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| Two Weeks in Chuuk by Alithea Nunes (January 25, 2007) |
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It was the sixth time I woke up that morning but this time I jumped out of bed at 6am. After a year and half of penny counting and growing anticipation John and I were on our way to dive in wreck heaven - and we had a hell of a LONG way to go to get there. We ended up on an earlier flight to Seattle which was a grand stroke of luck since we landed at the wrong terminal. However, we knew we were in the States when we ordered an omelette for breakfast and had so much greasy cheese on top that we couldn't actually find the egg! Flying a beautiful Airbus A330 the 5513 miles to Tokyo was a fantastic experience, with on demand movies, loads of room, menu choices (we both opted for rotisserie chicken with red skin potatoes and green beans... yum!) and hot towels. No, we weren't in first class! Taking off in a dark grey downpour was a bit nerve racking for me but made me even more excited to see paradise. After watching three movies it was time, once again for breakfast, at 10pm Vancouver time. When we arrived in Tokyo there was no place for us to disembark so they let us out in a cargo hangar and bused us to Terminal 1 where we had to go through Japan's security system, quite simply a pleasure. Young girls in uniform (somewhat resembling girl guides but without the cookies) who were extremely friendly and polite, a welcome change from some of the other customer service we'd received on the way. We had four hours to kill in Tokyo and we loved it. Little boutiques with everything you can imagine, Totoro was everywhere, cartoon directions to EVERYTHING and cheap beer that you can drink anywhere in the airport. I especially loved the vending machines (no, not the kind you are thinking about...) the ones with aluminum Coke cans in the shape of the glass bottles.  Totoro is everywhere We both slept VERY well on the plane to Guam and arrived at one o'clock in the morning Guam time. By now I had lost track of what time it was in Vancouver, and why should I care since we were officially in PARADISE! We quickly boarded a shuttle to the Oceanview hotel (not the five-star Oceanview Outrigger as we had originally thought.) Although it was the middle of the night, it was incredibly hot and muggy. However that didn't keep us from sleeping like logs until 11 the next morning. Our day in Guam was wonderful and we soon discovered it is a place we would like to return to. Amazing diving, tropical beaches, the world's longest tunnel aquarium and fruity drinks with umbrellas! The aquarium was especially stunning, with dozens of types of fish, nurse sharks, leopard sharks, guitar sharks, turtles, rays etc. Of course I would prefer to see all of these in the wild but it was still a beautiful gallery.  Aquarium complete with sharks, rays, turtles and a plane wreck  Housekeeping at the aquarium  Hanging out at the beach Once we headed back to the airport we realized one of the main attractions of Guam - thousands upon thousands of shoppers mainly coming in from Asia to take advantage of the duty free shopping in this US territory. The airport was insanely busy but we were blessed once again and were "randomly" selected for secondary screening which meant we got to take a seat, kick off our shoes, have our bags inspected, skip the hectic line and get through security MUCH faster... phew! 7:40pm was our departure time from Guam to take our last flight to Chuuk Lagoon. Almost there, except... As we are boarding the flight we are asked for our immigration Visas. WHAT?! My stomach was in my throat and my jaw was on the floor. We explained that we were told no VISA was required and the airline clerk seemed to think differently until he took a second look at our passports and saw we were not from Australia. Maybe John's accent threw him off! Despite all this we were still the first to board. At 9:30pm we landed in Chuuk! The airport was tiny and the terminal was open air which was a bit of a relief - without any air-conditioning the place would have been stifling. Apparently the weekly Sunday flights serve as a popular local entertainment. The barbed wire fences lined with Chuukese blasting the local flavour through their car stereos and consuming mass quantities of prohibited alcohol. As we waited for each bag to be unloaded by hand into the terminal those around us were talking about how lucky they were that their luggage arrived. Apparently if you don't pack your stuff in cardboard boxes with a local's name on it the chances of your stuff arriving is about 50/50. And so we waited. Slowly the airport cleared and we were about two out of ten left waiting. Finally one of our bags showed up. And we continued waiting. I was almost in a state of full blown panic about our $10,000 dollars worth of equipment lost somewhere in Micronesia when our final two bags were offloaded. What a relief! Once we got through customs (a couple guys behind a collapsible table) we were greeted by two locals holding a handwritten sign "SS Thorfinn". I was a little skeptical as we loaded into a beaten up van whose doors couldn't close and started slowly bumping away from the relative safety of the airport. But considering our limited options I could only hope for the best. We soon arrived to a broken cement pier and waited. Apparently, the guys who picked us up had unsuccessfully tried to contact Thorfinn to arrange our pick-up. I was still a little suspicious as we stood in the dark with our pricy luggage, but after about ten minutes of waiting a skiff came zooming out of the darkness. We quickly loaded our luggage and were heading towards a line of dazzling lights bouncing off the water - the SS Thorfinn!  