Dive! Dive! Dive!

Hi friends!

When last I posted we had cracked our camera and were pretty down about it.  To focus on just this however would do a disservice to the excellent diving we thoroughly enjoyed in Palau, Yap and Truk (or Chu’uk).

For those who aren't into researching dive locations, these form three of the four states of the Federated States of Micronesia, to the north of Papua New Guinea and to the east of the Philippines.  All are home to diverse diving experiences.

Palau is famous for strong currents, some interesting cavern dives and generally lots of life in the form of schooling sharks plus manta rays and pelagic fish such as tuna, marlin and sailfish.

Yap is home to a number of manta ray "cleaning stations", areas of reef where large numbers of mantas, some as large as 5 metres across, come to have parasites cleaned off them by reef fish.

And finally, Truk lagoon in Chu'uk is the site of a famous US bombing operation in WWII, Operation Hailstone, which sank in excess of 50 Japanese ships plus a number of planes.  These ships make for interesting and challenging wreck dives showcasing everything from boxes of beer bottles to guns, torpedoes, tanks, trucks, planes and even a John Deere tractor.

We visited Palau first, and had a great 7 days diving a wide range of sites.  We used reef hooks to hold ourselves onto the reef while grey reef sharks schooled in front of us over the deep drop-offs, and we drifted over massive coral reefs populated with giant clams and patrolled by schools of giant bumphead parrotfish, swimming along in a cloud of their own crap like prehistoric cows.  We also had curious Napoleon wrasse getting up close and personal, an interesting experience with such a large fish!  We saw a few manta rays, and watching these giant rays at play was a great experience we would soon be getting much more of at Yap.

The caverns were spectacular, holes in the top of the reef that you drop into at 2 metres, to emerge on a coral covered wall 30 metres down.  The light inside them was truly ethereal.  Our last dive into Chandelier cave allowed us to surface into a series of stalactite-covered caverns complete with trapped air that allowed us to take out our regulators and have a chat before descending once more.  Though we were cautioned not to fart as it would stay in there for every visitor to come after us!  Very tempting..... but I was good, I promise!

In Yap we stayed at the dedicated dive resort of Manta Ray Bay.  We didn't see any mantas at our first visit to the cleaning station, but as the week progressed we saw more and more, culminating on our last day with a 90 minute dive with up to 8 manta rays, some of whom formed a "mating train".  The less I say about this the better! The other diving there was quite varied, a mix of deep drop vertical walls with pelagic fish and beautiful coral gardens with some of the tiny life we have grown to love since our time with Scuba Junkie in Malaysia. One night on dusk we did a dive to watch mandarinfish come out to mate.  These little fish shuffle around amongst the coral and are normally quite bashful during the day, but on dusk males convince a series of females to join them for a quick dash out of the coral and a bit of a "quickie".  Let's just say the expectations incumbent on these males are a long way short of what are expected of a modern human male.

We did spend a part of the week nervously watching category 4 Hurricane Bopha pass to the south of Yap, our concerns somewhat assuaged by the consumption of the Yap "Stone Money" micro-brew beer.

Which brings an interlude from dive talk: Stone money (the real thing, not the beer) is a pretty neat invention of the Yapese (though the beer is still bloody good too).  These giant stone wheels were quarried over at Palau, and then transported by canoe at much peril back to Yap where no such stone was available.  The value of each piece of stone money is the subject of discussion between both parties and takes into consideration the age of the piece and the difficulty of obtaining it from Palau.  As a result when an Irishman turned up with some stone money that he had quarried and transported using modern techniques, these pieces did not have as much value as the traditional money.  Given that it can take up to 20 guys to shift some of these monstrosities they don't often move, but are still used for some transactions such as property dealings and a record of their ownership kept.

Leaving the land of stone money, we flew to Chu'uk, the land of the world's worst roads.  Never again will I complain about London roads or some bumpy Australian highway.  We joined our liveaboard dive boat, the Odyssey, not really knowing what to expect except for wrecks wrecks and wrecks.  What we got was deep, dark and dirty wreck diving, interspersed with wrecks that have been colonised by soft coral and turned into underwater wonderlands. 

