It’s June now here in the Philippines. With the time difference and all, I’m pretty sure that makes it close to early February back in the States—I’m still not quite sure how that works. June’s arrival brings with it a few different things—first and foremost the end of summer (and subsequently the beginning of school), the start of rainy season, and perhaps the most difficult to comprehend, the knowledge that we have less than one year to go in our Peace Corps service. We have been in country for 15 of our scheduled 27 months, so everything now feels like a repeat of my senior year of high school. “The last time we’ll celebrate this fiesta” or “Only one more birthday here in the Philippines” or even “This is the last June 5th sunset that we’ll ever see during our Peace Corps service in the Philippines” (sometimes we like to make grand gestures out of relatively small events…).
So it’s June and summer is finished. Ironically, as most of Erin and I’s work is performed in schools, summertime proved to be the most productive time of year for each of us yet. Actually, May was hands down the best month so far for me since arriving here last year. Peace Corps life closely resembles a roller coaster with its extreme highs and lows. We have become very mindful of these trends and try to make the most out of the high parts, with the knowledge that a low could be right around the corner. Because May brought with it seemingly abnormal (yet much appreciated) extreme highs for me, I wanted to share those experiences with you (all 4 that read this) quickly before a ninja-like ‘low’ crouching around the corner takes me by surprise and I get all sulky and moody and don’t want to write. Let the words flow!

Not a Peace Corps Project, But Great Nonetheless
My Summer, Part I
I half-heartedly agreed to go with Ian on his harebrained scheme of a dive when I got his text late last October. Diving? In the Sulu Sea? You in? It sounded like fun. Sure, I could probably do that. I had just gotten my dive certification a few months before and I had also just returned from a great 2 day dive trip with Ian and a bunch of other PCV’s at beautiful Apo Island—more diving would be fun for sure. Around February the details started to slowly seep out. Mid-May. Perfect, summer vacation, no school. On a boat. I like boats. 6 days at sea. That’s exciting. Lots of diving. That’s what I want to do is dive. Expensive. Ouch.
Being married has changed the way in which I look at money. Whereas before I was married I had my own money—albeit very little—and I could choose how I wanted to spend it (we won’t get into the argument whether my choices of spending were wise or unwise…) Now, in the glorious state I live in named ‘matrimony,’ not only do I not have money, it seems as if I can’t even choose how to spend the money I don’t have. You may have heard the saying, “What’s mine is hers and what’s hers is hers.” That about sums up the financial situation in the Farver hut. We have nothing, but it’s all hers. When I brought up the possibility of this dive to Erin, expecting fire and brimstone, I was shocked to be greeted with sugar and gumdrops. “Wow, what a great idea!” she told me. “You’d get to hang out with some close friends—it’s a great chance for you to bond with them and have ‘guy time.’ When are you going to get an experience like this again? Plus, you’d be gone for 6 whole days?! Wow! Do they have any longer trips?!” It was a serendipitous turn of events that at the time we were discussing this we got our return from the previous years’ taxes (yes, we pay taxes on our PC earning…) from our distant relative, Uncle Sam. That little piece of chance helped make the Dream Dive a reality, at least financially. What I didn’t know was how brutal a 5 day dive trip in the middle of the Sulu Sea could be. Silly, silly Scotty.
We were steaming full throttle towards a very small group of islands to the southwest of Panay called the Cagayan-cillio Islands. They’re nearly uninhabited chunks of dryness jutting up in between our island to the east and Palwan to the west. Our dive master, a good friend of Ian’s named Gert, is a Belgian with something close to 3000 dives under his belt. He wholeheartedly claimed that he had the best dive of his life the previous week when he swam with a giant docile whale shark flanked by a few hammerheads at the same place we were going to. A statement like that is bound to get 6 guys like us very excited. We knew that you never really know what to expect when you dive, but after hearing about whale sharks and hammerheads, our anticipation was extremely high as we tried to snatch tiny nuggets of sleep on our way to the Promised Land of Diving According to Gert. One of my buddies, Lloyd, remarked that he felt like a 10 year old trying to sleep on Christmas Eve. We were not to be disappointed.
When you’re in the middle of the ocean, the sun rises around 5:30 in the morning. I had heard the throbbing diesels lose some of their intensity in my sleep-like trance in the bowels of our little boat, so I peeked my head above deck to see why we were slowing down. I was met with one of the most amazing scenes I have ever seen. In my life. Honestly, it was that good. We were surrounded by ocean—literally in the middle of the Sulu Sea—except for a tiny island directly to our port side (yeah, you learn to talk like a sailor after that long at sea. Truth be told, I’m still not sure which side is port and which is starboard, but I like being able to say ‘port’ and ‘starboard.’ I’m probably going to start using them in normal conversation soon…) Anyways, we were just dropping anchor, there was ocean everywhere, a beautiful yet tiny white sand beach about 200 meters from us and the sun was trying to stretch and peek its head over the horizon behind all of that ocean.

All 6 of us were up by then, totally awestruck by the scene as it unfolded before us. We were commenting on the surreal-ness of the situation to each other and enjoying a wonderful 3 in 1 coffee brew. Incredible! As if the island and sunrise and everything else weren’t enough to overwhelm our senses, there, swimming in the stunningly crystal-clear blue water by our bow (sorry to all the land-lubbers who won’t understand this extremely complex and technical sailor-speech) was a sea turtle, welcoming us to his little piece of paradise. We hadn’t even been in the water yet and the trip was already worth it for me. Just Incredible.


Diving turned out to be even better than our initial arrival, if that is even possible. The details of the individual ventures under that paradise are jumbled my head—we made 15 dives in 5 days—an incredible physical feat that I paid for dearly in the weeks that followed. Though it may not sound like much (I actually did 14 dives in 4 days—the last day I could only muster enough strength for 1 dive), we were totally and utterly exhausted after the trip. I had “land legs” for at least 2 days and my ears were still gurgling and popping a week later from the 50 meter maximum depth I had hit. The most I had ever dove before was 2 times in 1 day down to a palsy 15 meters and I was beat after that—this was a whole new level of tiredness I had never experienced before. A tiredness mixed with extreme awesomeness. To make a long, babbling and incoherent rendition of all of the sights that we saw short, the colors of the coral were amazing and there were thousands, nay, more than thousands, of fish. The absolute highlight of my trip had to have been either the 2 sharks that we swam with or the school of over 20 barracuda that we stumbled upon. We saw lobster (one of which we ate topside), lionfish, huge clams, sea turtles big and small, fish of every color—I also finally found Nemo in his anemone as well. He and his 4 million cousins. Dolphins jumped and played and frolicked near our boat as we headed back to land. The Flemish word for incredible is Ongelooflijk, and that was the catchphrase of this trip. Anytime something was incredible (which was quite often), we would look at each other and utter the glottal “Ongelooflijk!,” complete with hand motion (in case we were underwater). A truly incredible trip. The best thing I have done since being here.

After the sun had risen...


Enjoying one of many 3 in 1 coffees on board


A moment of rest on our trusty boat


In the water before (or after??) a dive


The group of fearless divers

For a more technical account of our dive, check out Ian's site. You can find his link on the side or click here