North Korea (DPRK)

view from the people's libraryAlso know as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), the local’s would rather have you not name their country North Korea, as they still see the Korean peninsula as one nation. Whether this will eventually become the case again is anyone’s guess. The “hermit kingdom”, having secluded itself from the rest of the world for many decades now, has drifted so far from the rest of the planet that it can nowadays hardly claim to still be part of it. Indeed, travelling in the DPRK is just as otherworldly as it is a constant challenge to our conception of the world, more specifically, the western one.

Although it was surprisingly easy to go to, I still feel a sense of privilege of having been allowed to spend a couple days in what is possibly the most mysterious modern nation to have ever existed. For various reasons, I normally avoid going on organized tours but in the DPRK, showing up with your backpack at the border and hoping for a tourist visa is not an option, the only way to enter the territory is with a company (in my case Young Pioneer Tours) that has accredited ties to the Korean International Travel Agency, the regime’s own (and only) tour operator in the country. However, the DPRK is not many people’s idea of a vacation and it’s not that obvious at first that it’s even possible to come for a visit so consequently, most if not everyone on the tour was a seasoned traveler. A bunch of non tour-goers getting together for a tour, which made for an eclectic group and many North-Korean beer fueled nights of recounting adventures back at the hotel.

Some might find in the following paragraphs a downright abuse of superlatives (awesome, spectacular, immense, etc.) I’m not going to apologize, it was how I perceived it and moreover it was how it was meant to be perceived as when it came to buildings and monuments dedicated to their regime, the Korean spared no expense. As for myself, it has been one if not the best travelling experience I have ever lived.

Recipe for a North Korea

North Korea is a textbook totalitarian Stalinist nation the likes of which the world has never seen, not even Soviet Russia at its apogee. Even more surprising is the fact that it has managed to survive on its own this long, all the way to the information age we are in right now. All this due to the regime’s control of some key aspects of the life of it’s citizens, through which I will narrate my own experience during this trip.

  • Propaganda
  • Personality cults
  • Monuments
  • A great war, a national enemy and an omnipresent army
  • An ideology and a way of life
  • Limitation on Freedoms

The country certainly holds within its borders beautiful unspoiled landscapes and archaeological sites but let’s face it, it’s not the reason why most come to visit. What really is interesting and fascinating about this place is its people, its regime and the social and urban environments they coexist in.

Propaganda

IMG_5098
Propaganda in the Pyongyang metro

Upon entering any city in the DPRK, the one thing that will strike you the most (and possibly what sets them apart from any other agglomeration on the planet) is that there is no advertising whatsoever, only propaganda: portraits of the Great Leaders, slogans, paintings and sound broadcasts through the form of music or voices. In Pyongyang, the capital, I’ve found it to be omnipresent; out in the country side, not so much. At times the cityscape feels like those found in visual renditions of the many great dystopias in literature: immense murals of the great leader surrounded by proud workers and pointing a decisive finger at the sky or massive fearsome Korean script symbols displaying “Prosperous and Powerful Nation” like messages. Villages most often only had to do with some columns and portraits but regardless, propaganda was everywhere and pervasive.

High schoolers singing for us
High schoolers singing for us

All Koreans learn music from a very young age. Through singing, playing and dancing they practice cohesion and unity much like I did during my time in the army. We were taken to performances from artists of all ages, at a high school back in Pyongyang or in a primary school in smaller city and overwhelmingly they were of a caliber far superior to everything that I had ever seen. Sometimes downright disturbing as 11 years old exhibited the amount of comfort and confidence on the scene we normally would only expect from an experienced adult artist. You did not need to understand the lyrics to figure out that they were all about the feats of the great leaders, the glory of the nation or its war exploits. Music is an integral part of the system. It was played in the metro, at the train station and in many buildings, monuments and squares. Day and night I do not know, but certainly when tourists were around.

Kids learning about the life of Kim Jong-Il
Kids learning about the life of Kim Jong-Il
Propaganda at a primary school
Litterally: American bastards, hit, strike, military games are fun

During one our our visits to a primary school, we were taken to a few classes where kids were either learning to read an write, reciting in chorus the sounds of characters in Korean scripts (it may not seem like it but just like our writing system, is phonetical) or learning about comrade Kim Jong-Il’s life in a special room that appeared to be devoted to the life of the Supreme Leader. Through pointing at drawings of him at a very young age, the teacher had the children recite by heart excerpts of its biography or feats that he had done as a child. Plastered around the hallways and staircases of the school were propaganda images of U.S. and Japanese soldiers perpetrating atrocities against the Korean people and drawings of childish figures weilding tools or weapons in combative postures. Every classroom was outfitted with a piano and in one we were treated to an endearing dance performance by children in the middle of which they all gathered in circle while a boy and a girl started jumping around one one foot, attempting to make the other fall to the ground. Outside the playground had as a centerpiece a low-scale concrete tank shaped amusement module.

