The cast of Oddamaivadi

It had been a great trip so far. Admittedly the 3am drive down left a bit to be desired but the two dives on the mystery wreck were mind blowing. An eagle ray soared past us as we hovered over the wreck and huge trevalley moved in the shadows as we swam into the ghostly ship lying scatted on the bottom and hordes of snappers swirled above us, a solid mass of fish. I’m still not sure how this was but the air from our tanks tasted of strawberries and the dives were simply world class.

As the sun set on the beach at Kayankerni we exultantly discussed our evidence on what the ship could be, the length indicated a World War II wreck but there was still much to be done the next day to further uncover the mystery. It was then that we made our fatal mistake. We decided that nothing would cap the day better than a couple of beers. Thus fortified with this foolish idea we proceeded to Oddamaivadi to get some beer. Over the Kayankerni bridge as we rattled along the newly built road we heard a thud. Shortly followed by a warning light on dashboard and the death rattle of the engine seizing up.

Rather befuddled we sat in the car for a few minutes before deciding to move it to the side of the road in case a passing combine harvester gave us a gentle tap on the back in the approaching gloom. It was then that we started to meet the inhabitants. As I pushed the Swift to the side of the road (it’s a surprisingly light car) a motorcycle spluttered to a stop and our Guardian Angel turned up to assist, heavily disguised of course as a mustachioed and saronged old man, GB Kahn. While DJ and I stood bewildered he in quick succession organized a truck to tow us to the nearest garage.

The garage, actually a large field with a shack, turned out to be the haunt of Sudu Malli, the black as night mechanic who soulfully advised us to get a new filter and he would try his best the next day. As we had reached the limit of what we could do for the night we arranged a tuk to get back to base and a jovial character by the name of Ali picked us up.

As we proceeded to buy a couple of beer bottles (to console ourselves) Ali with great gusto started talking. And he didn’t stop. His stories were various and colourful. He started off with tales of how he used to run goods for the LTTE and the army, until both were pissed off with him and he had to move to Colombo. There it turned out he was arrested for dealing marijuana and he regaled us with how he used to escape rape on a daily basis, including unwanted specifications of how the victims were chosen as they used rudimentary toilets.

Ali continued to talk and swig beer from a can while we drove on. He took a short but terrifying detour to show us a field where he as involved in a land dispute. For a second we thought we were going to be have a sticky end somewhere in a lost field. Ali continued to talk, now he was telling us about his experiences with ghosts on the road. We later learned that he loved to smoke up..which probably explains the ghosts. He also told us he transports corpses in his tuk, a sort of open air hearse. We were reassured to hear however that he washes his tuk regularly in the lagoon.

Ali was even full of political soundbites, a particularly witty statement was, mamma Thambi, appi nari, ogollong Sinhala, sinhayao…koti thang malla. Which for political correctness left a bit to be desired.

It was with a sinking feeling that we realized Ali had no intention on leaving us when we got to the bungalow. Instead he helped himself to a bottle of beer, regaled us with a story on circumcision and proceeded to show us how his belly dances. I cannot make this shit up. Apparently it was because he was quite diligent with his yoga…yoga I say again. Then just before he left he showed us another one of his life skills, twisting his ear up and keeping it balled up. He then serenaded us with a short tune before bumpily heading off into the night leaving us speechless and not a little traumatized.

The next morning dawned bright and early. The promise of a hot day was kept as instead of diving as we had hoped, we travelled around Oddamavadai, this time with a mercifully silent trishaw driver, in search of a petrol filter. Tracking one down finally in the shop of the town’s other crazy mechanic, Meegamuwa Kolla, whom we later learned had a ‘wire in his head’ (i.e. was batshit crazy) we had Sudu Malli install this and we crossed our fingers.

No luck as the engine was rock solid. Which then brought us to the tricky part of how the fucking hell we were going to get a Suzuki Swift back to Colombo.

Luckily there turned out there was a truck, Anoja was her name that needed to get to Colombo. Of course this being Sri Lanka nothing was quite that simple. The truck needed repairs to its clutch. And the driver had to come from Batticaloa with the parts. Thus we sat in the smallest patch of shade in all of Batticaloa while we waited for Saadi the driver and his unnamed squint eyed assistant to turn up. Once they turned up they and Sudu Malli dug around in the bowels of the truck until finally it seemed it was all fixed.

They then proceeded to take us for a slow tow to a service station so they could load the car. The rather innovative process was to put the car up on a hydraulic jack, back the truck up and then push the car in. Of course the first service station refused to let us do this, so we proceeded back into town, the townspeople regarding us with interest and possibly a sense of déjà vu as we trundled past them again, this time heading to Meegamuwa Kolla's service station. Suffice to say the plan of how to get the car into the truck was not quite as easy as it sounded but much sweating and pushing and jousting, not me of course, I was too busy taking photographs, we finally got the car in.

