After a summer filled with pestilent twelve years olds, my time for a long-awaited family vacation finally arrived. My immediate family planned for months to join other family members in Crete, Greece, to celebrate my grandparents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. After much anticipation, the sixteen of us piled into a small plane from Metz, France, to start this fun-filled journey. Promises of endless sunny beaches and colorful snorkeling in crystal clear waters filled my mind, but will this trip live up to my expectations?
   

 To say that traveling in a group of sixteen people is painful is an understatement. After several hours of slow airport service and other means of transportation, the sum of us arrived at Akti Zeus, the resort in which we were staying for a week! The skyline in Crete was the first element that caught my eye throughout this week. The dark shapes of inactive volcanoes and neighboring islands dotted the horizon in sporadic patterns making me feel incredibly small in the midst of their vastness. As soon as I unpacked and equipped myself with my favorite purple flower bikini, it was time to hit the Mediterranean Sea. As I stepped out onto the grey colored volcanic sand, the color of the water astonished me; it truly was sky blue and crystal clear. Could this trip get any better? After a few days of lazy bliss, the time for snorkeling in one of the many reefs had finally arrived. My sister, cousins, and I bought a plethora of plastic snorkeling gear from local tourist shops and piled into our small, shady rental car. Before leaving our family for our adventure, my uncle warned us of one danger: eels. He carefully told us of these long, snakelike creatures that would not hesitate to wrap around you or worse take a firm bite. Although this news put me slightly on edge, I tried to push it to the back of my mind to fully encapsulate the experience I was about to have. The road to the reef was rocky, and we faced a steep hike filled with loose stones to reach our hideaway. However, the small beach we encountered led us right into a beautiful, fish-filled cove. After gearing up in tight sun shirts, many layers of sunscreen, flimsy flippers, and ridiculous looking headgear, we were ready to dive in. Our awkward, penguin-like hobbles on the rocky edges of the beach were quickly replaced with long, smooth strokes in the crisp, salty water. My ears popped and my eyes watered as I dove twenty feet to grab one of many colorful shells on the sea floor. I was so engulfed in this pattern of scanning the sea floor that I failed to notice another danger that my uncle had not mentioned.  As I plunged my body downward to grasp the ledge of a rock, I was suddenly faced with a sharp stinging sensation in my fingertips. Immediately I looked down to see a hundred small, black points of a sea urchin embedded in my fingers. Thankfully my sister easily removed these sharp pieces, and we continued our shell hunt. Although I was a little shaken by the small incident, the wide range of tropical fish that surrounded me soon acted as a distraction. The threat of eels was the last thing on my mind.
     

After several hours of snorkeling, the tide of the Mediterranean Sea was beginning to rise and stir the water around. My hands and feet were shriveled and pruned at this point, so my cousins and I decided to head back to shore. Since our little taste of paradise was about to come to an end, I once again occupied myself with scanning the sea floor while I still had the chance. Little did I know what was about to happen. Only a few meters away from shore, I started to feel a slight but firm tug on my left ankle. At first, I brushed it off as one of my pesky cousins, but after seeing them ahead of me, I realized that something had a hold of my ankle. Immediately the thought of eels resurfaced as I thrashed like a madwoman in the now icy water. With my eyes tightly shut and my limbs flailing wildly, I finally had the sense to look and see what was holding me captive. Relief flooded my senses when I saw a large piece of plastic stuck to the base of my flipper and not a giant, blood-sucking eel. Relief soon turned to rage as I noticed all the floating debris around me. Not only was this debris detrimental to the aquatic life, but also to the sanity of intermediate snorkelers! With my heart still beating out of my chest, I collected a few large pieces of the pollution and finally reached the shore. From that day on, littering and careless waste disposal have become my pet peeve. Not only is pollution harmful to all sorts of ecosystems, but it also gives snorkelers like me heart attacks!