SS Thorfinn liveaboard As we boarded, the crew did all the hard work unloading our bags, which they continued to do over the next seven days. We made our way up to the common room where we were united with the other five of our group of seven. They had traveled to Chuuk via Hawaii. It was late and the 36 hours of travel were wearing on all of us so we were less than impressed to have to sit for a mandatory briefing before we could lay our heads down to dream of the diving to come. But we learned about how the SS Thorfinn operated and what our diving days would look like, which was enough to keep me awake. After meeting Captain Lance Higgs and the other staff, we found our cabin which had a bunk bed with a double on the bottom, our own sink, a TV that our video camera could hook up to and loads of room for all of our gear. It was perfect for us and we quickly made ourselves at home and crawled into bed for a much needed night's sleep. I look back on the next seven days aboard the SS Thorfinn and absolutely everything about how the days above and below the water played out was dream. Every morning, we would wake up and dash into the common room to find what dives the day would bring. Day one was I-169, Unkai Maru and Gosei Maru. Day two was Hoki Maru and Fujikawa Maru. Day three was Amagisan Maru, Kansho Maru and Hoyo Maru. Day four was Yamagiri Maru and Fujikawa Maru again. Day five was San Fransisco Maru and Kikukawa Maru, Day six was Aikoku Maru, Shinkoku Maru and a Betty Bomber. Our last dive with SS Thorfinn on day seven was the Heian Maru. I will tell you about these dream dives in a minute... Between dives we had delicious local cuisine cooked by a chef who had his (or her?) own unique flair... Enough said. Then we always spent a good solid couple hours each day logging our dives so as to preserve the memories we made in this paradise. On top of these luxuries, we never once touched our tanks unless we were getting ready to slip into the lagoon - the dive staff never ceased to go above and beyond to take care of our equipment from filling our doubles and deco bottles with our required gas blends (as a side note, we were told the only way to dive trimix in Chuuk is to bring your own helium, so needless to say we were diving air or nitrox), to making sure our cameras were rinsed between dives. Without a doubt the best service I have had with any dive operation to date! And let me just clarify what it meant to fill our doubles - the skiffs tied up next to the SS Thorfinn and in order to board her it was required to climb a six foot vertical ladder. They lifted and lowered our doubles and deco bottles two or three times a day and always had a huge smile while doing it. There was true camaraderie amongst this dive staff. All of them are locals who grew up with these wrecks and they were amongst the lucky few to be able to earn an income and support their families living on the islands. These men (local women are not allowed to dive - I will get into that a bit more later) lived aboard the Thorfinn and would literally do two to five dives a day for weeks at a time simply because that is what it takes. If they didn't, any number of locals would be jumping at the bit for the job. Jobs are definitely few and far between in the lagoon. Okay, so back to the diving. Although my whole point of writing this is to put Chuuk into words, I really don't think I can possibly do it justice. So bear in mind that as you read some of my favourite log entries, they are only going to give you a taste. If you love being in a tropical paradise with an intriguing history, warm clear water that is 86 F at 200 feet to the surface, and love wrecks even half as much as I do, then all I can say is you MUST go to Chuuk!
Each and every dive gave us an insight into Operation Hailstorm and ultimately my love for shipwrecks grew stronger every time we splashed into the warm lagoon and slipped beneath the surface into heaven. After an absolutely unforgettable week of diving, it was all too soon before it was time to disembark from the SS Thorfinn. So as a last hurrah, Lance hosted a BBQ on the back deck with music, drinks and dancing. A great way to end our first week in Chuuk and send off the other five in our group who were sadly on their way home. Luckily, John and I had one more dive before it was time to make our way to Blue Lagoon Dive Resort, and what a dive it was...
