Swimming with sharks is an experience to remember for a lifetime.

Press trips for work, in the tourism sector, always include very good programs, but made without the journalists. The idea there is to present as many attractions as possible from a destination — museums, cathedrals, restaurants, parks.

In the case of a trip to the Maldives, the list also included sharks. They were there on the fourth line of the to-do list, just below the relaxing massage, the interview with the spokesperson, and the tour of the hotel’s facilities.

How can you swim with sharks? I’m the mother of a boy half from São Paulo, half from Pernambuco, and back in Recife we ​​learned that it’s essential to keep our distance from those wild beasts of the oceans if we want to keep all our limbs intact.

There was still the aggravating factor: on the same day I landed in Malé, capital of the Maldives, I also had my period. And everyone knows, because Steven Spielberg taught us, that blood attracts sharks.

The hotel and tour staff assured that no, this would not be a problem. The proposal was to snorkel among nurse sharks, which politely do not have the habit of attacking humans, and it was also agreed that, when swimming, I would use a pad. No human being would leave the filming mistreated.

The boat sails for about 30 minutes to reach a famous point in the Maldives, next to a resort. “They’ve been feeding the sharks there for a long time, and there’s a large population of them that grew up there,” explains Antoine Perretti, manager of Aquafanatics, the company responsible for the tour.

In the group there were families, small children, couples of different ages. I noticed a trio of a father, mother, and teenage daughter who had come clearly more prepared than I had, wearing wetsuits and swimming caps. I considered how inappropriate my bikini and short linen shirt were.

Reached the exact location, here they come. “Only the noise of the engines makes the sharks come close to the boats. It looks like magic, but it’s not”, jokes Perretti. It’s just that the animals know that when there are tourists, there are also snacks given by the guides.

As everyone puts on their fins and masks, my attention is divided: one eye on the approaching shark, the other on the prepared father falling into the water. In less than a minute he (the father, not the fish) was back in the boat, panicking.

Someone asks aloud if we know the movie “Open Sea”, in which a couple is forgotten by a tour company and dies eaten by sharks. It just gets better. “These are sharks that don’t bite their prey, they suck it in. When you swim with them, they’ll ignore you,” explains Perretti.

I jump into the water, grab the guide rope and surrender. Sharks bigger than me rise from the bottom of the calm sea to approach us tourists and swim in an exciting and unique ballet. There are dozens of them, 20 maybe. It is an experience to remember for a lifetime.

“We ask them not to touch them, because we can carry bacteria, viruses on our skin, and we don’t want them to get sick. But, if you could run your hand over them, you would see that their skin is very rough”, says the manager.

From the tour, there are two certainties: having a waterproof camera must be fantastic, and human beings are not as appetizing as they believe they are.