All that was left was the drive back to Colombo. We squeezed into the back of Anoja’s cabin where there was just enough leg space to give us hope but not enough to allow for a comfortable ride. For one brief, terrifying moment Saadi played some South Indian tunes at full blast, before catching our looks and interpreting them as meaning that we would happily kill him and his assistant and drive the damn truck back to Colombo if he continued with the music.

In blessed silence we proceeded towards Colombo, a 9 hour odyssey where I learned something interesting. Transport trucks do not have anything in terms of suspension so you could feel every single jolt from the road. Needless to say by the end of the trip I had reached a level of pain that I had not thought possible.

So there it is, strawberry flavoured air, giant trevalley, a crazy tuk driver, even crazier mechanics and a temperamental truck called Anoja.

The moral of the story…don’t drink beer? Random I know.

Obsessed

It’s been awhile I know, but in between the new job and accompanying learning curve and a high intensity season the blogs have fallen by the wayside. The rain thundering down outside is however a harbinger of the end of the season…no more rush of air as the water envelops.

This has been a season of many firsts, the field of giant fans ghosting the sea floor, the adrenaline rush of a tank valve blowing, an inadvertent solo dive to 30m and the cold dread of feat clutching at my belly, overcoming that fear, exploring an enchanted garden on a wreck the equivalent of a 15 storey building underwater. Most of all I’m going to miss the camaraderie of adventure, the early mornings as the boat shards through the water with the excitement of the unknown ahead of us.

It’s going to be a long six months....

Withdrawal

It’s been four days without the water, the waves preventing us from launching has left me hot and bothered. I need to feel that blue rush, the anticipation as the boat surges through the waves, the spray sharding past the bow with a life of its own.

The reef rustling below as the sun’s rays kaleidoscope down into the deep blue. I need that symphony crescendo as the wreck rises out of the shimmering cloud of fusiliers.

I need Le Grande Bleu.

The Transition

I know I’m overdoing these posts, but I can’t help it.

There’s nothing more insecure than falling backwards. Weighted down with equipment and awkwardly duck legged. Perch on the edge of the boat, fingers up against the reg and mask and roll over the side, backwards.

There’s a brief fear as the world turns upside down but then the deep blue of the water takes you as it rushes up and the reassuring hiss of the regulator delivers air to your hurried breath. And you know the next 30 minutes to an hour, 13 meters down or 30 are going to bring you sights you have never seen and never will again.

I used to be scared of the backroll, an irrational fear that weighted down I would sink straight to the bottom of the ocean.

But now it’s mostly what I look forward to.

That grand bleu rush...

Neutral Buoyancy Nirvana

After the personal buoyancy seesaw of the previous dive I did something I had been having an inkling for a while that might work. I took one of the grey leaden weights off the belt.

The result was a breathtaking nirvana. Initially I thought I had fucked up because as J moved down the nylon line disappearing into the big blue, I had issues getting myself to sink. Remembering S’s words, I arched, hugged the BC and pressed the release valve to get all the last vestiges of air out of it. The descent was one of the most controlled that I’ve ever had.

A quick burst into the BC at 23 meters (which incidentally according to Pissu is about 7 stories under water…who knew?....gulp) and I was beautifully buoyant. The feeling was exhilarating and it was all I could do not to whoot! into my regulator as I finally found freedom below the ocean.

Swooping and swirling over the reef, breathing out deep to sink down and check out a moray in a cave apparently being given a shave by a couple of shrimps, smaller breaths out to cautiously lower myself next to a blackspot electric ray under an overhang and controlled breaths in to rise over a dip in the reef.

Pure bliss, this neutral buoyancy nirvana.

The safety stop was beautiful, instead of my usual yo-yoing in the water as I pump air in and out of my BC, which drives my dive computer up the wall. I hovered with minimal adjustments to the BC and my breathing and surfaced oh ever so smoothly after one of the best I’ve ever had.

Today was a significant step forward and I have an uncontrollable itch to keep going down into that deep blue.

Adrift

It was unnerving, the dark blue underneath and the bright blue up above as I bobbed in the waves alone. The last I had seen of my dive buddies were bubbles receding in the depths as I swore at myself through the regulator. I’m pretty competent most of the time, so pressing the inflator button instead of the deflator button was a ridiculously stupid thing to do and I shot up at a much faster rate than the prescribed 18m/minute. I’m fucking lucky I didn’t get the bends, or blow a lung out, though for the latter I’m still keeping a wary eye out.