People looking at a painting of  the Supreme Leader looking at paintings
People looking at a painting of the Supreme Leader looking at paintings

In fact my first encounter with DPRK propaganda even started back in China. As I was walking to enter the plane back in Beijing, I spotted a stack of this week’s Pyongyang Times whose headline read “King Jong-Un provides on-site guidance to various sectors” and had a front page photo of the smiling Supreme Leader in a food factory with it’s entourage dutifully taking notes. I immediately grabbed a copy. It appeared no text or image had been spared by the regime’s propaganda machine. During the trip we made several stops at gift shops and without exceptions they always had a couple of copies of biographical works such as The great man Kim Jong-Il or philosophical works like Let us Exalt the Brilliance of Comrade Kim Il-Sung’s Idea on the Youth Movement and the Achievement Made Under his Leadership, not to mention the ubiquitous Juche handbook. It would follow me back home too, as I bought a couple of issues of the Pyongyang times and some posters.

Personality cults

The Great and the Supreme Leaders
The Great and the Supreme Leaders

The both deceased Great Leader (Kim Il-Sung) and Supreme Leader (Kim Jong-Il) are revered to a god-like status by their subjects; every North Korean man worthy of it wears a red pin that sports both their portraits, portraits which can also be found occupying the facade of every single building appearing to have a government function. In the literature, both men are not only extensively praised for lives lived in total dedication to the Korean people but are also conferred supernatural powers such as the ability to have inanimate objects such as tractors or even the weather paying respect to their grandeur by complying with their will.

Kumusan Palace of the Sun
Kumusan Palace of the Sun

The respect or the Korean people for their dear leaders is such that during our visit to the mausoleum where both embalmed remains are kept under glass sarcophagus, some non-westerners visitors started sobbing at the sight of their beloved masters resting in peace. No expense was ever spared when the time came to build monuments in their honor. Immense bronze statues are common place but the most impressive testament to the leader’s divine status was that aforementioned mausoleum: the Kumusan Palace of Sun. Previously Kim Il-Sung residential palace, it was converted after his death to his final resting place and renovated again after the passing away of its successor, Kim Jong-Il. All cameras were taken from us upon entering the building, there are some pictures on the web but frankly it can only be properly experienced in person as no image will do justice to the magnificence and immensity of it. The two leaders stay in different wings of the building and their setup sort of mirrors each other. Hundreds of meters of escalators and travelators, long hallways, immense halls and finally a passing through a dust-blowing machine eventually get you to the room where the remains of the leader is kept. There, in rows of three, you have to bow to the feet and each side (but not the head!) of the body. Afterwards, you proceed to where all the awards (medals, honorific doctorates and so on)  received by the deceased are displayed in a museum like fashion and finally a whole set of rooms where memorabilia used by the leader during his lifetime is held, notably its car, its train and in the case of Kim Jong-Il, his boat. The pilgrimage ends with a stop by the lamentation wall, built to symbolize the grief the of the people for their masters, where a sobering lady gives a very emotionally charged speech in Korean about how dearly they are missed.

The whole event was extremely processional, which added a great deal to an already very solemn atmosphere. All throughout the visit, we were kept in line or in rows, silent and surrounded by guards and followed by many many Koreans dressed their best and on special visits to pay their respects. It was so surreal we were bordering the absurd and could tell others in the group were sharing my feelings as I saw them grimacing, trying to repress a smile. Clenching my jaw the whole time in order to keep a serious face, it was clearly not a place to fuck up but inside, I was exhilarating with awe and fascination.

Monuments

Pyongyang has tons and tons of monuments pretty much all dedicated to the Great Leaders or the Korean People’s Army (KPA). Many of them in massive bronze and kept completely free of rust by factions of maintainers, as opposed to statues more commonly found around the rest of the world who are generally left to tarnish away to a black-green color. The most spectacular example was the Mansudae Grand Monument, where two immense statues of Kim Jong-Un and Kim Jong-Il standing on a pedestal flanked by other tributes to the KPA. There we had to show our respect by bowing as a group and each laying flowers at the base. Here I guess a picture is worth a thousand words. statues

The Juche tower
The Juche tower

You can only build so high and large in bronze, it’s somewhat pricey. If you want to go for the sky, you have to use other materials such as stone wich is what the famous Juche tower is built from, in the form of a paint-brush and dedicated to the Juche ideology, the philosophy underpinning the functionning of DPRK’s societal system. While it can be resumed as “self-reliance” I was told it was quite complex and not really meant to be understood by mere mortals. At more than one hundred meters high, it offers a spectacular 360 degrees view of the whole of Pyongyang, perhaps only surpassed by the yet-to-be completed Ryugyong hotel. arch of triumph

The Arch of Triumph, buit to commemorate the Korean war, also deserves a special mention, for beating it’s French counterpart by a couple of meters. Take that French.

