Although Pohnpei and Chuuk are the same country, they each have their own exit tax you have to pay before leaving. It’s a very funny arrangement. You get to the check in desk at the airport, they hand you a slip of paper with your information, you walk over to the tax desk, give them the slip of paper and the cash, get a tax receipt, walk back to the check in desk, show them the receipt and get a boarding pass. It’s 21st century, why is the tax not just part of the airfare?
It was late in the afternoon, and we came just in time to watch the sunset. Our hotel had a prime west facing location, but sadly all ocean view rooms were taken by a large training group from the US Navy. Tropical island problems.
What we first dismissed as jet lag and diving related fatigue progressed to full blown cold symptoms. Nothing more depressing than congested sinuses when you’ve come all this way to dive. We tried to find some meds, but it was slim pickings. To his credit, the driver from our hotel tried his best and took us all around to find a better stocked pharmacy, but for some reason a decongestant was not something any of them had. We tried to arrange the diving, but were told to come back to the shop at an unspecified time in morning.
Island time was very real on Chuuk. When we did find someone the next morning, it was clear they needed more time to get us going, even though we had been in contact long before arrival. Micronesian islands had been closed for so long during the pandemic, it seemed people have forgotten how to run a dive shop in that time. They had to borrow the BCDs from another operator, and weren’t sure if they’d find the boat captain and the dive master. The silver lining was that we had another day to rest and recover from the cold.
Once we did make it underwater, it quickly became clear that even if I don’t dive anywhere else ever again, I would consider my modest diving career a success. Small sunken airplanes you can carefully swim through, ships with wide open cargo holds, dark and creepy engine rooms, decks overgrown with colorful soft corals such that you can’t even tell what you’re looking at any more. And we had all of that to ourselves, just the two of us and the dive guide.
We skipped 3 days due to bad weather. Disappointed, but got to explore a bit of the island instead. Chatted with a group of locals who were chilling on their property near a beach. The overarching sentiment, just like on Pohnpei, was that they are so happy here, they have everything, and life is fantastic.
Federated States of Micronesia is a bit of a special place in many ways. Along with Palau and Marshall Islands, the country has signed a Compact of Free Association with the United States. What that means is that the US provides them with money, dictates a lot of their policies, and allows their citizens to live and work in the US if they so choose. Some people have taken advantage of that, but came back. Our Pohnpei driver lived in California for 4 years, but found it too expensive and came back to his island. We have everything we need here, and land for us is free, he said. People we chatted with on Chuuk also had spent time in the US, even in Alaska, of all places. To many, life on these islands is more appealing than life on the continent. There was a lot of pride in their voices when they spoke of their home.
The expat hotel owner, Bill, shared a different angle. There is little productive employment on Chuuk, and alcohol abuse is a major problem. A drunk driving incident a few days prior to our arrival left 3 people dead. For a town of 14,000 inhabitants, it’s a big deal. For all its paper independence, Micronesia relies heavily on funding from the US government, so there is little they can do without express or implied approval of their providers. Bill was also bummed that the hotel was running out of coffee, and the next shipment was delayed. The only thing we could find in the grocery stores was instant coffee, so it seemed businesses that want to provide decent brew to their customers need to special order.
Speaking of grocery stores, that was another unforgettable experience. We checked several, and essentially the only things you could reliably and safely consume were dry and canned goods. The smell from the fridges holding meats and veggies was nauseating, I felt like I could get sick just by being there for longer than 10 seconds. So our meal of choice was reconstituted mashed potatoes and canned fish. Dessert? That would be a piece of bread with Nutella. Thank heavens for Nutella.
The meals in the restaurant were not terrible, in fact they were very edible, but the lack of fresh vegetables and the overall blandness of the palate made food we had in remote Yukon towns seem like flavor bombs.
With all that, the diving here was second to none. The colorful reefs of Curaçao, the well preserved wrecks in the Azores, the challenging but rewarding diving with sharks in the Galapagos, the cold kelp forests of Channel Islands, and the aquarium like diversity of the Gulf of California – nothing quite compares to this. The fantastic blend of the anthropogenic wrecks and the incredibly colorful, often indescribable ocean creatures left me in awe. It also reminded me how much of a privilege it is to explore the ocean in this manner. The underwater world is not exactly hostile, most marine animals range from indifferent to curious. But little by little, whatever enters the sea, gets enveloped and consumed by it. As soon as one captain leaves, another takes over, that of maritime fauna. Previously mighty ships are unrecognizable under the unstoppable conquest of ocean dwellers. Humans and their sophisticated creations are ephemeral.
If I were to do this again, I would absolutely smuggle in some decent tea and heirloom tomatoes in my luggage.
