Swimming through the cool clear lake, I’m aware of the densely forested mountains behind us, with pale rocky peaks to our right. A cable car snakes up the side of one, and the sky is turning grey, hinting at an Alpine storm. A standup paddleboarder with blond hair who is wearing bright Hawaiian shorts glides past, and the distant shore that we’re heading towards is clustered with cheery red parasols.
I can’t really see much of this. I can see the silhouette of the mountains cradling us, the figure of the paddleboarder but not his twist of blond hair, and the cable car would otherwise be a mystery to me. But as I swim alongside a fellow traveller, Sophia, she describes the scene around us in such detail that it fills in the blanks and paints a rich picture for me as a visually impaired person.
