The South Pacific

I've just gotten back from 6 weeks diving and sailing and exploring in Papua New Guinea. Don't get me wrong, short dive trips are great, but spending an extended period of time in a country like PNG gives you a chance to really acclimate -- acclimate to the climate, to the pace, to the culture. I even had begun to pick up some Pidgin although the locals were always quite entertained by my attempt to speak it, so perhaps I hadn't picked up as much as I hoped.

The diving was as expected: simply incredible. The diving was very varied and included great World War II wrecks, gorgeous hard coral ridges, bommies, and walls, fish dives like I have never seen before, amazing shark diving, sheer magnificent walls, and incredible muck dives with fascinating creatures. I loved being on the small sailboat; I didn't mind the lack of a few of the comforts of some of the larger boats because the small boat (and especially with just a few divers) gave us a flexibility and accessibility that you just don't find on a larger boat. And, even though we didn't sail very much, the few days we did have great wind provided some awesome sailing.

The most truly incredible aspect of the diving was the exploratory stuff. We would drive over something and say, "That looks interesting." Next thing you know, the captain would turn the boat around, anchor, and we'd be diving something nobody had ever dived before. Our hit rate for finding great spots was quite impressive with two sites in particular for which no words would be adequate to describe them. I was gone just too long to adequately write up a true trip report -- well, I could but then the trip report would be far too long.

I think a friend of mine summed it up best when he commented after I had raved about this trip to PNG and told him about the plans for my next one. He said, "So, I guess you think there's no finer diving the world." Understatement. The trip was unique is many ways, but one in particular was this was the first time I had brought an underwater camera of my own. I've resisted buying one for a number of reasons -- partly due to the weight / space restrictions of luggage (and for those of you who have traveled with me know that I get a little carried away when it comes to redundant gear). And, it's also partly due to the fact that I feel my diving really changes when I have a camera in my hand. I stop being part of the environment and start being a "subject hunter."

My friend Ross said something that really struck me. We came up from a dive where we had seen an absolutely beautiful purple anemone. Ross had videotaped it as I marveled at it. When we got back on the boat and watched the raw footage of the dive, Ross was surprised at the color of the anemone - his viewfinder is only black-and-white. Well, I don't want to see my dives through a viewfinder. It diminishes the total experience for me. And, it puts a wall between me and the beauty that I dive to see. I swore to myself that I wouldn't become obsessed with taking pictures. I think I did a good job striking a balance: in 35 dive days, I took about 30 rolls of film, and I didn't take my camera on most of the great wall dives nor on any of the deep stuff we did

The underwater highlight has to be a series of dives sites we did on the far side of Lavengai. The first was a sight called Coral Gardens which is probably the nicest and most varied hard coral dive I have ever done. I dove it 4 times over 2 days, each time covering a different area. I believe this is the northern most point of Lavengai. Afterwards, we rounded the corner of Lavengai to do some exploratory wall diving. Alun, the boat captain, would drive over areas looking for walls. We found this incredible one, named Elizabeth's Reef (or Two-Tongued Reef). As you dropped down to about 90 feet, there was this tongue or ridge that extended down and out. We swam down along the tongue with hordes of grey reef sharks. The tongue was about 15 feet wide at its narrowest point. At about 150 feet, the tongue abruptly ended dropping vertically down to maybe 230 feet in the sand with huge beautiful soft corals lining some of the deeper depths. We came back up and continued swimming along the wall. Just as the wall ended, there was another tongue, much shallower and smaller. We swam out to the edge of it and simply marveled at the incredible abundance of fish. We swam back to the wall which thankfully came right up to 10 feet so as to provide lots of entertainment during a long safety stop.

