wearing skis. He asked me if I was okay. I said I was fine, and that I was training to swim Lake Titicaca. He laughed and said the manager had called him to tell him that I would be there, but he thought the manager was joking. He pointed to a stand of tall dark green pine trees lining the edge of the slope, said I could tie my cord to one of the trees, and wished me luck.

  I found a tall, sturdy pine, with thick bark so my cord wouldn’t irritate the tree, tied the cord to the trunk, and began swimming. My breathing and heart rate increased. The air was perfumed with pine and sweet snow. I monitored my breathing and checked my heart rate. I was fine. so I took two steps back into deep snow, put more resistance on the cord, and pulled much harder. The sudden movement released snow from the tree’s branches, and it dropped in a pile and covered me from head to toe.

  Laughing, I worked into my swimming pace, and when I was warm, took off my coat. I thought I should have worn my swimsuit. The air temperature was around freezing, much colder than the air temperature at Lake Titicaca, and that would help me be better prepared.

  Skiers sped by me. Some looked at me like I was crazy, a few stopped to ask what I was doing. When I told them I was training to swim across Lake Titicaca, they laughed, but when they realized I was serious, they asked about my training and wished me luck. They inspired me.

  I “swam” for two hours and was exhausted when I finished but couldn’t wait to talk with Brownie. He was confident I would be able to acclimate for Lake Titicaca. He told me how to continue training. He said to move slowly when I landed in La Paz, Bolivia, and to sleep. La Paz’s altitude was between 10,500 and 13,000 feet (3,200 to 3,962 meters). The next couple of days he suggested that I walk around the city and take it easy.

  I flew to La Paz. Barry Binder, Deborah Ford, and Pete Kelly—all friends from California—would join me a week later. Charles Bowers, the American ambassador to Bolivia, put me in touch with the Bolivian minister of defense, who promptly offered to provide a Bolivian naval boat and two of his naval officers to navigate for me. They patrolled the lake and knew the weather patterns and currents. They were happy to help. Ambassador Bowers also introduced me to Paul Fernandes, a colleague. Paul was a British biologist working with the Bolivian government to study and help sustain fish populations in Lake Titicaca.

  Paul and his friend gave me a ride to Copacabana, a small town on the lake, and invited me to travel with them by boat to Isla del Sol, Island of the Sun, a desolate island in the southern part of the lake. Isla del Sol was known as the birthplace of the Incas and the Aymara Indians.

  On May 19, 1992, I walked into Lake Titicaca. The air temperature was fifty-seven degrees Fahrenheit (fourteen degrees centigrade) and the water temperature was fifty degrees Fahrenheit (ten degrees centigrade), but they both felt much colder.

  When I started swimming freestyle I felt great, so I pulled stronger, but I wasn’t getting enough oxygen. I was gasping for air but couldn’t catch my breath. What do I do now? I asked myself. Roll over onto your back so you can breathe.

  Floating on my back, I wondered, How am I ever going to swim ten miles (sixteen kilometers) across the lake if I can’t swim one hundred meters? Had I overestimated my ability? What made me think I could do this? I looked into the sky. The sun at altitude was blazing white, the sky was cerulean blue, and the searing white glare on the calm lake made me squint even though I was wearing tinted goggles. The low-pressure altitude, cold water, and my breathing were causing my body to lose heat quickly and my muscles were tightening to block the chill. I needed to swim fast to create heat to get warm, but I couldn’t swim fast and get enough oxygen. What could I do?

  Swim slowly. Swim breaststroke. Breathe deeply. I swam breaststroke, caught my breath. I realized that if I was going to attempt the swim I would need to choose between being warm and breathing. Swimming across Lake Titicaca was going to be far more difficult than I imagined.

  Would ten days be enough time to acclimate?

