Wreck Dive Buddies: Part One

Scenic Coron.

On a list of Top 100 Places to Get Your Divemaster Certification, the island of Coron would rank slightly below 'Sewers of Mexico City' and just above 'Fukushima Bay'. About 40,000 people live on the 689 sq km island, most of whom would dislike you immediately if you ever met. This is especially true in the town proper, a small dirty toenail clipping of buildings stretching from the pier up around the harbor, finally sputtering out in a few scattered hotels hacked into the hilly coastline. Coron is a town where arson is an acceptable method of conflict resolution. The former mayor, Mario Reyes, is currently on the Philippines' Most Wanted list for the murder of an environmental activist. He is joined on the list by his brother Joel, the former governor of the province. The brothers Reyes have been fugitives since 2012, presumably cruising around the archipelago in their extravagant luxury speedboats and lighting cigars with fistfuls of pesos.

Spend a few hours in Coron town, and you'll gain a new appreciation for the term 'shithole'. I guess this isn't entirely fair - calling Coron a shithole does a grave injustice to both shit and holes. The town has the aesthetic charm of an abandoned slaughterhouse. Typhoon Yolanda hit the town in late 2013, causing a fair bit of damage, but not nearly as much as the previous years of neglect and disinterest. Coron is a fine example of the great things folks can avoid doing when they all get together and don't give a fuck.

Coron's malaise is truly a team effort. From the mightiest bureaucrat to the lowliest street vendor, each person does their part to make sure nothing works properly. The power plant provides no power. The bistro has no meat. The Coast Guard has no boat. The iceboxes have no ice. The optical shop has no contact lenses. The drug dealers have no drugs.

Nothing works in Coron because nothing really has to work. And that's probably because of the shipwrecks.

~

Off the coast of Coron, a small Japanese fleet is scattered around the seafloor. Their unlucky crews had been ordered to sail for remote Palawan during the closing days of World War II, while the eastern Philippines were being retaken by the Americans. It was a good plan - without any large warships to provide protection, the fleet was vulnerable. Coron was a small, remote island far from any U.S. naval forces. It seemed like the perfect place for the Japanese ships to hide.

And it was, until 24 September 1944, when squadrons of Hellcat fighters and Helldiver dive bombers from the USS Lexington launched the longest naval airstrike in history and sank them.

A sunken seaplane tender - my favorite wreck.

More than sixty years later, Forbes Traveler described the wrecks of Coron Bay as one of the 'Top Ten Dive Sites in the World'.

And that's why the people of Coron don't give a fuck.

~

Tourists will come to Coron as long as the wrecks exist. Tourists will want to eat and sleep and buy poorly-made souvenirs. Tourists will desire beer, regardless of its temperature, and they will also need hamburgers. If you burn somebody's eggs or spit on the guy browsing for sunscreen, there's no need to worry (or apologize) - another tourist will wander by eventually. The wrecks ensure a steady flow of dollars, won, euros and yuan - nobody had to build anything, and they all come anyway.

I'm as guilty as anyone - I went back to Coron because of the wrecks. There's a very Steve McQueenish vibe to wreck diving. It's dangerous and unpredictable and difficult, which is why I like it. Wreck diving is probably the closest I'll ever come to doing anything that could be considered 'badass'. I wear a tie and polished dress shoes to my day job -  this is no small accomplishment.

It's difficult to talk wreck diving with folks who don't dive wrecks, at least without sounding like a sociopath. People at cocktail parties start backing away slowly when you describe the thrill of squirming through torpedo holes and penetrating silty propellor shafts. But I knew there were others like me in Coron, adrenaline junkies who'd love to spend an afternoon debating the merits of nitrox sidemounts vs. closed circuit rebreathers or spinning outrageous lies about the time they salvaged the captain's wheel off the Kaiser's dreadnought.

People who dive wrecks really love wrecks, which is good because wrecks can be hard to love. Shipwrecks are dark, claustrophobic, and filled with venomous sea creatures. They attract people who are a little off - those who have what HMOs might call 'pre-existing conditions'. Wreck divers tend to be almost paranoiacally resistant to authority, fiercely proud yet constantly in need of validation, and borderline obsessive. Their greatest passions are shipwrecks, scuba equipment, other shipwrecks, cheap beer, and drinking cheap beer while talking about shipwrecks and scuba equipment.

In the professional dive industry there are no casual wreck divers, in the same way that there are no casual coroners.

But don't take my word for it. Take a thousand of my words for it.

~

The Boss - 'Nur ein Schwein Trinkt Allein'

Karin at her birthday lechon last year.

Shortly after I first Karin, I watched her hack a fifty kilogram pig to pieces with a machete. One hour and several tequila shots later, she was rhythmically gyrating with an egg dangling between her legs, attached to her waist by a thin string. She was trying to smash it against a similarly swinging eggplant operated by her partner, a small Filipino man named Dennis. When they finally succeeded, the celebration was messy and euphoric. I liked her right away.

