When I finished Oceans Seven in March 2019, I didn’t know if I was ready to continue swimming. At that moment, I only wanted to celebrate and share my experience. A few months later, it became clear that swimming is a very important part of my life that makes me very happy. I decided I was going to continue swimming and wanted to do a swim in Mexico, my country. A new swim that would inspire Mexicans and swimmers from all around the world to come and do it. Diego Rivas contacted me and invited me to do the Acuarium Swim and when he told me about it, I immediately said yes.

Acuarium, because of Jacques Cousteau who referred to the Mar de Cortés as the aquarium of the world, a 32 km swim from San José to Cabo San Lucas.

On October 19th at 3:30 am, we met at the starting point, where I offered a special desert flower to the sea as a ritual of gratitude; also, at that moment I shared my feelings with my team thanking everyone for being with me in this special swim, having done this I started the swim through the beautiful and magical waters of Mar the Cortés at 3:48 am.

The first few hours I swam enjoying the stars in the sky and the fluorescent waters; at dawn I was thinking how fortunate I was to be there and at that moment the Pacific Ocean tide hit me…it was like a wall in the middle of the ocean, my strokes took me nowhere, I struggled to keep going and for the next two hours I really had to push very hard to make any advance until I reached the most beautiful ocean garden waiting for me, thousands of colorful fish tagged along with me until I reached Punta Ballenas, last point before San Lucas Bay.

Just passing Punta Ballenas, one can see the great arch of San Lucas, such a beautiful and emblematic view. I reached the San Lucas Bay, and at that point I thought I was almost at the the finishing point, but there were about 2-3 miles still to go. I kept swimming and enjoying the majestic San Lucas Arch until I was instructed to swim towards the beach to the finishing point.

October 19th is a special day for my children and I, Cancer Awareness Day and my deceased husband’s birthday. Swimming Acuarium was such a beautiful way to celebrate his life, to create awareness for Breast Cancer and to inspire many people struggling against cancer to keep going. A few more strokes and I reached the shore at 2:02 pm and stood up full of joy from such a beautiful swim that took me 10 hours 14 minutes.