A great war, a national enemy and an omnipresent army

At the DMZ
At the DMZ

The DPRK’s great war, is as everyone will easily guess, the war of Korea. North Koreans hold completely opposite view points on many historical issues and political ideas to what we generally accept as the truth but the outcome of that war is probably the one we most disagree on, as they are entirely convinced that it was started by the “sneaky US imperialists” and that they came out victorious. After some reading on the subject, I’ll admit they are not entirely in the wrong, but great struggles make great nations and hence the government had to come up with a rearranged version of the facts to give grounds to their ideology and find someone responsible for the great hardships its citizens have had to endure all the way to present day, where seemingly arbitrary UN sanctions are still adding more fuel to the fire of hatred.

This all sort of justifies the omnipresence of a massive army (the KPA) all throughout the country (pretty useful to maintain a police state).  Yet, the only way I got to really come near them was at the demilitarized done along the border with South Korea where they are justifiably in greater number there but everywhere else I could see people in uniform doing all sorts of tasks (like snow plowing entire stretches of highways with shovels). Later on, I read that the army not only has a public working role but is also used for construction, which again goes towards explaining why I saw so many but still, I could not really take any decent pictures of them at work due to strict restrictions on what we were allowed to photograph.

Pyongyang war museum
Pyongyang war museum

One very notable build of the KPA is the war museum in Pyongyang. To remind its people of their historical struggle, the regime has erected countless monuments to that great war and its many heroes but they all pale in comparison with the newly opened museum, which also really puts Canada’s own war museum to shame. Whatever we were told there was severely skewed to fit the regime’s view of thoses historical events but the quality and number of the exhibits was outstanding, let alone the building into which they where housed, that rivaled the great leader’s mausoleum in splendor and luxury. We enjoyed a private visit of the place (empty of locals) that unsurprisingly concentrated on the KPA’s bounty of American equipment. We especially spent a lot of time visiting the USS Pueblo, a spy ship captured by the Korean Navy in 1968 and a source of great national pride.

The Japanese also hold a dear place in the Korean’s hearts as, prior to the Americans, had subjugated much of Asia through colonialism. A few monuments in the DPRK are dedicated to the struggle against their rule on the peninsula, but contrary to the U.S., they did not appear to me as Korea’s own worst enemy as the Chinese also seem to really still hold a pretty big grudge against them. For that matter, as I am typing those lines at the cafe in my hostel, the TV is playing a series depicting the Chinese rebellion during the Japanese colonial rule. Still the Koreans loved them well enough to almost always refer to them (along with the Americans) as the “sneaky Japanese imperialists” or variations on that theme.

An ideology and a way of life

Officially, the DPRK is governed according to its own ideology, the Juche idea, which in reality materializes it self in some variant of communism. Almost nothing private, everything is government run, the stores, the bars. Food is rationed, everyone is entitled to  a certain amount of rice and you can buy at fixed prices whatever else you can afford. Parks and amusement facilities are numerous and according to the regime, top-notch. On their single free day of the week, citizens get to spend leisure time in many pools, sports fields, entertainment facilities that dot the city. Apparently, seeing them enjoying picnics and playing sports on Sundays is a sight to see but the late autumn weather with did not lend itself to any sort of outdoor fun. At nighttime, it gets somewhat gloomy because electricity is limited to only certain areas (and monuments) of the city, leaving entire districts in almost complete darkness and also I suspect without heating as even at daytime every building we entered had little or no warmth inside.

To keep themselves warm I suppose, men are given a monthly ration of 5 liters of beer they can redeem at the many bars around the city. Sadly, transferring this privilege is not permitted and getting caught doing so can lead to losing it entirely. During our stay we had the chance to go have a few pints at a local micro-brewery and to everyone’s surprise, the beer was excellent. With the exception of Soju, a strong liquor brewed with rice, all of the locally brewed beverages were of decent quality, but due to sub-par sanitization procedures of the bottling lines, slight overconsumption could give you a massive hangover, which I got to experience myself one morning.

At the restaurant
At the restaurant

As tourists, we were comparatively given outstanding treatment, with varied delicious meals at restaurants for lunch and dinner and easy access to bowling, ping-pong, pool and karaoke back at the hotel. No limitations on the amount of drinks and snacks we could order too. Rooms were heated all night long and so was the water. Not that I really cared but the only thing that left to be desired was the decoration and furniture that, just like everywhere else in North Korea, had not been updated since the 1970s. It made for very interesting trips back in time that went all the way back to the 50s I would say during the snail-paced train ride out of the DPRK, where the passenger car was kept at a comfortable temperature using … coal.