Coreen couldn't enjoy it for long however, because on day two she felt an acute pain and perforated her eardrum.  This unfortunately ruled her out from any further diving, but despite this she maintained her usual sunny disposition and dedicated her time to becoming what was acclaimed as the best tech team on the boat, setting up the camera and assiduously checking it prior to every dive.  I couldn't have handled a disappointment like this with the equanimity she showed, and she reminded me why we are such a good team - she is the sensible one!

Then on day three, disaster struck the Odyssey.

Firstly, on the first dive of the day, at a wreck named the Hoki Maru, I experienced a bad case of nitrogen narcosis.  At depths in excess of 30 metres nitrogen can affect the brain like a drug, with a whole range of factors contributing to the nature of the narcosis.  After penetrating and then exiting the hold of the wreck at 37 metres, my narcosis took the form of a panic attack, my vision closing in and hyperventilated breathing.  I had to grab hold of myself and tell myself that if I didn't calm down, I was going to die.  I decreased my depth until the symptoms abated somewhat, and then aborted the dive, very shaken from the experience.  Having never had such issues at depth before, it was a severe knock to my confidence.  Talking about it with more experienced divers afterwards, they related similar experiences brought about by some unspoken anxiety prior to the dive.  Not having Coreen with me as my usual buddy, and then having the camera fail on my entry to the ship's hold (you can't tell it's a full SD card when the screen is black!), may have been contributing factors to the nature of my narcosis, but I will never really know for sure.

Then, after being back on the boat for some time, we discovered that a diver had gone missing from his group during the dive, and had died while diving in the wreck.  Based on post-analysis, what likely happened is that Rob's group thought he had aborted the dive due to ear equalisation issues, and the other group that he followed into the depths of the wreck were unaware that he was following them and was lost.  He was found at 50 metres in one of the most inaccessible and difficult parts of the wreck.  This event rocked everyone on the Odyssey.  It shocked all of us who had enjoyed diving with Rob and his wife Edie (who hadn't been on that dive). They were both very experienced and well-prepared wreck divers, and we couldn't believe that someone of his calibre possibly made such a serious communication error.  

Certainly the toughest part fell to the staff of the Odyssey, who had the overwhelming task of recovering Rob's body from a very difficult location and organising its return to the USA, after which they had to bottle up whatever personal feelings they had and try to ensure that the charter continued to be enjoyable for a bunch of shell-shocked divers.  In this, they did a wonderful job.  I certainly can't imagine where they found the strength, but they were inspirational, and together with Edie ensured we continued to enjoy the diving, while keeping Rob in our thoughts.  I hope it is what he would have wanted.  We were certainly reminded just how technically challenging this diving could be, and how serious diving could be as a whole.  Our hearts are with Edie and her family at this terrible time.

The remains of a Japanese crewman in the Yamagiri Maru engine room

The rest of the week brought some interesting wrecks, though it took me a little time to rebuild my confidence after the events of that fateful Wednesday, especially diving into the dark, confined spaces of the deeper vessels.  We saw massive torpedoes, huge 14-inch artillery shells, tonnes of ammunition, planes and plane parts, anti-aircraft and artillery guns, machine guns, trucks, a bulldozer, a John Deere tractor and gas masks, not to mention all of the everyday items like beer and sake bottles (the Japanese sailors drank A LOT), crockery, toilets, surgeon's tables plus medical bottles and kits.  On some of the wrecks we saw the remains of deceased Japanese sailors, a sobering reminder that these wrecks are not underwater museums but are in fact war graves.

Torpedoes in the hold of the Rio de Janeiro Maru

After Chu’uk we spent a fun few days in Guam, enjoying the wonderful hospitality of some of the people we met in Chu’uk (thank you Sean and John!), and we have now returned to Australia.

Over the last 9 months we have met some wonderful people who have touched our lives, and had some brilliant experiences that we will never forget, but now it is time to end our travels and start the next phase of our lives.  What will this entail?  This will be the topic for my next post, but let me just say the search for our own corner of Australia where we can grow our own food is about to begin.  Things are about to get really exciting for the two of us (and anyone who likes the idea of a free place to stay in Australia!).