After taking our doubles apart and packing up, we boarded the skiff one final time and made our way to shore. I think we were both liking the idea of land - we could stretch our legs and become a bit more invisible when we wanted to reflect on our experiences. We could immediately see the difference between the beautiful grounds of the resort (guarded 24/7 by security) and the rest of the island. The little piece of land that the Blue Lagoon Resort sat on was well taken care of with manicured lawns, beautiful palms and little white beaches, while the rest of the island Weno still resembled a war torn civilization wrought with poverty, starvation and violence. This stark contrast was depressing, but John and I took what little solace we could from the fact that the SCUBA industry is one of the only ones in the lagoon and we knew the money we were spending (and we spent A LOT) was all going to the locals trying to survive.  Blue Lagoon Resort In true diver style, our first stop was the dive shop after we had checked in. This is not any dive shop - it is actually owned by the three sons of Kimiuo Aisek. He is the founder the resort and is accredited with locating many of the wrecks in the lagoon. He left the shop to them when he passed away in 2001 and these three men grew up with these ships. The dive shop was full of what us tourists love - t-shirts, jackets, sweatshirts, bags and for us Canadians we especially loved the toques! After we found those special pieces of memorabilia, we made our way to the bar. This was no ordinary bar, this was a bar in the middle of the Pacific Ocean! We climbed up on a stool, soaked in the warm breezes blowing in off the lagoon and stared at the stars. T-shirts and flags surrounded us, all signed by the divers who sat in these stools before us - definitely some entertaining reading. As we sipped our coconut rum we chatted with our bartender and soon learned that she was one of three daughters of Kimiuo Aisek. I was intrigued and wanted to learn about what it was like growing up with her father, who not only lived and breathed these historical shipwrecks, but was also an eyewitness survivor of Operation Hailstorm. I wanted to soak in all her memories and knowledge. As a woman, I was particularly interested in what seemed to be fairly traditional roles her sisters and brothers had taken at Blue Lagoon; the daughters ran the resort and the sons ran the diving operation. I asked her if she was a diver and as she looked at her feet she sheepishly replied that no she wasn't, so I probed more. Did she want to be a diver? To this question she opened up a little and said that she would love to dive but her brothers would never let her. On the surface this may not seem all that unusual; I am sure every diver out there has someone in their life who wishes they could stop us from descending into the blue and keep us safe and sound above water. But she wasn't allowed to dive for a very different reason - it was because women in Chuuk are not allowed to expose the shape of their legs, even to their family members, so the fact that she would need to be in a wetsuit meant diving is not an option. Although I completely respect the cultures of the people I go to visit, it broke my heart that this woman expressed her desire to go see what it was her father loved so much but her culture's values kept her from that. I did offer to make her a neoprene skirt and teach her to dive (to which I got a chuckle,) but alas, she would never be able to experience the piece of heaven that is in her backyard and the source of her family's livelihood. It definitely makes me thankful for what I have and liberties my culture allows me.  John at the resort After enough coconut rum to sink a battleship (I know... bad joke), we made our way back to our air-conditioned room and slept like babies again. The next afternoon we sauntered over to the dive shop so we could put our twins together and were greeted by the wonderful dive staff that was more than happy to open up some single tanks for us and help with the delicate operation of twinning them together. However, this is when things started to get interesting; the valves were being taken off tank after tank and each one was destroyed in the process. John and I glanced at each other as we both thought, "these tanks have never been opened before!!!" And so it continued until finally four tanks of similar size and diameter were found. Now I must set the scene before I continue. The previous happenings did not occur in the rental room of a dive shop as you might have envisioned, instead we were out behind the fill station and beside the docks. As time went on, dozens of local fisherman were returning from their hard day's pull. With all the excitement of trying to find our four special tanks, we started to draw a crowd, and when the time came to attach our manifolds, there were enough people to build a battleship, never mind a couple pair of twins! Before I knew it, there were 20 people all with their hands on my precious hunk of metal and I was being squeezed out of the crowd. And to top it off, each had their own unique idea of how this puzzle was supposed to fit together. I saw flashes of the week's diving adventures sinking, and fast. In my most "I am trying to be polite