Etape 9 - Liveaboard in Divers' Mecca, Southern Archipelago of Palau

Ocean Hunter I liveaboard trip on Oct 23-28, 2006

What a week. Our golden rule was 5 dives, 4 meals, 3 naps, 2 beers and 1 shower a day. It all started that way. The Ocean Hunter 1 was a small but cosy liveaboard vessel with a crew of 3 - Siksek the Captain (and dive guide), Troy the Dive Master and Cheettra the Master Chef - and 5 clients onboard - Thomas and Christian from Switzerland/Germany, Brad and Judith from Shanghai (originally from America), and myself. The boat had 3 cabins with bathrooms, dining area, covered upper deck, forward deck and aft dive platform. Not a huge space but all what one needs, well designed and well maintained.

I was very lucky to end up with the four fellows - Brad and Judith had been in Palau a year ago but then had not been able to do a liveaboard. However they had pretty good idea about the area and were well equipped for underwater photography. Thomas was on a three-week holiday specifically in Palau and Yap. Little bit like me he had dreamed about coming to this divers' paradise and decided to make his dream real. He will be following me to Yap and staying there after I will be gone back to the Philippines. He has also been probably the most dive maniac, along with Brad, during the course of this week. Christian has only 12 days vacation in Palau and he has been determined to make most out of it. From here he is continuing to Shanghai to meet his friend there..

During the week I found out that both Thomas and Christian were pretty much similar 'free souls' as me. Wanting to see world, find own treasures, test own limits and maybe live without worrying about tomorrow. Sun always rises from east and sets in west. High tide and low tide keep water coming and going. Under surface everything is focused on survival, today. In the past days I have read a very nice book called Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. It tells about a young sheppard boy travelling from Andalucia through Sahara to the pyramids to find a treasure of his life. We all look for a treasure, but most of never find it as we do not open our eyes and really want to find it. Coelho put it nicely that

"...no one can escape his heart. Because of that it is better to listen to what it has to say as only then one can avoid unexpected turmoils. They continued their journey and the boy listened to his heart. He learnt its ugly tricks and finally accepted it as it was. At that moment he no longer felt fearful and longing back to the oasis, and in one day his heart told him being happy. 'I may sometimes complain', his heart said, 'but it is because I am human heart and human hearts are like that. People are afraid of making their big dreams real because they feel that they have not deserved those dreams or that they will not be capable of making them real. We hearts are afraid when we think about beloved ones that leave without ever returning, or moments that could be happy but they are not, or treasures that could be found but are left forever hidden in sands. Because when the worst occurs, we suffer enormous pain.' 'My heart is full of suffering', boy told to alchemist in some evening when they were watching moon in the sky. 'Tell to your heart that fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself and that no heart feels pain when it searches its dream because every moment of the search is meeting god and the eternity."

For me this round the world trip is making my dreams real. What is the point in working your ass off if it does not help you to make your dreams real? Coming back to my original topic of OH1. We left Koror on Monday morning that headed to Central ROck Islands for our first dive at the Helmet Wreck. The wreck was a Japanese cargo vessel from WW2 and it was sunk in the middle of pristine labyrinth of small limestone islands that are covered with dense tropical jungle. The dive was a nice 'check dive' for the week. Not too difficult but still interesting. We were even diving inside the boat's cargo bay exploring old aircraft engines, army helmets and anti-aircraft ammunition.. From there we headed to the mouth of German Channel in Southern Rock Islands. In the beginning of the 20^th century Palau was a German colony and during that time German engineers blasted a narrow channel through the coral reefs in the southern archipelago. Today that channel is a boon for dive operators as it allows boats to transit from reef-surrounded rock islands to the Philippines Sea and head either south to Peleliu (Island) State (of Federal State of Palau) or north towards world-famous dive sites of Blue Corner, Blue Hole and others. We moored our boat to the lagoon side of the Channel and used our dinghy (or chase boat or zodiac whatever you want to call it) to get to the nearby dive sites. We did dive in the German Channel's outer entrance for the afternoon dive as well as night dive. The site has a manta cleaning station but unfortunately tides were not in our favor and we had to wait later to see a majestic manta ray. Between every dive our chef fed us with all sorts of absolutely delicious food and consequently my little wish of losing kilos has been a distant dream.. ;) Sunsets here in the paradise cannot be described. They are just breath-taking. I have sat on the deck watching sun disappering into the horizon and sky turning in multitudes of colors - deep red, orange, yellow, shades of blue, purple, pink and so on. In the 'blue moment' suddenly nearby rock islands get deep green color and reflection from green turquoise lagoon water makes me wonder why not to stay here longer?!