Stay tuned......

Gutted

So I would love to say that everything has been great since our last post, but that isn't really true.

We killed the screen of our Canon s95 four days into our trip in Palau (that's in Micronesia).  Cor had a moment of distraction, put the camera into the underwater housing upside down and the force of closing it cracked the screen beyond repair.

So the $1000 worth of underwater strobe (Inon D-2000) and tray we bought in the USA has been pretty much worthless over the past week and a half as we have no idea what we are pointing our camera at, whether it is in focus, underexposed or overexposed, or what settings the camera is on.  At least we don't until we get home and put the card in the laptop.  Needless to say we have had some great experiences, from mantas to mandarinfish, that we wanted to record that we have missed.  We have a few pics that worked, but nothing that does justice to the camera equipment we have.  I ordered a replacement to be sent to our hotel in Guam so that we could pick it up before we do our final liveaboard of this trip, but it hasn't arrived and it looks like the next week will be more of the same.

I know it is only a camera, but we are on this trip of a lifetime and the thought that we aren't able to take the photos of a lifetime that it warrants is a really shitty feeling.  We have both been down about it, but you know what?  We are still here with each other and that is what matters, sappy as it is.

A reminder of how lucky we are is passing to the south right now.  While we sit here in Yap, Typhoon Bopha, a category 4 hurricane, is on its way to Palau and will hit in the next day or so.  We were there diving just last week, and our thoughts are with the Palauns who are about to be hit with this disaster.  I hope they make it through OK.

Love to all of you travelling or just dreaming about it.  See you out there on the water, under it, on the rock or at the bar.

Palya!

One of the photos we got before killing the camera..... a broadclub cuttlefish.

Grey reef shark - they are stocky for a reef shark

Coreen in the Blue Hole cavern

California dreaming meets Hawaii Five-Oh!

Hey folks,

We are in Micronesia at the moment and have now posted our photos from the past few weeks, but I wanted to give you all a quick skinny on what we have been up to since we last posted.

One of the people we met in Red Rocks was Brian, a legend of a bloke that has done 6 years down in Antartica and now lives on a 36ft Catalina yacht in San Diego.  He offered to take us sailing if we were ever down there, so we did what we normally do, we rolled on down and took him up on his kind offer.  We had a great couple days hanging with him, sailing, chilling out, drinking Green Flash beer and climbing.

A brief side note here on one of my favourite topics: BEER!  Eleven years ago when we were in the USA their beer was not fit to drink.  They were into their Budweiser (the watery kind, not the real Czech kind), Miller Lite (low in calories don't you know) and Coors.  Now, they have woken up to the fact that beer can taste better than water and have a real trend forming of IPA's (India Pale Ales), golden ales, and a whole range of tasty lagers.  It is a complete change from where they were 11 years ago, and one that makes travelling the US a much more pleasant experience!  I can recommend Green Flash, Lagunitas, Kona Brewing Co, Metolius and Mahena but there are so many more.

After this we visited our mates in Venice Beach again, and then cruised up along the coast road to Morro Bay where one of Cor's online friends lives.  Those two just started chatting like they had known each other for years (which I suppose they have) and I was given cause to wonder just how much our world has changed in the last 15 years.  Those that know us wouldn't be surprised to know that Peggy and I got on just as famously, and we swapped names of many sci-fi books and authors over a cracking seafood lunch.

We then went via amazing Hearst Castle (if you ever get a chance, check it out) to Monterey Bay to see the aquarium.  It was fan-fricking-tastic.  So many things to see, and our favourites included the rays, the seahorses and their mola-mola.  Check out the pics on the link to the right for a tiny slice of what it is like.

Next stop, San Francisco, and another friend we met in the Australian outback, the gorgeous Sarah.  Sarah arranged a day out in Napa for us touring some wineries, including one where her friend Zane worked.  This guy was knowledgeable about so much in relation to wine and was a top guy to boot.  We had an amazing day there and leaving after drinks with these guys was so hard, I could definitely hang with them a lot more.

