Sunday, February 4, 2007

Walkabout Dave sinks to new depths

January 25 – 31, 2007

One of my objectives on this trip was to really learn how to scuba dive. Previously I had dabbled in it at one resort or another. But I’d never spent any serious bottom, and never got certified. Growing up, my hero was Jacque Cousteau. I yearned to go down into the briny depths like Jacque and to speak with its denizens with a cloying French accent – “Hallo, hallo, my leetle fishee friends. And how arre you today, in your underwater habeetat.” So I built a week at Beqa Island, off Fiji, into this adventure. For reasons no one was able to satisfactorily explain, it is pronounced “Benga”, but this didn’t deter me in the slightest.

I actually took a course in scuba back in college, probably to fulfill some sort of phys ed requirement. The course focused heavily on the 86 common ways to get oneself killed while diving. They range from burst ear drums (from descending too quickly), the bends (from surfacing too quickly), nitrogen narcosis (from going to deep) to running out of air (from staying down too long). Of course, you can also get eaten by a shark. My personal favorite way to off yourself scuba diving is to drop a full air cylinder while on your dive boat. The necks have been known to shear off, resulting in an uncontrolled torpedo capable of sending the boat to Davy Jones. So I had the book lernin, but had never gone the final step to do the open water dives and get certified.

Beqa is one of the top dive sites on the planet and known especially for its beautiful displays of soft coral. It is an island of about 36 square kilometers sitting an hour’s boat ride off Vita Levu, Fiji’s main island. It lies in the middle of a huge lagoon, say 50 miles in diameter – formed of a virtually unbroken coral reef and a few small islets. Geologists will tell you, if they can corner you at a cocktail party, that Beqa is the remains of what was once an enormous volcanic island, extending out to the current reef line. Then the volcano exploded and collapsed, leaving the smaller central isle and the reef lines and islets to mark the old perimeter. Did you know who came up with that theory of the formation of atolls? I though not. If you would turn off the boob tube once in a while and read a book you might actually learn something. It was Charles Darwin the evolution guy. What a cool dude!

There are about eight small fishing villages on Beqa and several resorts. I stayed at Beqa Lagoon Resort, and one of the nicer places I have indulged in on my travels. I had my own little seafront burra (Fijian for cottage) with hammock and plunge pool. A plunge pool is a small round pool about five feet deep -- a refreshing way to cool off after the hard work of hammock swinging. The resort also has a large common open air dining room, and a lovely pool with water warm as a bathtub.

Beqa is definitely a dive resort meaning people go there to seriously dive. Surface activities being only necessary interludes while air tanks are refilled. This was my first introduction to dive culture. Divers, it must be said, are fanatics. Until you can count your total dives in thousands you are still a neophyte. Veteran divers will happily tell you how many aggregate weeks or even months they have spent at the bottom. They eat, breathe and sleep diving, and discuss endlessly the relative benefits of 3, 5 and 7 mil wetsuits, dry suits, aluminum versus steel tanks, titanium versus steel regulators, and so on. They are also incredibly nice people and took me under their collective wings (fins?) giving me a great introduction to the sport.

Diving, I was pleased to find, is a toy-intensive activity. Beyond the basics needed to sustain life underwater, you’ve got the dive knives to strap to the ankle (there is no known use for them, by the way, other than to look like James Bond in Thunderball), dive lights (for night dives and caves), dive computers (which do everything but play Tetris) and full face rigs with radio communicators built in. And don’t forget underwater photography – which allows you to replicate all your land-based gear purchases at several multiples of the cost. I was stuck using rented equipment and looking rather shabby. The only thing I had brought was the prescription mask and – of course – my ankle knife. I do have a nice shopping list put together though for when I get home…

Each morning after a light breakfast of omelets, pancakes and French toast, those of us who could still fit in our wet suits loaded on board one of the dive boats to head off to that day’s dive sites. The prize diving sites are scattered along the lagoon reef like pearls on a necklace (Zing! Nailed that metaphor!) They bear compelling names like Seven Sisters, Three Thieves, Golden Arches and Blue Wall. (Less popular dive site bear names like Slow and Excrutiating Death and Nagging Rectal Itch.) We then dive one of the sites, return to the boat and after a suitable rest interval, do a second.

There is something very mellow and colleagial in the nature of diving. It is not a sport for showoffs or hotshots. When you are diving you are basically taking a stroll through the three dimensional world of the coral reefs. There are no points for being faster or flashier (provided you have a dive knife), everyone wants everyone else in the group to feel safe and comfortable. Sebastian was right – “things are better, down where its wetter, take it from me”.

Basically, you want to see as much neat stuff as possible, and you want to share it with your fellow divers. I had one moment of glory when – swimming off a ways on my own – I found a shark. Given the generally bad rep of sharks it is ironic that they are actually rather rare and some species are endangered. On many of our dives we didn’t come across any, so finding one was reportable news. This was a five or six foot white tip, not a monster. I swam back and reported my find (a fin hand signal over the head) and then returned to make sure Jaws it didn’t abscond. When the others caught up they found me tailing the beast over quite a stretch of ocean. When later asked whether I wasn’t concerned it would turn on me, I pointed out I was never in danger since sharks don’t bite lawyers – professional courtesy.

Over my week at Beqa I did a dozen dives over various conditions, including a night dive, a wreck and dives with and against current, and got a pretty good education. Diving is much fun, but I’m no divaholic. I can take it or leave it. I just wanted to complete my qualification course to get certified so I could do a recreational dive here or there, without anyone questioning how deep I could go, or making me prove I could clear my mask in a swimming pool. Of course, there was that moment at the end of the night dive that I realized I might be slipping over the deep end and developing a dunking problem (sorry). There I was at the end of the dive, pitch dark lit only by flashlight, dismal visibility, nothing to see. I was doing my safety stop holding onto the weighted line hanging from the back of the boat. The safety stop is a three minute hold at 15 or 20 feet before surfacing, to avoid any possibility of bends. And there I was, as three minutes ticked off to four, five and six. Hanging on the rope as it heaved up and down with the boat in heavy seas I realized I wasn’t coming up. I still had some air in my tank and there was no place I’d rather be.

Your faithful correspondent,

Walkabout Dave

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