For isolation though, there are fewer more unnerving moments I’ve had than then, alone in the vast Indian Ocean, with no boat in sight apart from the big liners on the horizon. Waves slapping up against me as I looked around for the boat and waved at anything that seemed promising. Looking down into the 21 meters below me, I couldn't even see the bubbles from my hidden dive buddies, though with the strong current I had no idea how far away I had drifted in those few moments. Thankfully the boatman managed to see my waving arms and I clambered on, shame faced and feeling extremely stupid. The only solution is to dive more, at least 20 more dives before the season fizzles out in March.

More blue yonder here I come.

Sitting at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean

27 feet down, this was not exactly how I had envisioned my first California dive, off Escondido beach in Malibu. They had promised kelp and that most definitely was there. I was after seated right next to one. As I had raised my hand and released the air from my BC and slid under the waves, everything disappeared into a pea soup green haze. Divemaster Dave, Phil, Brian and P sank right next to me, yet when I hit the bottom they were nowhere to be seen.

And boy did I hit bottom. For some reason, it seems that people dive out here in California with much more weights than we did back home. Even taking in the discrepancy of wearing a full wetsuit, hood, etc 27 pounds seemed a bit excessive. As soon as I went negative on my buoyancy, I shot through the water so quickly my sinuses didn’t so much equalize as implode quietly. I’m glad I didn’t do this over the Marianna because I’d still be falling.

Dave’s instructions rolled through my head, 30 seconds down and if we don’t find each other surface. Of course being on the bottom of the Pacific in conditions that seemed reminiscent of the inside of an Blue Whale after a solid rice and curry session wasn't exactly condusive to recalling those instructions. Visibility was down to a couple of feet and everything was pea soup green.

It was with some relief then that Dave appeared out of the gloom, fluorescent tank gleaming. As he motioned for me to follow him and we swam off, I assumed we were going to join up with the rest. Yet we continued swimming, at what seemed to me unseemly haste through the kelp. The brown green streamers pushed at us as we weaved through them. If I thought visibility was bad in the open, under the kelp everything went a chocolate brown. All I could see was the fluorescent tank and the faint gleam of Dave’s torch.

We continued swimming through the kelp, at one point Dave jerked up over a rock as something zapped him. I took great care to swim further up over the rock (turns out it was some kind of electric ray). After approximately 17 minutes of exploring this area, getting sick of kelp and learning to control my fear as the light kept ebbing and flowing, Dave gave the thumbs up. Ascending through the green and then dark blue waters, we got to the surface, right hand up as a sacrifice to any passing speedboats, we surfaced.

I was intensely curious to find out what had happened to the original plan of all five of us swimming in one line. Maybe because of the visibility Dave had decided to split us up. Of course it was with some surprise that I noted when the mask came off at the surface, that my dive buddy was in fact…not Dave.

I could however hear Dave in the distance, yelling. Floating on the surface, nervously eying Phil next to me, I couldn’t for the life of me make out what they were yelling. It was only as Phil looked over curiously and wondered aloud what the problem was, that it started to dawn on me….Phil hadn’t stuck to the plan. He’d grabbed me as a dive buddy and decided to go a wandering without waiting for anyone else. Me, being unable to differentiate white folks at the best of times and most definitely not underwater and in scuba gear, followed as had been instructed. Admittedly I did think the situation strange at the time, but then how does one discuss these things a couple of stories down in the water? Also if it was any consolation, Phil had thought I was P, which if anyone has seen us in real life would realize how laughable a mistake that would be.

As it turns out Dave had, rather un-gratifyingly in my opinion, decided that I must have panicked and drowned Phil (another experienced diver) with me. He had gotten Brian and P to take off their BCs and tanks, tied them to a kelp plant in order to help him look for our bodies. The worst thing is that P didn’t even defend me, pointed out that I’m not a likely person to panic. He was just trying to figure out how to tell the maternal unit without losing vital body parts. 911 was even being dialed as Phil thankfully decided not to explore anymore.

As it turned out, once we surfaced all was well with the world. Universal OK signals were exchanged and we came back to shore in staggered shifts. One thing is getting through the surf at the beginning of the dive was not an issue. But at the end, freezing, tired, disoriented, it’s a hell of a thing to be battered by waves while carrying that tank and wearing those fins. It was not with much dignity that I exited onto the beach. The rest of the dive club members assured me it was standard at the beginning.

Carrying the weights and tank in a wetsuit up PCH was also not the most fun. But it was worth it, despite some of the worst visibility I have seen outside of a drain in Colombo, I mean for all I know I could have had Jaws next to me I wouldn’t have noticed, the dive was an experience. The main lessons being stick to the plan and learning to recognize white people better. I think I’ve had my fill of kelp but I am looking forward to seeing what populates those forests, Channel Islands next stop!