And so after San Fran we flew to Hawaii.  We caught up briefly with our mate James from Costa Rica before he went out for another week of work on the Aggressor, and we did our manta ray night dive.  Only a couple of manta rays and no really close encounters, so fingers are crossed that we see them here in Micronesia.

We hired a convertible in Hawaii (a Camaro) which was fun, and then we added to the fun factor with a helicopter ride over the Big Island.  It was sensational to see the lava flowing red hot down the fields up close and personal, and getting into the valleys to see scores of waterfalls on the wet side of the island was breathtaking.

Another note, in Hawaii cops drive Mustangs, Chargers and Camaros.  They get a stipend to their salary to drive their own cars and the state gives them money for the safety bits and pieces.  It is strange to see a bright orange Charger in the rear view mirror with a cop light on top, real Hawaii 5-0 stuff.

A final thing to add, see the links to the right for our latest pics (I have even updated the Costa Rica ones) and I have now done a video of our climb of Frogland here on Vimeo.  There is one instance of bad language in there towards the end (just a warning for the parents) but check it out anyway.  My first ever video!

Palya!

Rocking the Red Rocks

Palya, friends!  Since we last posted we have been enjoying the United States during its pre-election buildup.

We arrived in LA back in early October, picked up a van from the fabulous Lost Campers, and then hit the road.  We spent a fun night with an old Uni friend who has now settled down and got himself a lovely other half and a couple of rugrats.  His parents were visiting and we may have stayed up late with them to put a dent in their son's wine stocks.....which made our setting out for Vegas the next morning a fun drive.

Vegas.  What can you say about it?  It is a pretty artificial place.  No real reason for it to be here but some lines drawn on a map by some people when they were figuring out the state borders.  There is no natural reason for it to be here. No port, no river, no verdant valley.  It is only here for entertainment purposes, and at that they excel.  The gambling, the million different Cirque du Soleil shows, all the bands and comics that play here to halls that may or may not be full, are all part of the modern USA's equivalent of "bread and circuses".  Keep them fed, keep them entertained, keep them happy.  That is Vegas.

We haven't really been "in" that side of Vegas.  We did go to a Bob Dylan and Mark Knopfler concert (Dylan was terrible, he has lost his voice, couldn't understand a word, Knopfler was great, but only played one Dire Straits track), and we did stay at the Luxor with a 50 buck internet special (tired rooms but it did have a hot tub!) but apart from that we have been camping outside Vegas rock climbing.  And that IS something natural that Vegas has, because Red Rocks park is awash with moderate to difficult sandstone rock climbs.  And it is almost in town!

As usual when we go climbing we have met awesome people.  People we learn from, people we laugh with, people we share a beer with.  The crew from Fairbanks Alaska, Erika, Vaughn, Erin, Chad, and Brian as an älso ran" were top notch, and have pushed us to do some big multipitch climbs we might not have attempted on our own.  Cor has started leading traditional style climbs but having these guys push me to do some longer stuff has been great.  Getting up at 5:45 to hit the wall at dawn and then do a stack of pitches followed by an hour's descent by head torch in the deepening dusk is probably not what I would have elected to do, but it has been really great fun.  I have learned a lot about climbing and myself, and I know that I will be training next year and coming back stronger.

So now my fingers are a bit of a mess and we are going to take the next week off as we travel up to San Francisco for our flight to Honolulu, no doubt listening to American public radio (NPR) all the way.

A big shout out to James from the Okeanos Aggressor - he encouraged me to shoot photos in RAW format and see what I could do with them afterwards, well my photos are really looking great, so stay tuned for the best of our USA pics!

So until we see you, whether it is on the rock, on the road or at the bar, pura vida!

Sorry officer, I'm not from around here.

Well we have now had our first (and hopefully last) run-in with American law-enforcement.  We were looking for a missed turnoff to the local Walmart and I thought I was just "going with the flow".  Apparently not!  This whole miles vs kilometers thing is a little confusing, but really I was just thinking of something else when those lights started flashing in my rear view mirror.