but extremely serious voice," I shouted "Stop!" And luckily got the reaction I wanted. I think my stress bridged the language gap. All hands dropped off the equipment. Of course, there were some hurt faces in the crowd that I felt terrible for, but at least my heart rate started to return to normal. So at that, John and I were happily left to our own devices and soon were ready to splash in. But we would have to wait one more sleep. The second week was much like the first - dive, eat, log, sleep, dive, eat, log, sleep. We had another amazing dive guide, another local who I would guess was in his 50's, but that could have been the tropical sun and smoking doing its damage. On the wrecks that we had visited during our stay on the Thorfinn, he was happy to let us do our own thing which was a great opportunity for John and I to crawl around inside to our hearts' content. However, his lifelong career of diving in Chuuk meant he had an immense amount of knowledge of these wrecks and when we opted for a divemaster, he brought us deep inside to areas that we never would have seen otherwise. And just like our divemaster on the Thorfinn, he did the same dives as us on a single tank of air (well, almost) and our twins and deco bottles seemed rather cumbersome, but we did manage a bit more bottom time and had a nice big security blanket. I wouldn't do it any other way. One night as we were sitting atop our favourite stoop at the bar, we were once again asked by the security staff if we would like to purchase a Chuuk license plate. These were also available in the gift store and although they didn't really appeal to John or I (we preferred the books and clothes) a couple of drinks later we gave in. Ten minutes later, the security guy returned and asked the bartender for a bag, which I thought we didn't really need since our room was a short stumble away, but nonetheless the gesture was appreciated. We exchanged this tourist trap collectable for $15 cash and carried on sipping our coconut rum. When we decided to check out our new prize, we glanced into the bag then quickly closed it again in a state of shock. It was a real Chuuk license plate that the guy - yes, the security guard - had just stole off some local's car! We couldn't believe it and were so embarrassed by our foolishness. Uncertain of what we should do at first, we eventually came to the conclusion that it would be best to leave it in our room when our time came to leave. We knew what the punishment was for taking items off the wrecks and were not prepared to find out what it was for this inadvertent crime. So, warning to all of you who like to bring home a piece of memorabilia from the places you travel - stay away from the license plates! In between dives, we had the incredible opportunity to tour Dublon. This is a very historically significant island in Chuuk and still bears the scars of its very sad and tragic story. After Operation Hailstorm occurred, the US troops isolated all the Japanese navy and merchant marine personnel on this island - more than 30,000 of them. Due to the American mindset of the time, these men were treated inhumanely, starving to death in appalling conditions while they waited for the US to repatriate them to Japan. The island is now one of the more populated islands in Chuuk, but it certainly is not very far removed from WWII - the concrete bunkers now serve as shelter for the many Chuukese on the island, the airplane base once operated as a primary school (until the money ran out), and across the dirt road from the church are the remnants of the Japanese Military Hospital which is slowly being retaken by the jungle. You can feel the spirits of those who suffered while wandering amongst these ruins. John and I brought stickers and soap from Canada with us to give to the children. We asked the parents of a couple small boys if they would mind the gifts we had brought and with joy they accepted. As we boarded the skiff to make out way back to Weno, we watched these two little boys glowing in their excitement under the shade of a tree as they opened their packages and covered themselves with colorful fish stickers.  Dublon Island hospital remains As Chuuk started to feel more and more like home (and boy do we wish Micronesia was our home!) it became closer and closer to our departure. As we completed our last couple dives and started to pack up our stuff, we were happy to notice that the dozen or so cats and kittens we had been feeding all week had developed little bellies! We would have loved to have taken them home with us, but knew we would be disowned by the one waiting for us there.
Our trip back was pleasant and uneventful; seemingly a lot quicker since we passed through the date line in the opposite direction. In fact I think we landed around the same time we departed! As luck was on our side, we were once again "randomly" selected for secondary screening! As we made our way back to chilly Vancouver, I started to write this story, and I thought about how Chuuk is always said to be a once in a lifetime experience... I certainly hope not!!! A little video we made of the Chuuk fishies from over 11 hours of footage we shot... Resources Blue Lagoon Resort SS Thorfinn Liveaboard |
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