~

Karin could tell I wasn't doing great. A few days earlier, I'd stormed into the shop and heatedly declared that I wanted to leave Rocksteady as quickly as possible. My relationships with the Filipino divemasters had soured to the point that I closely inspected my gear for sabotage before every dive, and checked my equipment box afterwards to make sure nothing had been stolen. My paranoia stemmed from an earlier incident when a Filipino divemaster ran out of air during a dive, and blamed me for the chaos that ensued. I refused to speak with him after this, which was taken by the notoriously sensitive locals as an unmistakable 'fuck you'. They predictably backed their fellow pinoy, and I found myself in a shark tank.

The same guys who had seemed like such a tight-knit family during my first visit to Coron were now circling like ravenous hammerheads, probing for signs of weakness or inattention they could exploit. I'd returned to Coron because of the wrecks, but I'd returned to Rocksteady because of the people. And now that the people were poisonous, I couldn't see any reason to stay.

Karin is a hard-nosed German businesswoman who has survived for years in a place that treats foreigners in general as sunburned ATMs and foreign women in particular as something even less flattering. She's fended off corrupt municipal bureaucrats and inept Coast Guard officers, battled a litigious ex-husband and the larcenous fingers of disgruntled locals. She spends nearly every waking moment at the shop, fighting a semi-losing battle against Himalayan mounds of paperwork and suspiciously ambulatory dive gear.

If there's a problem with a boat engine, Karin gets a phone call - sure, she might not know a fucking thing about engines, but she's the boss and therefore she must fix the problem. If a lightbulb burns out in the toilet, Karin gets a phone call - how do you unscrew these things? If a seagull shits on a customer's towel, Karin gets a phone call - probably demanding a full refund for the day's dives. Karin has one of the most exhausting and aggravating jobs imaginable.

Which is why I was so surprised when she invited me to dinner.

~

Karin lived far outside town, about twenty minutes by motorbike. I rode on the back of her ancient green Chinese knockoff, the shocks cringing woefully with every bump. And there were a lot of bumps - we were officially out in the middle of nowhere, a thin dirt road snaking through the jungle. The bike's feeble headlight revealed a tangled mess of bamboo, grass, and other wild growing things.  Eventually we pulled up to a gate, which she nimbly swerved around, and arrived at the house.

We hopped off the motorbike and were immediately accosted by Karin's pack of dogs. Karin is a dog-lover; every day, the leftovers from lunch on the dive boats are scraped into plastic bags which are taken home for canines' dinner, making them perhaps the best-fed dogs on the island. I loved hearing her castigate anyone who forgot to save the dog food - the way she said 'lllllllaaazy bas-tahhhd' was sweeter than poetry.

And apparently somebody had been an especially lazy bastard that day, because one of the dogs seemed powerfully hungry by the way he snapped at my shins. I pride myself on being somewhat of an amateur dog whisperer, and I tried all my usual tricks of establishing dominance and discouraging aggressive behavior. But my sophisticated understanding of canine psychology proved useless against his street-dog instincts, and he continued to snap. Only when Karin jabbed her finger and commanded, 'Fuck off Jocko,' did he leave me in peace. He wouldn't mess with the boss.

Karin showed me around the compound, which consisted of the main house, several separate huts for her teenage boys, and the beginnings of an extensive garden. The jungle encroached all around - bamboo sprouted everywhere, and it was evident that keeping the place clear of undergrowth was a full-time job. She pointed out the herbs and vegetables that would soon be on our plates, the place where her kids used to paint their faces and play Indians, the large tent where one of the shop's German instructors had been living since the typhoon destroyed her apartment. 'It's more like a castle,' Karin said as we passed by. I had to agree - it was the biggest goddamn tent I'd ever seen outside of a circus.

We talked about her kids - the impossibly cute little girl who liked writing mystery stories, the guitar-playing romantic who was off to university next year, the sweet-tempered basketball nut who was busy making all the mistakes teenagers usually make. She told me about the hostel she wanted to open near the dive shop, if those bastards would ever agree to a reasonable price for the land - lots of soft wood tones and recycled art, bamboo everything; a refuge for travelers who just wanted a peaceful and beautiful place to meet, eat, sleep. Karin even brought up her old life, when she'd jetted around the world with her father's free airline tickets and lived a nice, stable life back in Germany. She was absolutely convincing when she said she didn't miss a minute of it.

Dennis was almost finished with the barbecue, so we meandered back to the deck. A large table was set with plates - Karin and Dennis, their kids, me, and some special guests. Karin's mother and brother were visiting from Germany; this was one of the few times every year they'd all eat together. I smiled at her brother, a large friendly guy named Jens, and gave Mama a hug. There was the usual bickering about salt to add or not add, and how many serving tongs were needed, and where the hell that extra fork went. The table began to grow crowded with aromatic plates of grilled chicken, fresh garden salads, and steaming white rice. Soft light spilled out of the house, casting shadows across the yard where tall bamboo formed a dark and impenetrable wall. The jungle was silently noisy in the way that jungles are, if you listen closely.

