The first experience I remember with the Pacific Ocean was incredible. I was 4 years old, and my parents took me to play with the sand, and I learned how to wade in the waves.

My parents enjoyed remembering the first time I went by myself to the border of the ocean and a big wave took me in.

I still remember the sensation, the brown, blue, green, and white colors mixing in front of my eyes while I was amazingly calm, but at the same time excited, with the experience. I remember instinctively holding my breath, opening my mouth to taste the water, and feeling no fear at all, just the assurance that this was going to pass because the wave will let me go. In fact, when I finally was released and breathing normally, I ran toward my parents, who were also running toward me, shouting: “I swallowed a wave!” My parents had been observing from the distance and were obviously alarmed and could not get to me fast enough.

It was nice to go the beach in Viña del Mar. In time my parents also allowed me to go to the swimming pool in the same spa resort of “Balneario El Recreo.” Soon, after I tried several times to get down to the deeper area of the pool, they realized that I need to learn how to swim.

Back to Santiago my mother decided to find out where I could learn how to swim. She found the Piscina Mund in Nuñoa where they had swimming lessons and there we went. The place had six swimming pools. One with a big slide, one 3 meters (9.8 feet) deep, another with a beach, another exceptionally large of 25 meters long (82 feet) and two pools for babies and toddlers. The two deep pools had springboards at different heights. When I finished my classes I was able to dive from the second highest springboard!

Going back to my first experience with the wave, my parents and I had talked enough about my reaction and clarified that it was not me that swallowed a wave but the wave had swallowed me. I still could not agree with that because I had the flavor of the salty water in my mouth. Then we saw a gentleman in a black swimming suit, Tyrol style hat and big moustaches coming toward us.

He had a small sack hanging from his arm, and in his hand, he had a small wood tablet with a piece of pumpernickel bread with a thick spread of butter, and several pieces of green pepper. He politely asked my father if he could offer this delicacy to me. My father, after carefully examining the snack, said yes. I was intrigued with the flavor of the snack and liked it very much. The gentleman explained that green peppers are full of vitamin K, and that nutrition was indispensable for growing up healthy. My father invited the gentleman to sit with us. He accepted and told us he was a medical doctor, graduated in Germany, and since he has come to Chile, he had started a campaign to teach parents to feed green peppers to their children, together with all kinds of green fresh veggies with plenty of vitamin K. The doctor explained that Vitamin K was recently discovered (1943), and it has been found that low levels of vitamin K in the blood are associated with low bone density in adults. He also explained that prolonged or frequent use of antibiotics may destroy vitamin K in the gastrointestinal tract. My father was extremely interested in all this because he often had to use antibiotics in his maxillofacial and dentistry practice.

After we came back home, green peppers were included in all our salads.