Swimming to Antarctica_ Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer - Lynne Cox [135]
The swim across Lake Baikal, however, was as successful as it was amazing. Thousands of Siberians came to the town of Listvyanka, a village on the edge of the lake, to celebrate the finish of the ten-mile swim. They threw long-stemmed pink roses into the water as I swam by, and they cheered, “Welcome, Lynne Cox. Welcome, USA.” A few months later, to commemorate the swim, officials placed a plaque at the starting point and named the cape beside Cape Tolstoy Cape Lynne Cox.
Buoyed with these successes, I decided to try other swims, ones that had never been attempted, that could be vehicles for opening borders and for furthering cold research. In 1990 I decided to attempt a swim across the forty-two-degree waters of the Beagle Channel. To do this, though, I had to gain support from both Argentina and Chile and cross a border that had been contested at one time or another by both countries. It took a lot of work to get both countries to agree to support the swim, and at one point while I was in Argentina with my crew, I nearly had to walk away from the swim because of the political tensions. Fortunately, the commanders of both navies were able to work out the logistics, and with their support, I became the first person to swim across the seven-mile-wide Beagle Channel from a beach in Ushuaia, Argentina, to Puerto Williams, Chile.
From there, I decided to swim across the Spree River, from East Berlin to West Berlin, at a time when the Berlin Wall was still intact. My idea was to get support from East and West Germany as well as England, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States, since they controlled various sectors of Berlin, and to promote cooperation between all of the countries.
By the time I gained permission to make the swim, the wall had been torn down, but the Spree River would prove to be one of the most dangerous waterways I’d ever swum in. The East German government had placed mines, razor wire, and large slabs of razor-sharp sheet metal in the river to prevent East Germans from swimming across it and escaping into West Berlin. Most of these devices had been cleared from the river, but the job had been done in great haste, and the East Germans weren’t sure if they had removed everything. They agreed to help and had one of their police boats escort me. During the swim we made at least five rapid course changes to avoid underwater obstacles, as well as many others to avoid the dead rats, trash, and condoms floating on the water’s surface. One of the most exciting parts of the swim was having people from East Germany and West Germany walking along the shore, all ten miles with us, to the finish of the swim in West Berlin.
Departing briefly from doing swims to bring countries together, I decided to instead make a swim that would highlight cooperation between countries. The Amyara people who lived on either side of Lake Titicaca, in Bolivia and Peru, have gotten along together for centuries; many of them are related. In 1992, with help from Bob Gelbard, who was then the assistant secretary of state, I was able to quickly obtain permission to attempt a swim across Lake Titicaca from Bolivia to Peru.
No one had ever swum across the ten-mile-wide section of the lake from Copacabana, Bolivia, to Chimbo, Peru, mostly because of the extreme altitude—12,500 feet—and the fifty-degree water temperature. But attempting this crossing really intrigued me. Training for it would be a challenge, and fortunately, I was able to work with Dr. Brownie Schoene, a pulmonary specialist who had climbed both Mount Everest and K2. Brownie helped me acclimate to the high altitude, but neither of us knew how I would react to the added stress of cold water.
It was a shock for me. When I first attempted a training swim in the lake, I suddenly couldn’t breathe, which made me have big doubts about attempting the swim. In order to complete it, I would have to slow my work rate down to half speed, so I could breathe, and then hope I didn’t go into hypothermia. With this