This site was so incredible that we changed our plans to stay over so that we could dive this site again, this time as the first dive of the day. I think the most amazing thing about it was coming back up from the deep ridge -- you could look up the entire ridge as well as see the dramatic wall. It was simply breathtaking. After doing this dive again the next morning, we proceeded to a spot the captain had found earlier. He had spotted some small caves along a wall a few miles away. We dove them, but quite honestly it was anti-climatic after having done that incredible wall. I had watched the captain anchor in this little shallow area next to the caves, and I had seen the depth finder and saw that there was another impressive wall right near the caves we were diving. We went to dive this wall, but we needed to swim over what was basically a 3 foot deep coral rubble pile. Linda, Steve, and Elizabeth were all saying to me as we swam over, "this spot is a dud, let's get out and have Alun move the boat." I was sure I had seen what I knew would be an impressive drop, so I pushed the group to go just a little bit further. Eventually, we hit the edge of this wall. Words cannot ever adequately describe this wall. We descended to about 60 feet and swam for a few minutes. All of a sudden an incredible view came into sight. Beneath us at least by 100 feet or so was the top of a bowl that opened up heading out and even deeper. The afternoon sun lit it up so that you could see at least a few hundred feet down. Elizabeth made a signal to me which loosely translated was, "I would trade my first born to not have a serious nitrogen load right now so I could go down to see the bowl." The instant we got back on the boat, we told the captain that we would be diving this site again with a clean nitrogen load the next morning. The next morning with tanks filled to 3300 psi, pony bottles filled to the brim, we set off to find the bowl again. We planned to swim along at 60 feet until we spotted the bowl or we hit the 5 minute mark of the dive. (If you're going deep on a single tank, you've got to get down and back up if you want to have enough air for a long deco / safety stop.) Normally, I'm pretty good at following the dive plan, but when we got down to around 60, I realized that with the sun now coming from the east rather than the southwest, then bowl would not be nearly as lit up as it had been the previous afternoon. I dropped to about 105 to make sure I could spot it. Right at the 5 minute mark, I headed down immediately spotting the bowl. I hit the edge of the bowl and stopped right over the ledge. As I marveled at the sight, I saw that it opened up into a second bowl even deeper than the first. I never saw her pass me, but Elizabeth tells me that she swam right over me as I stopped over the edge of the first bowl. I was simply overwhelmed with the beauty of the sharks and soft corals down along the edge of the bowl. The view up with the sun streaming down over the edge of the wall and then the ridge of the bowl was mind-blowing. The view down was equally incredible. I met back up with Steve and Elizabeth at around 70 feet, and again we putted around for quite a long time in the shallows doing an extra long safety stop. Other highlights include visiting a village making sago (a starchy flour-like substance made from the sago palm tree), playing volleyball with some locals, diving some World War II wrecks including a Japanese midget sub and torpedo bomber, going on a nighttime crocodile hunt through the mangroves and up some of the small rivers in New Ireland (only after the guide taking us promised we would only be looking and not shooting any crocs), finding a very cooperative stone fish which let me shoot an entire roll of film of it, playing with a turtle who didn't seem to mind people at all, watching dolphins ride the double bow wave of the catamaran, playing scopa and having afternoon munchies and solo with good friends out on the trampoline of the boat, taking the dingy up into the rivers of Lavengai to do some black bass fishing to name just a few. People constantly ask me to compare this trip to previous Pacific trips. It's like comparing apples to oranges -- the diving was very different, the boat very different, the fact that I stayed in one place for the entire time was different. However, of all the differences, the largest one was completely within me. Not that this trip was any less spectacular than previous ones, but especially on last year's PNG trip, I was on complete sensory overload. As Ross and Elizabeth can attest, my most common phrase was, "Oh my god." I walked around with my mouth opened in utter disbelief at the diving and at what I perceived to be such as vastly different culture. There's no doubt that the culture there is very different from our own, but since it was less new to me on this trip, I was more able to see beyond the differences to the similarities with my own. I met people concerned about the state of their environment, villages fighting timber companies to prevent the deforestation of their lands, people protecting their reefs from foreign fishing boats indiscriminately catching anything and everything in their path. I met girls who didn't want to get married since then they would have to do all the cooking and cleaning for the family. I met fathers who adored their little girls and took their little boys out fishing. I met people who even though by our standard of living were so incredibly poor, they freely and without thought to what they could get in return showered us with gifts of fruit and vegetables, welcomed us into their villages and homes, and shared with us their very way of life. I'm already counting the days to my next PNG trip.