Its already been well over a month
since my brother came and went from his vacation in Chuuk, and the weeks since
have been filled with mayhem so I haven’t had a chance to sit down and write
about our adventures, but I feel its necessary to at least give a short summary
of what happened during his visit to my islands in Micronesia. Most of the
things we did while he was here were similar to when my little sister came the
year before, so for the sake of brevity and repetition I will keep it short and
just run over the basics of what happened.
The first thing on our agenda when
my brother Jim arrived in Weno was to do what 99% of the tourists coming to
Chuuk want to experience, wreck diving. The Chuuk Lagoon is world renowned for
the being the best wreck diving spot on the planet. 56 enormous Japanese
warships are lying in the shallow blue waters and being slowly enveloped in a
sheet of multicolored corals that defy the imaginative bounds of an acid
tripping artist. These behemoths of steel are littered with bullets, bones, and
artifacts leftover from the battles of WWII. The mix of history, tragedy, and
beauty make these scuba diving sites a unique destination.
We stayed at the Truk Stop Hotel
and did four dives to the depths of the ocean. Schools of brightly hued fish
danced around us as we perused the wreckage of these historic hulls. War
cannons, wine bottles and crumbling walls are being continuously welded
together in colorful clumps of living rock. In the warm tropics, the elements
of nature quickly smother anything in their path. On land, the vines and plants
twirl around derelict objects and swallow them into the belly of the jungle.
Under the water, polyps of coral slowly carpet all surfaces and bury them in
warped bungles of rainbows.
On one of the dives, my brother and
I forgot our flashlights but decided to blindly follow our guide into the
bowels of the ship. Inside the lower hallways of the ships, darkness dominates.
A hand in front of your face is just an invisible blur of blackness and the
only line of sight that you have is from the sliver of light that is emitted
from a flashlight. With the help of our scuba guide’s beam of light, we snaked
our way through scarily narrow passages and went deeper inside the maze of tiny
tunnels. We came to an open room and our guide turned around to direct us
inside. He pointed his beam at a ledge and shook it to tell me to move over
there so that Jim could come and fit inside the room. I sat on the rusted slab
of metal and watched Jim maneuver his way into the small opening. The guide then
shut off his light and darkness once again blinded us. Suddenly the light
appeared with a flash at the ceiling about 10 inches above my head. My eyes
followed the beam and nearly popped out of my head as I looked up to see a
human skull staring me in the face! I was so startled that I shot backwards and
banged my elbow on a table behind me. The guide pointed his light at the table
and I saw a pile of cracked bones under my forearm. Talk about dramatic effect,
this guide knew what he was doing.
Later that night after the skeleton
incident, I spent my first evening ever in a Chuukese bar. The Hard Wreck Café
has the ambiance of a friendly beach dive bar and fulfilled all my fantasies of
what normal alcohol consumption should be. Bluesy rock was playing over the
speakers and a couple pool tables kept us entertained. A local guy named Ketani
had just returned to Chuuk from Olympic trials and was in a jubilant mood. He
picked up the tab for the entire bar and kept the drinks flowing faster than we
could drink them. Hanging out with my brother while shooting pool, drinking
whiskey and listening to Chuck Berry…wow, this felt just like America.
After Jim was introduced to Chuuk
with a stint of diving, we headed to my rural island of Fefan to spend a week
with my host family. Jim got a healthy dose of bucket showers, canned fish,
concrete mattresses, and buzzing insects during his stay. On one of our hikes
up the mountain we took a sideways detour through the jungle and came to a
mysterious place that I had never seen before. A black crevice in the slanted
face of a rock left an opening of about 18 inches. Following the lead of some
of my local friends, we slid down into the damp darkness and found ourselves in
a rounded series of tunnel caves. These battle trenches were fashioned by the
Japanese and formed mazes throughout the mountain. We wandered through the
circular rock holes and found three gigantic artillery cannons poking their
nozzles out of various cave entrances. Empty shells bigger than my thigh were
scattered along the ground.
The huge guns and secret caves were
impressive, but were outshone by the reckless mayhem brought on by the little
kids who came along on our hike. They ran through the dark caves like maniacs
and waved their hands wildly in the air. They weren’t just being playful, they
were rousing the bats! Thousands and thousands of bats. Bats swarming and
shrieking in frantic flocks trying to escape the clutching hands of tiny island
boys. Jim and I crouched in horror and crept our way along, but the little boys
laughed in glee as their faces were pelted with these flying rats. We emerged
from the caves and each of the boys had a handful of furry creatures that they
attached to their shirts. The bats happily clung to their shirts and curled up
in peace for the rest of the hike.
Since Jim was a male, I was able to
take him along on fishing outings and teach him a few island methods of
catching fish. My specialty is spear fishing and I did my best to impart any
knowledge to help him along in his efforts. He nailed a few fish and seemed to
really enjoy the hide and seek game of finding camouflaged sea creatures. The
spear fishing was a lot of fun, but our serious fishing excursion was a day of
tuna trawling that I arranged with a local fisherman. To find the schools of
tuna, it is necessary to go outside the lagoon and into the deep blue waters of
the Pacific. The flocks of sea birds are the targets you must follow in order
to know where the fish are. The tuna circle around balls of small bait fish and
huddle them into clumps near the surface. Sea birds can spot the commotion of
tiny fish trying to escape the jaws of tuna and we can spot the sea birds.
We were luckless for most of the
day and spent a lot of time chasing faint hints of white specks on the horizon,
but late in the afternoon we finally came upon a real swarm of birds. We
dropped our lines and motored around in circles hoping to snag some big fish.
There are no fishing poles in Chuuk, your hands have to do the work of pulling
in the fish. When we felt the first tug on our line, Jim and I joined together
and starting hauling in the big fish. A few seconds later, our boat operator
screamed “Poko!” (shark) and grabbed a
hold of the line to help us pull faster. A dark mass of six-foot flesh could be
seen snaking its way towards our boat at a blistering pace. We were in a race
with the hungry jaws of shark. At the last moment, we yanked the fish out of
the water and the shark dove under the stern of our little boat. The next fish
we caught was also being pursued by a ravenous shark and once again we narrowly
escaped his thieving jaws and brought our catch aboard safely moments before it
was engulfed by the cartilaginous beast. Our day would have been considered
unsuccessful by fisherman standards, but was a wonderful success by sightseeing
standards. Besides the predatory sharks circling our boat, we saw two pods of
leaping dolphins and more than ten whales. These humungous gray mammals spouted
high in the air and splashed their tails to amuse us throughout the day.
To cap off Jim’s trip to Chuuk, I
took him to what I consider to be the most beautiful place on earth, Pisar
Island. I have previously gone into extensive detail about the paradisiacal
aspects of Pisar, so its suffice to say that we had an amazing time soaking up
the sun and floating in turquoise water on our isolated beach paradise for a
few days. It was a perfect end to
a delightful visit and rounded out Jim’s impression of the islands in Chuuk. He
got to see the muck and mayhem of Weno, the unparalleled underwater spectacles
of scuba diving, the rural jungle lifestyle of my island, and the pristine
heavenliness of Pisar.
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