The moment the cop got out of his car I thought, hands on the steering wheel, don't get shot, hands on the steering wheel, don't get shot, hands on the steering wheel, don't get shot etc etc.  It transpired I had been doing 50 in a 35 zone (!!) and when he asked for my licence and registration I feared the worst.  A whopping big fine to go with the cost of a replacement GPS that we soaked with water in Costa Rica (a fun story for another post) would really make our hire car costs this trip very expensive.

But he was great and all my fears were for naught.  When he found out we were in the USA for a month he advised us that all the streets in Vegas running one way were 35, and the others were 45, so to do 44 the whole time and we would be fine as no one would pull us over doing 44 in a 35.  50 on the other hand.....

So all in all a let off and a big sigh of relief.  Plus, no one got shot or appeared on COPS.

Respect my AUTHORITY!

Pura Vida!!

I am sure anyone who has done a blog post about Costa Rica has titled it like this, and there is a reason. Pura Vida means pure life, and is a real echo of our "good life" philosophy. The Costa Ricans hustle, but they know why they are working hard: so that they can enjoy pura vida with their families. It's a bit of a cliche but I think we too often lose sight of this.

Now this will be a pretty long post, contrary to the wishes of a few people who apparently lead busy lives, but there is sex in this post so stick with it and it will be worth it.

We left the dive boat, (PICTURES NOW UP!!) picked up a 4WD hire car and did some travelling around Costa Rica with James (who had been diving with us on the Wind Dancer and found himself at a loose end for a few days).

First stop was La Fortuna in the shadow of the active Arenal volcano, which only appeared in 1968, a reminder of how quickly the planet can change without any help from us. We did some zip-lining (essentially flying-foxes set in and up to 200m above the forest canopy) and on one got up to 70km per hour, and on another travelled the better part of 800m across a massive gorge. Adrenaline pumping stuff. We did some walks on the suspension bridges and we did some wildlife spotting at the Danaus Ecocentre. We saw sloths (with a little help from the people at the centre), poison dart frogs, caiman crocodiles and leaf cutter ants. Sloths were smaller than I was expecting. I was expecting large animals but they grow to weigh 7kg at the absolute maximum, which gives them the edge over their predators in that they can hang out on some pretty small branches. The three finger sloth looks stoned and happy, while the two fingered sloth looks permanently cranky. Upset about missing out on that extra finger maybe! That they could create this paradise Danaus in just 15 years is amazing to me and the effort they are still putting in to making it better yet is fantastic.


It's a sloth!

We also sampled the hot springs of the local ticos after getting wet on a forest walk, and as we soaked our troubles away in the 44 degree water we were treated to a lightning show as the storm that drenched us rolled over the volcano.

Arenal volcano puffing away

That night James put his dive instructor cred on show with one of the girls from Oregon we met at the hostel. Anyone who has met a dive instructor knows what I am talking about. That's right folks, our blog just got raunchy!

After some challenging driving uphill, over some very rough roads for a couple hours, we made our way to Monteverde, home of some of Costa Rica's most pristine cloud forest. We did some excellent bird watching with a local guide and saw toucans and the elusive three wattled bell bird, among oh so many others. The toucan eats eggs and the young of other birds! That's why they have those massive beaks. Freaky stuff eh?

Hummingbird

After Monteverde we dropped James off in the crazy San Jose (don't drive here - no street signs and suicidal drivers) and headed to the tourist trap of Jaco on the coast. Most Costa Ricans shrink in horror at this as Jaco is a gaudy tourist trap full of prostitutes, but we were destined for a week at School of the World to learn how to surf (me and Cor) and Spanish classes (Cor). Coreen was inspirational in her work at Spanish and was quickly my go-to translator, while I was learning my way in the waves, with hardly any prostitutes at all. Cor hurt her back so didn't surf after day 2, but thank goodness her back is starting to loosen up now. Not even my mad acupressure massage skills could help at the time.

I'm up!

What I learned surfing: you have to work to put yourself in the right place at the right time (do nothing and you catch 90% fewer waves); fear of getting dumped by a wave puts you towards the back of your board, which only makes it more likely your fears will come true as the wave catches you not the other way round, so man up and get forward; and relax, it's only water. Thank you Riccardo and Alonso!

