Travel - Above and Below Sea Level

On route to start my dive lessons.

The Philippines is a diver’s paradise; marine life here is as diverse as it is anywhere in the world and some of WWII’s largest navy battles have left behind incredible wreck diving. Since arriving here, I suspected I would find myself diving. This was despite convincing myself long ago that, if I had one fear, it was small underwater spaces; likely brought on by summers spent swimming around and under lobster boats, or climbing amongst and diving off automobile sized boulders at Barrios Beach.

Today though, possibly turned into probably when I accepted a colleagues offer to join him In Puerto Galera – one of the best places in the country to get a diving license. As the week passes I begin questioning the wisdom of my decision; I am less worried about something substantial happening and more worried that I will have a panic attack and force myself to abort. This nervousness is not a totally foreign feeling. I felt something similar two weeks ago while planning my first trip out of Manila; a feeling that a certain amount of unknown and perhaps undesirable was possible.

The weekend is now here though; at 8:30 in the morning I am walking down the pier to my waiting Bangka (A Filipino’s take on a boat – for the most part, a large canoe that is angled on the bottom instead of rounded, but has bamboo outriggers – the effectiveness of the outriggers I have questioned since hearing the statistics on ferry deaths in the Philippines).

Decked out in scuba gear on the way to the dive site with my German instructor and two shirtless, shoeless Filipino boat hands I find this all very James Bond. (Sean Connery of course). Learning I will actually enter the water via a backwards flip I decide perhaps Navy Seal is more appropriate than Bond.

It has taken some work to get here: a 5 hour drive from Manila, a study session from 2 until 4 in the morning after watching a world cup game at a bar in town, and a morning training in the pool. There were also some costs, financial as well as the foregone weekend of pool reading. The idea though is exciting, and I suppose this is another parallel of travel: any nervousness is complimented by excitement.

Putting myself at the mercy of fate and my own capacity to remain composed, I insert my breathing regulator and fall backwards into the water. Spinning through the water loaded with weights, wet suits, air lines and a tank, my reaction is to panic, ignore my instructor’s advice, spit out my regulator and thrust myself to the surface. I do what I have practiced though and gasp into the respirator. My panic stricken lungs are filled with cold dry oxygen.

It worked.

I can breathe.

I finish my barrel roll. and then. Down.

Descending the 30 feet to the bottom another sentiment common to travel strikes me: wow….

Many things stand behind this wow – being weightless, seeing fish that previously only existed in Disney movies or National Geographic Magazines, watching a Scuttle fish (like an octopus) jet by, or having a fish as large as a dinner plate, colored bright white, yellow, and blue steal a banana out of my hand that I am feeding to a school of fifty fish.

Being in this underwater Avatar like world, I recognize that not everyone will get to experience a place like this which is totally foreign to everything they’ve experienced in life. Not unlike the feeling one would get when travelling in a region on the other side of the world from their home.

Underwater I begin reciting the steps that I vaguely recall reading the night before.

Slow my breathe

Stop flailing my arms.

Keep away from the fire coral.

Do not rise too fast or your lungs will burst.

Pop your ears to prevent a pressure buildup in your sinus.

This overwhelming necessity to use all my mental resources to complete the task is like that felt when trying to navigate through a new, busy town to find a bus that leaves in under an hour, for example like I did in Baguio a few weeks back….

Check Guidebook – but hide it so no one notices how much of a tourist you are.

Check Wallet.

Check Cell Phone.

Look over shoulder.

Ask for directions.

Avoid traffic.

Turn down offer to buy something.

Don’t drink the water.

And this is travel at the best of times; things easily become worse when someone hassles you, or when it’s getting dark and you know the last bus leaves town in a matter of minutes.

And as I think of things getting out of hand, I’m whipped up in a current. Now I have to fight this horizontal pull on top of avoiding the coral below and the lung bursting potential above. My breath accelerates. As I take in air too quickly I begin to rise so I spit out my lungs and hold my breath only to recall that holding my breath is life threatening here. Something I normally take for granted I have to give all my concentration to completing. And my damn instructor looks so calm. I try to just float like him but find myself either rising up or falling to the sea floor.