Day 2 was a killer one. Very unfortunate and fortunate at the same time. We dove at Turtle Cove, West Ngemelis Wall, Barnum Wall, Blue Corner and finished with night dive at Big Drop-Off (Ngemelis Wall). 4 hours and 40 mins of bottom time within 14 hours with max depth of 27.4 meters. Nitrox (32 or 33%) kept me away from decompression problems. However, I had remnants of cold from my time in India and that cold stroke back in the form of ear pressure equalisation problems. Little red pills ;) brought by Brad and Judith helped to keep sinuses open but I knew that sooner or later I will have a real problem with my left ear. Not a single dive site was a bad one. This day confirmed me that Palau's reputation as divers' mecca is not unfounded. At the Blue Corner we were witnessing a real boullabaisse, fish soup, as there was probably the whole ocean's food chain present. Small fishes were eating plankton, bigger fish those small fish, big fish those fishes, and sharks and barracudas in the end of the food chain as the ultimate predators. Using reef hooks we were positioned at 20 meters in the edge of a plain vertical drop-off to deep blue (a few hundred meters at least). In front of us, just a few meters away, schools of smaller and bigger fishes were doing their acrobatics and at least 30 blacktip and whitetip sharks were roaming around. Those predators were silently passing by our noses within two meters and it was really underwater photographer's dream come true. Sharks left us on our own as there were more than enough fish to eat. Gigantic Napolean Wrasses were eating nearby hard corals and upon our arrival came to greet us. I could write a book about other dive sites but I prefer to list most prominent findings: stonefishes, turtles, lionfishes, pufferfishes, scorpionfishes, leopard sharks, tunas, barracudas, nocturnal firefishes, nudi branches, lobsters, shrimps, pipefishes, octopuses, cuttlefishes, and countless varieties of soft and hard corals, incredible sea fans et cetera. Night dives at walls (drop-offs) were awesome with all the corals in bright colors when pointing a diving torch (lamp) towards them.

Now I mentioned that day 2 was a disaster as well. I had obviously made some sort of mistake when preparing my camera's diving case in the previous night. At turtle cove as I was descending to a coral cave's entrance my ear did not want to get equalised and I had to abort my descend. With hindsight, my body was telling me to return to surface and get back to the boat. However I did not want to leave that fabulous dive site and decided to continue at around 5 meters following the edge of the drop-off and thereby following my buddies diving along the wall below. I saw some nice coral fishes and a reef shark, stonefish and some other fellows. I was busy photographing them when I realised that my ear had autoequalised and that I could not descend to join the others. So happily I began descending towards 10 meters that was half way to my buddies. It was then when I realized that water was condensating to the inner walls of my camera's dive case and to my horror I realised that the o-ring holding the water pressure began leaking salt water into the case. With seconds to make decisions I decided to ascend to ease the pressure and maybe buy some time for the camera. However I realised that I cannot go straight to the surface but I have to make a 3-minute safety stop at 5 meters. Sh*t, it meant that the camera would be most likely flooded and destroyed. However, my health was far more important than a camera so that I stopped at 5 meters, holding the camera as high up as possible. The second decision I had to make was which way to hold the case – i.e. leaning left, right, back or front. There was already about half a deciliter of salt water inside the casing so that decision pretty much determined what do I want to save in the casing. My decision was to save the memory card so I leaned the casing on left. That meant that water got into the lens and caused the camera to short-circuit. However when I got to the boat and opened the casing I found that the memory card and battery were indeed dry and intact. Had I been smart I should have tilted the casing front side down to let the water remain in lens's extended zoom area.

Ok, so sh*t happened and what then? I cleaned the camera and let it dry for 36 hours in dry air-conditioned room. It was probably not the best idea either but I did not occur to me (or my buddies) that in such situation one should put the camera into black plastic bag and keep it in direct sunlight to make it as hot as possible to dry the device and force salt into crystals that could be cleaned afterwards, inshallah. Now it was impossible to open the camera so in the evening of Day 3 I decided to take a risk and test the device to see whether I can salvage something. Christian had brought an old laptop with him and I had a USB connection cable with me. So I hooked the unit to Christian's laptop, inserted the battery and put in another small memory card for testing. To our big surprise the camera switched on and was recognised by the laptop. Wow, miracles do happen! :) I switched the memory cards and the other one worked perfectly and we were able to download all photos to the laptop. Great, 10 points for data transfer but what about the camera itself? Disconnecting it from the USB cable switched the camera mode on then I became clear that some damage had occurred. The camera would not shut off without removing the battery and LCD display was almost dead, only a faint backlight was left barely enabling adjustments of settings. I took a few photos and flash and shutter were working perfectly despite of the salt water! Ten points to Sony for durability!

So my little depression of losing valuable camera and possibility to take photos in Yap and the Philippines faded and I was so happy to see the camera still operational, albeit with some limitations.. I could not care less, the most important thing is that it still works despite of all odds! Now otherwise I have been very fortunate as well. Both Christian and Brad have professional cameras with underwater casing and they have been kind of share all their shots with me. :) So I learnt a great deal about the disaster which in the end turn out not to be the worst of possible alternatives. I will continue doing underwater photography but with a different eye of minute details that can make or break things. I had left a tiny salt crystal between the casing and its o-ring in the first evening and that made the different at a hostile environment where pressure to objects is more than twice of normal surface level air pressure.