After our week in Jaco we farewelled our Escuela mates, then we caught a ride, two chicken buses and a boat to swap the Pacific ocean for the Caribbean. We crossed the isthmus in just one day. Remarkable (both that we did it in a day AND that I used the word isthmus)!

Tortuguero wasn't the white sand Caribbean beach town we were expecting, more like a river shanty town with a few touristy afterthoughts scattered about. We did some canoe trips in the river
and saw howler monkeys, capuchin monkeys, spider monkeys, caiman crocodiles, Jesus Christ lizards (they run on water? Jesus Christ!!), and oh so many birds. The guide James recommended, Francisco Bonilla, was absolutely tops, and any good photos we have were down to his excellent work in positioning the canoe.

Jesus Christ lizard

But the real reason people come to Tortuguero is for the turtles that give the place its name. Last season it was estimated that 50,000 turtles nested on this 18 mile stretch of beach, mostly greens but

also leatherbacks, loggerheads, hawksbill and olive Ridleys. The black sand beach looks like the woods around Bastogne post World War 2, full of massive holes, and each night new tank-like tracks of turtles emerge from and return to the water. Some turtles will nest up to eight times in a single season, fertilising her eggs as she needs to from a little chamber where she stores the sperm from her last male she shagged. I'm pretty sure there has been a court ruling about this, it's definitely psycho ex-girlfriend behaviour.

And the biggest danger to her eggs once she has buried them in this war zone? Some other dopey turtle digging them up while making their own nest! Egg breakfasts were definitely on the menu for lots of the local wildlife.

One night we were on the beach being pelted with sand from a couple of nesting turtles as they covered their eggs, it was a real privilege to witness it such a special event. And then, on the morning we left for San Jose and our flight, we took a 4:30am (!) stroll down the beach, and were lucky enough to see a nest of green turtle hatchlings boil out of the sand and make a mad haphazard dash for the ocean. As I learned in surf school, sometimes being in the right place at the right time takes work! There were so many we didn't know where to look, and all we could do was give these little dudes the best possible chance by keeping the birds off them until they made the water.

Escape!

So that is it for now. It has been an amazing few weeks in Costa Rica, and now we are in the USA doing some rock climbing. So until next time, whether it is online, on the rock, beneath the waves or at the bar, Pura Vida baby!

Under the sea!

We are in an inflatable boat in the rain, and we are soaking wet. The seas are running to 3 metres and we lose sight of the only land for 500 miles as the wind blows whitecaps off the waves. I tell myself that I am not crazy, but after 20 minutes of this I don't believe me. We hit the water and are under the massive waves instantaneously.

Welcome to Cocos Island diving.

As we descend through the gloom we see lots of little fish swimming in the ripping current, which lets up a bit when we reach the bottom at 30 metres. A quick fin over the nearest ridge and there it is, the reason for all that surface insanity. Hammerhead sharks, stacked, packed and racked 10 to 15 deep swimming by almost within touching distance. There are countless sharks, and just when you think their numbers have no end they are gone, off into the blue. The majestic giants return in numbers 10 minutes later, this time covering the sun. All around there are curious one metre Almaco jacks (trevally), cruising yellowfin tuna and octopus in the rocks.

This is just a sample of our week in Cocos Island, Costa Rica. The diving was challenging and rewarding in equal measure. We have met and dived with legendary people, including a famous underwater photographer and someone we suspect may have featured on a cover somewhere. The photos won't do it justice, in large part due to the relatively poor visibility experienced at Cocos following the large earthquake off the coast a couple of weeks ago. In any case it will be a while before we get them sorted for posting. But the memories of the diving are crystal clear and don't need any Photoshopping.

And the sinuses? They worked just fine for the most part. A few dives where it took some time to equalise the pressure but in the end A-OK.

So Cor and I are now in the Arenal area of Costa Rica, drinking $4 cocktails in the shadow of an active volcano after a hard day of zip lines and hot springs, looking forward to a day of sloths and lava tomorrow.

Palya!