And then, as quick as it starts the current stops. I’m weightless again. Like travel, like life, like mark twain said, of all the horrible things I’ve experienced in my life, most never actually happened. I’ve stopped hyperventilating. Scuba diving like travel, is a bit of hard work and discomfort, it is a bit intimidating, it is exciting, it gets out of control, but it is rewarding, it is eye opening, and if you stay calm and be careful things will be spectacular.

Philippines 2010 - First Photos

For the first month in the Philippines all I had was a disposable camera... bad idea.

Here are some of the shots that turned out:

http://picasaweb.google.com/Luke.DeCoste/Philippines2010#

Enjoy!

To live. You have to have faith.

Only after packing my bags and picking my route do I have time to realize that I am nervous. This will be my first trip outside the developed world since I left Tunisia 3 years ago and my first trip out of the expat friendly district of Makati since I arrived here 3 weeks ago.

As I leave Makati for the next district where I will find my bus, one thing is very clear: I’m not in Kansas anymore. The taxi driver affirms this by warning me to be careful of the people there and insisting he escort me to the ticket counter of the open walled bus station. The comfort he provides leaves as soon as he does.

Though the people at the station would probably go out of their way to help me, as the only foreigner I still feel vulnerable. I suspect many people there are wondering what the hell I am doing out of Makati? Learning that my bus won’t leave for four hours at 11pm doesn’t help matters. Perversely, though I am nervous, I am also glad to be finally getting a taste of the different.

Placing my back against a wall I tell myself that things will be okay. My faith erodes somewhat when the uniformed security guard goes off duty leaving me even more alone. My situation soon improves though when three fellow foreigners approach wearing enormous backpacks and speaking that distinctively North American English. Fresh graduates from Toronto they are three days into their first trip outside the western world. We decide to stick together at the bus station and as we navigated Vigan, a UNESCO site and the “finest surviving example of a Spanish colonial town”, and San Fernando, home of the Philippines surf culture. Only when we part 30 hours after meeting do I realize how much security they provided.

As I arrive in Baguio, the scene reminds me of India: so many people move so quickly past me and towards me on the sidewalk that I opt for the street instead; the buildings are dully painted including with pictures of Ronald MacDonald; and electrical wires are strewn everywhere. In the street little boys straighten cartons of cigarettes, women pick dead leaves off fruit, and young men cook chickens all in hopes of making a sale. Nobody, including taxi drivers, security guards, or other strangers can tell me where my bus station is; most seem not to know it even exists. Only after slipping through alleys so busy that I have to turn sideways to pass between jam packed jeeps and tables of fly swirled pig’s heads do I see the odd assortment of buses that is my escape from the city.

Amidst the noise of people retching, and the smell of same mixed with bus exhaust, the ride to Sagada is no more calming; each new hair pin brings a new chaotic scene of a car passing around a turn, or someone replacing a tire on one side of the road while a scooter parks on the other. I think about the remnants of rock slides, and baldness of bus tires, and the way the mountains must eat away at the brakes. I wonder how the young driver can stay aware for 8 hours, and how tired the turns will make his arms.

And then I tell myself again that things will be okay. Right then in the middle of this mountain route I have but no choice to tell myself this. Instead of worrying I enjoy the views of rice terraces harnessing mountains with gardens; and of women holding up their wares for sale to the bus windows at every stop. These same stops where I shoe flies from my bread before buying it and having faith that I can eat it. The same stops where the only water is probably unfiltered, but you have to have the faith to drink it all the same.

This same faith sees me trusting two 13 year old boys to take me on a tour of ancient burial caves containing hundred of coffins in Sagada. This same belief that it will be okay brings me to climb with other locals to the roof of an otherwise full WWII era jeep to get some of the most amazing mountain views I’ve ever seen (and where I, appropriate to the conversation, meet a women who after 11 months living in the mountains in Besao, a town of 1000, will soon return to America to become a priest).

In fact it was this same faith that saw me leave Makati in the first place to meet many fine strangers, experience very different towns, and see jaw dropping views. Faith isn’t unique to travelling in the developing world or travel at all. It helps us get through life in general; faith that she is the one, that the kids will be okay at daycare, to buy that house, or to take that new job. It is this faith that make life interesting, if not worthwhile.