Nelson’s e-mail:
no lie..i dont think many of you will believe this story. i have
newspapers as evidence, this story made the front page. i also have the
testimony of my friend, the kappa sigma, if youll believe him
hah..anyway, here it goes:
saturday morning we all met at the bus station at like 8:45, a group
of about 30 kids, we all bought bus tickets to Cadiz, a real popular
beach community in spain. we arrive in Cadiz and the driver tells us
that for the beach, this is where to get off. me and my friends planned
on finding a hostel nearby for cheap to spend the night, but some girls
had booked a hotel. they realized that they shouldnt have gotten off
the bus so early, because the hotel was 90 minutes away hahaha, they
booked rooms in the wrong chain of the hotel.
when we worked all that out, much of the group had split off, some to
do whatever, some to find us rooms, so some of us went to the beach.
a group of 4 of us walked down the beach to explore, and we walked out
onto the jetty(a long structure perpendicular to the beach that kind of
holds the sand in place) made of large cubes of cement piled up, about
250 feet long out into the water.
one girl lost her sandal down a crack, so me and friend, Will, who is
a kappa sigma at U Arkansas, kept walking down to the end of the rocks.
when we got to the end we talked to a few fishermen there for about 30
seconds when from behind us we could hear people yelling ” Ayudanos!”
which means “help us”.
we turned and saw 3 people( later we found out it was a 74 year old
mom, her 41 year old son, and her 40-ish year old daughter)
they were being pulled out to sea by a current. we werent sure if it
was a very serious situation, and didnt know what to do, we asked the
fishermen, they asked if we were good swimmers, we said we were good
enough, so along with one fishermen(the rest were too old) we jumped in
the water, which was FREEZING, we were very far out from the shore, the
water must have been over 20-25 feet deep, the waves were crashing over
our heads, and we began swimming out to the people, who had moved about
15 feet farther away in the short time it took us to decide to jump in.
the daughter was holding her moms feet, the son was under her left
arm, my friend Will got under her right, and me and the other fisherman
helped where we could.
we werent making any progress, infact for a while i think we were
being sucked out farther. the whole time we weer screaming towards the
shore for help, some people came out but it took them forever cause we
were so far.
the whole time me and will were saying how we werent getting any
closer, whether we should swim for the shore or for the rocks, and
other stuff to the spanish people.
i took over for will to help carry the elderly woman, and as soon as i
got under her arm, she started to choke me, around the neck, i guess it
was a natural reaction of her being shocked and scared. i couldnt
breath, and she was pulling me under the water every time there was a
wave. i was swallowing massive amounts of water and i could barely
swim. i tried to carry her more and get her arm off me, it wasnt going
very well.
aroudn this time we finally started to move closer to the beach. will
pulled her arm from around my neck and took over, and we continued
closer to the shore.
after struggling for about 15-20 minutes in the water, we finally
could touch the bottom, and we carried the woman upshore and let her
down, where a half-circle of about 200 people had gathered.
i staggered through the crowd and sat down and fell over, exasperated.
my head was pounding and my heart was beating faster and harder than it
ever has before. i laid there, eyes shut until medics came, they asked
if i needed help but i just waved them onto the woman, where they went.
eventually some man, not a medic, talked to me, he helped me up and i
said my head hurt, so he said the ambulance could give me something for
it.
walking up the beach i had to throw up all the water i had choked
down, it was horrible, i had swallowed a lot. the medic in the
ambulance motioned me into it, and sat me down, gave me a oxygen mask
which i told him i didnt need, just something for my head please. i
guess i needed the mask, cause i just closed my eyes and tried to
recouperate. he also hooked a blood pressure monitor to my finger and
spoke a lot of spanish about how my head hurt because i overexerted
myself and i just needed oxygen. after about 5 minutes i told him i
needed to use the bathroom, he said we were going to the hospital, i
said no, i pulled the equipment off me, thanked him, and climbed out of
the ambulance.
i walked over to a little shack where they served snacks and went into
the bathroom and sat for like 5 minutes, trying to recouperate.
eventually i got up, and went out and i ran into Will. he said he was
relieved to have finally found me, because supposedly someone was left
in the water and may have drowned, he thought it could be me.
we noticed there was still a huge crowd gathered but didnt know why,
because when i was walking to the ambulance i saw the old woman we
saved sitting in a lawn chair, talking, with her other daughter
thanking me profusely in spanish, so it couldnt have been her that
everyone was still gathered for.
as we moved to the front of the crowd we saw a blanket draped over
someone, and asked if the guy was ok, to which someone gave me a very
strange look and said, no, el es muerto…or no, he is dead.
me and will tried to figure out who it could be, when Will recalled he
saw the son of the old woman fall back a little, but Will said he
looked fine, and that he was a guy, he’d be fine. we later found out
they had to use a boat to recover the guy from the water, they pumped
his stomach on the beach, but he died.
me and Will stood still, silent for a few minutes, just watching them
drape the blanket over the guy and carry him away. his name was Moseis
del Amor Delgado. Wills sister and some friends came up and talked to
us, we explained how we were there, we all stood, and then just walked
back.
this is all true, i know it sounds crazy, i got some newspapers, the
story made the front page, ill show you when i return.Im sure that if
we hadnt jumped in the water to save them when we did, they would have
been pulled out to sea and drowned for sure.
i had kicked off my sandals, dads from key west, and will took off his
shoes and put his digital camera in one, and the fishermen watched them
for us when we jumped in, but when we returned, someone had stolen
wills shoes. we asked everyone there but they told us weird stories we
didnt understand. i cant believe that as we were saving someones life
someone had the nerve to steal wills camera and shoes.
so wow…with that said..we all sat around on the beach all day, me
will and his friend daine went and got pizza, then sat at an outdoor
cafe for about 3 hours, just talking.
around 11 we walked, looking for the hostel where people found some
rooms for us.
we got there, sat around talking for a while, and went to sleep.
the next day we got up, ate in a big group at a cafe, then wandered in
smaller groups.
we came back around 630, my host family already knew the story from my
roomate and the newspapers, i explained it a little more, then showered
and went to the soccer stadium, it was Sevilla’s last game of the
season.
the people around the stadium were going nuts, everyone had sevillas
colors on, they had jerseys, hand towels with sevilla sewed into ti,
flags, signs, the works.
we had really good seats, one the side, like 10 rows back. the area
behind sevillas goal was the most insane though, here everyone stood
the entire game, there were 20 huge flags, millions of little ones,
someone had a drum they kept banging, and there was a huge smoke bomb
or something that lasted well over 10 minutes, the whole stadium was
getting red smoke all through it. the stadium was pretty big, 45,000
capacity.
the game was awesome, everyone was singing all sorts of awesome songs,
chants, and yelling everything in support of sevilla and saying
horrible things about the visitors, Malaga. in the end tho, malaga won.
2-0, they scored with 20 mintues left, and then again with like 3
minutes left. it was a tough loss. there were were over 100 police with
riot helmets on the field to prevent a riot, and they were stationed
all throughout the city i noticed on the walk home. it was a tough
loss, but it was such a crazy experience, i really enjoyed it.
Comments are closed.