Kayaking through the ocean

I will preface this by saying, I made it out alive. We decided to do what we thought would be a nice journey kayaking out to an island. The island looked really cool and we wanted to go check it out. Here is a pciture of the island we ventured out to.

We rented out the kayaks this morning and set out to the island. As you can tell in this picture, the water looks pretty calm so we were not worried at all. We decided to loop around the entire island and that was where we made a major mistake.

The calm water made us think the water would be the same the whole way around the island. We were very wrong. After I got about half way around the island my kayak started going over some huge waves. They were not breaking yet so it was okay but it made me a little nervous. Next thing I know, some massive rocks/cliffs start appearing in front of us. We tried turning around because we weren't too sure how to get around them. Once we started turning around we realized that the waves were starting to break on these huge rocks. I turn to look back behind me and I see a wave 2 times the size of me coming quickly towards me. I see that it is starting to break and I panic. I paddled as fast as I could to the side of the wave to get out of the white water.

I have never been so scared as I was in those few minutes. I started thinking about what would happen if the wave broke on me and threw me into one of the rocks or cliffs. (Mom, I debated telling you this but it is part of my abroad experience so just focus on the fact that I am safe haha love you!) It took about 2 hours before my heart came out of my stomach. I was almost in tears when it was happening and everyone in my group was really shaken up. It was quite the experience and I am just very happy that I made it out alive and kicking! Costa Rican adventures got the best of me today.