You were reading earlier about the fishes etc I saw here in Palau. Now one of them was missing, in purpose. Guess which one? MANTA RAY, of course! On my 15th dive in Palau, on Oct 26th at 4:30 pm, I was back at the German Channel's entrance to the Philippines Sea. We were sitting in the sand bottom near the manta cleaning station, waiting the creatures to arrive. Current was out flowing and our dive guide decided to swim around the cleaning station to see whether there is something on the other side of the rock formation. Meanwhile we were playing cards and taking group photos (you may wonder how in underwater, well just come and dive with me..;). I was getting really bored and wrote on my drawing board "Where're the f*ckin mantas?" to our dive master. His answer was as polite "on holiday in Yap!" ... ok, then I asked him to "arrange them an express import, now!" ... well, we asked us to leave the sand bottom and follow him, maybe we could find them in deep blue. It was only a few minutes later when we had crossed the cleaning station that I turned around to look the direction from where we had come. There, probably 5-10 meters away, I saw a strange looking UFO hovering some meters over the rocks. On its right side there was a blacktip shark turning away from us as the creature approach us. In a few seconds I realised that I was looking straight into the mouth of a large manta ray! My buddies had realised that something was happening and everyone turned to see that awesome creature. I was so astonished the view that it was left to Judith nearby to alert others. The manta came slowly towards us and then turned slowly into right, flapping its "wings" and showing its white belly with remoras cleaning it. I was looking the creature with great admiration as it gathered speed and disappeared to the blue. The next moment I had our dive master shaking my back and showing his writing board "here's your f*ckin manta" with a big grin! ;) I thanked him. It was truly an awesome experience and that sight I will not forget easily! I came here to see a manta and I took me 11 years and 130 dives to see one of those majestic creatures! I was really happy. If October 25th was a disaster with the camera and starting of my ear problem then October 26th was definitely one of the happiest days of my life in 2006! A dream made real. :) :) :)

On the morning of October 27th we went to Blue Hole which was a large cave with 4 entry holes on the ceiling and 2 exit windows - small and large - on the side. In the bottom of the cave there was a tiny entrance to the Temple of Doom, a small pathway inside the coral rock to a chamber where skeleton remains of 2 turtles rest and apparently where four Japanese divers died last year. Now I had a serious ear problem in the morning and did not feel like diving, especially to the deep Temple of Doom. However I told myself that the Blue Hole could be my last dive site in Palau unless my ear gets better. So with determination and help of red pills I managed to get down and even took a torch to follow my buddies to the Temple. At the entrance I realised that the torch's battery was pretty empty and it would not give me enough light in the pitch black tunnel. Also I did not feel comfortable about place so I decided to wait in the large cave while the dive guide, Thomas and Christian want to the Temple. Eventually they came back, amazed and happy. We took some amazing photos of the cave and hopefully I will be able to share them with you.

After the Hole we left back to Central Rock Islands archipelago and went to snorkle at Jellyfish lake! Yep, we snorkled with millions of jellyfishes. I was really a spooky experience. Now you may think we are completely nuts to toss around jellyfishes! Well, in fact these jellyfishes are of a special species which has lost capability to sting. So, we were swimming a large natural jello aquarium without any fear of being hurt. Very interesting experience and I can strongly recommend. After the jello experience we had a nice snorkling session at Clam City where there were enormous giant clams of various colours and varieties. As my ear was hurting more I decided to stop diving and let my buddies explore apparently fabulous dive sites of Ulong Island to where we sailed in the afternoon. I have been writing this story aboard OH1 while my buddies have been diving. They just came back and started making fun of me being a book writer. Well, maybe this is the most detailed account of my journey but I feel that it might be interesting reading to you as well.

Now (on October 28th ) I am back in Koror (mainland Palau) after another great day in Ulong Island where we had BBQ on the pristine white sand beach (in fact USA version of the Survivor TV series was filmed on that specific island!!). As a side note, I was pleasantly surprised when my camera started working normally (excl. its LCD display) as we arrived at Ulong Beach. It was shutting off normally and other functionalities seemed to be ok. Apparently I was really a lucky b*stard.

In Koror I had arranged an appointment with a doctor to check the status of my left ear. Pain last night was horrific but today it had already calmed down. I went to Palau National Hospital’s emergency department and a doctor there diagnosed severe swallowing in my left arm and the ear drum was completely red. It had not been perforated or otherwise damaged, which was good news. Everything pointed to the fact that I had an infection in the ear and consequently I was given antibiotics and various pain killers to dope myself. Apparently my body was fighting against the infection and consequently I have fever as well. Since the climate is so hot and humid I did not even realize it.

I checked with the doctor whether I am allowed to board a plane tonight to Yap and the answer was positive to my surprise. I have booked a 4 day stay at O'Keefe Hotel in Yap and I am supposed to do some more diving with mantas there. Now as my ear is semi-kaputt I need to stick to snorkeling with mantas which might not be that bad thing after all.. we shall see. Besides people here tell me that I should spend time in exploring the local well protected Yapese culture as it is one of the best preserved original cultures in Micronesia.

So Yap, here I come..