We eased ourselves into the plastic chairs, careful not to lean too far backwards and tumble off the deck. Karin handed me a San Miguel, whose top I casually popped with a lighter and absentmindedly began to sip, enjoying its crisp iciness in the hot Filipino night. I lowered the bottle to find Karin looking at me disapprovingly, clutching her own beer in one hand.

'Nur ein Schwein trinkt allein', she said - only a pig drinks alone. Narrowing one eye, she raised her bottle and clinked it against mine. She took a long pull, sighed, and nimbly lit a Winston with one hand. With the other, she started ladling rice and chicken and vegetables onto her plate, then her daughter's, and then mine.

I put my beer back on the table and smiled because I wasn't alone.

~

The Guru - 'Bahala Na'

'Bahala na' is a Tagalog phrase that translates literally as, 'As the Lord wills.'  A more colloquial translation might be, 'Screw it.'

These were the favorite words of Angy, one of the German dive instructors at Rocksteady, closely followed by 'Ay Nako!' ('for God's sake!') and any sentence starting with, 'The faaahhh-cking _____...'  She was truly a people's poet.

Angy cut an intimidating figure - nearly six feet tall, with sunburned ropey muscles and an immaculately shaved head. One glare from her icy blue eyes would make a Navy SEAL look nervously for the bathroom. When she got angry, which was often, the best course was to tread lightly. I spent most of my early days at Rocksteady trying valiantly to not piss her off. And for the most part I did, which I still regard as a minor miracle.

~

On my final day at Rocksteady, I finally got the balls to ask her for a photo together.

Angy and I both hated being cold. She's from Germany and I'm from Minnesota, but years living in southeast Asia have completely erased our tolerance for low temperatures. Our first words upon exiting the water were usually unprintable, not just for foul language but because they were literally indecipherable due to our chattering teeth.

The waters of Coron are usually a balmy 29 C/84 F, but that didn't stop us from freezing our asses off. Tourists who come for a few fun dives usually find the waters quite warm and pleasant. Dive pros, however, make multiple dives every day, and their bodies never get a chance to heat back up fully. Some divemasters and instructors clenched their teeth and grimly bore the discomfort, taking a sadistic pride in their resistance to the elements. Angy and I did not. We bitched loudly and passionately to anyone unlucky enough to be within earshot.

~

We were huddled in the back of the boat one day, wrapped in towels and sweatshirts and whatever semi-dry piece of clothing we could find, braving the engine's exhaust fumes in hopes of warming up a bit faster. Angy resembled a Bedouin camel raider, multiple scarves and beanies making her face almost inscrutable. She took layering seriously - Angy wore two wetsuits on every dive and topped it off with a hood, gloves, boots, and whatever else she could get her hands on. We clutched steaming mugs of terrible instant coffee as the rasta banca boat chopped through the waves.

I asked Angy how she first discovered Coron. I'd arrived by accident myself - the result of a miscommunication with boat ticket vendors and a lousy understanding of the Philippines' geography. Her story was even more convoluted - a swirling tale of missed flights, vague recommendations from friends, timely storms, and a six-degrees-of-seperation web that would leave Kevin Bacon shaking his head. That she'd arrived in Coron at all was a staggering coincidence - that she'd stayed so many years defied any logical explanation.

Still half-frozen in my pitifully inadequate towel cocoon, I then asked the go-to question of any lazy interviewer - do you regret any of the decisions you made? You're living in a tent in your boss' backyard, you have no health insurance, you're stuck on an island full of people who you can't trust...do you ever think you made the wrong choice? At the moment I was regretting my own decision to come back to Coron; I think my misery was looking for company.

Angy's response? 'Fuck, no'.

She'd been surviving just fine. She'd prefer to have her flat back, of course, but it was entirely possible to live in a tent. She didn't have insurance, but most people in the world don't have insurance. She took care of her body as best she could, and saw no reason to be toil away in fear of 'what-ifs', trading the present for a pessimistic future. She would have liked to have a partner, but she had learned how to be happy with herself. Angy's strength came from her own muscles and thoughts, things that no thief could steal and no bank could repossess. She could take care of herself; she had her shit together. There was nothing to regret about that.

I asked her about turning points in life - those big important moments where you have to choose between two divergent paths; the times when people tell you to 'trust your gut' no matter how unreliable and misguided it has been in the past. And Angy said that was all bullshit, that it's never the big decisions that matter most, but all the little unnoticed ones that quietly stack atop one another until they form a giant flashing neon sign that says 'GO THIS WAY'. And even then it doesn't really matter where you go, as long as you look like you know what you're doing.