  For the next week, I swam in the morning along the shores of Copacabana, with its bright yellow, red, blue, pink, and green buildings edging the lake. A small herd of long-horned brown and white steers with big dark brown eyes stood knee-deep in the lake. They turned their heads in sync and watched me as I swam back and forth. I don’t think they had ever seen anyone swimming in the lake, and even the local people stopped and stared when they saw me swimming along the shore, but the hotel owner where I was staying told them that I was training to swim across Lake Titicaca to celebrate the peaceful existence of the Bolivians and Peruvians who lived around the lake, and after that, they watched and waved, and said, “Buena suerte”—good luck.

  At the hotel I couldn’t figure out how to use the shower. There were two electrical wires that hung above a metal box. The hotel owner explained that I needed to connect the electrical wires while I was standing in the shower to heat the water. He said it was a good idea to wear rubber sandals. I didn’t take many hot showers after that!

  On May 26, 1992, my friends from California, a representative from the United States embassy, and a reporter from Peru climbed into the Bolivian navy’s boat and the two officers steered to a beach below the city of Copacabana.

  I walked into the water and began swimming toward Chimbo, Peru, on the opposite side of the lake. The water was calm and clear, and when I looked down, hundreds of frogs as long as my foot were resting on the sandy bottom. They were pale green and whitish gray. Their mouths were wide open and their arms and legs outstretched. They didn’t move when I touched them with my big toe. They looked eerie and gave me an unsettled feeling. I swam next to the boat and tried to get into my pace. I was having difficulty. I was trying to find a balance between my breathing and working hard enough to keep myself warm. When I tried to increase my pace, I couldn’t get enough oxygen, and when I slowed down, I felt the cold piercing my skin. Once that happened, I never felt warm again. The cold bored into my muscles. They felt as tight as a board. I focused on making them relax. The water was calm, but large puffy cumulus clouds shaded me from the sun, and the air temperature plummeted. But when a strong breeze pushed the clouds away, the sun’s rays were hot on the water’s surface. I pulled more under my body to gain more lift so I could feel the sunlight warming my back.

  About halfway across the lake, the wind began blowing at ten to fifteen knots, the water erupted into whitecaps, and I swam into the waves. My speed dropped and I wondered if I would reach the other side.

  My crew cheered me on and that lifted my spirits. I told myself each stroke brought me closer to the finish.

  Three-fourths of the way across the lake, I was cold and exhausted; I hadn’t expected the altitude to affect me so much. I had to roll onto my side and inhale to get enough oxygen. Waves were crashing around me; I inhaled spray and choked. I stopped to catch my breath. The wind increased, and the waves broke faster. Because of the rough water, I changed my stroke pattern, used my arm to shield my mouth, and breathed into my armpit.

  Lifting my head, I looked toward shore. It looked far away and I wondered if I could reach it. I put my head down, continued swimming, and felt the wind swing around and the waves change direction. I was surfing the lake, being pushed by the current, and swimming at a faster pace than I had ever swum.

  “See the people coming down from the hills?” Deborah shouted.

  T
here were women walking toward the beach with their llamas.

  “They’re coming to welcome you,” Barry shouted.

  As I reached shore, Deborah jumped into knee-deep water and wrapped a beach towel around me. I was cold but not shivering. I heard people cheering and shouting in Spanish and in English. They were off to our left, wearing bright red sweat suits.

  The group of Aymara Indians stood in front of us and stared. And I’m sure I stared back. They wore interesting traditional clothes. The women wore black bowler hats, with their hair in long black braids. Their colorful shawls, sweaters, and woolen skirts were blown by the wind. The men were dressed in thick work clothes and bowler hats.

  One man said they had been listening to the radio about the swim. They had never seen anyone swim in the lake and they wanted to see the swimmer. One of the people wearing a red sweat suit told me that he was a member of the Bolivian national swim team. They had walked from Bolivia to Peru to watch the swim. I couldn’t believe they had walked all the way around the lake. They were excited. We talked about their training and spoke with the Aymara people about the majesty of the lake and their special part of the world, where people who lived around the lake were friends.

  The people in Copacabana celebrated the completion of the swim with flowers and sweets and we posed for photos together.