The view from the Juche Tower
The view from the Juche Tower

Architecturally speaking, Pyongyang is a communist’s dreams, with massive avenues crisscrossing the city and huge intersections controlled by the awesome looking traffic ladies for the lack of traffic lights. Bombed to ashes during the war and rebuilt from the ground-up under Soviet guidance, large rows of bland box-like concrete buildings painted in pastel colors (or not painted at all) extend all around. Between them, Koreans walking about with a purpose but never gathered in large groups as this could arouse suspicion. Transport-wise, most of them get places using the tram, the bus or the metro but a recent influx of Chinese-build taxis has had drivers in the capital city get stuck at an intersection for more than one red-light. Despite that, I believe Pyongyang remains an incredibly bike friendly city, given the abundance of two-wheelers on the road.

Street scene in Sariwon
Street scene in Sariwon

Since fuel is still very scarce and that really most of the vehicles are government owned, the roads outside of the city limits were almost entirely devoid of cars. 8 lane long straight highways with no human in sight really make for post apocalyptic scenery. In other cities, save for a few trucks and tractors, everyone was on foot or riding bikes. Given the communist architecture love for large, open spaces, I could not help but feel sorry for the Koreans who, devoid of the luxury of transportation we enjoy, have to commute this way every day of the year, rain or snow. Empty highway

Limitation on Freedoms

Having fun at a restaurant
Having fun at a restaurant

We were not allowed to grab pictures of anything related to the military and generally were advised to ask for permissions whenever we wanted to press the shutter button. Talking about sensitive matters was not recommended, especially with our Korean guides, who accompanied us everywhere we went. At night, we were confined to our hotels where thankfully, there was plenty of activities to entertain us with but during daytime, we followed a strict schedule of visits where no one was allowed to wander off to explore. Do I need to mention that there was no Internet too?

Rows of cassette players at the People's Library
Rows of cassette players at the People’s Library

Pyongyang has a gigantic library where citizens seem free to browse many works from inside and abroad in many media forms and many languages. Just for fun, some of us asked at the counter which were the latest English books that have been returned and the titles that came up were The Encyclopedia of Chickens and The Commercial Value of Sea Cucumbers Around the World. As you might have guessed it, whatever forms of literature available there is limited to technical works or those rendered innocuous through the passage of time such as Shakespeare’s. Interestingly though, our guide showed us a copy of Ann Frank’s diary that was lying about and confessed us it had been one of her favorite books.

In conclusion

Take whatever you want from what I have written here, my intention was not to paint a grim picture of North Korean, it gets enough bad reps on its own. Besides being a most fascinating experience, my time there was also extremely pleasant, especially thanks to the Korean people in general and especially our guides from inside and out of the country.

Life is not easy in the DPRK, but people were smiling, children were waving as our bus was passing by and girls were giggling at the sight of us bunch of tall westerners. We even had a snowball fight at the DMZ under the watchful eyes of the soldiers. Everyone was polite, kind, courteous and appeared generally happy that we had made the journey (even the Americans) all the way around the planet to their country, braving the cold, to learn more about their way, their culture and their aspirations. Around some beers at night, where Mr. Lim was showing off his outstanding skills at ping-pong, me and Mr. Ju were having a casual conversation over how the workweek is set up in our respective countries, he has a wife and a kid, she used to be a tour guide as well had to quit working to raise their offspring.

The DPRK may be on a different planet, it’s still inhabited by humans.

Rollerblading in Pyongyang's main square
Rollerblading in Pyongyang’s main square


Note: Most if not all photos were taken by Jean-Michel Paris.
Many thanks to Young Pioneer Tours for having made such an amazing experience possible
For those wanting a different account (in French) of the same story, Jean-Michel has posted his travel log on his blog.

Central America – The end

The Great Blue Hole from above

From Utila, Honduras to Caye Caulker, Belize

I’ll admit that as soon as my plane ticket was bought, I sort of checked out and turned on the autopilot. I’m glad my brain did that on my behalf, because the journey was a grueling one. Numerous chicken buses, border crossings, a boat; it took two days and a half to get there. To make things a bit faster (but more complicated), we even went through Guatemala. The reason I just pushed through was that I wanted to dive the Blue Hole in Belize, some cenotes as well, and meet a friend on Isla Mujeres. That’s too bad because what the Lonely Planet said about Belize is true, it vibrates to a different tune than the rest of Central America. It is friendly, clean and boasts well preserved nature as well as loads of mayan ruins. It is well worth spending come time in but I had to press on.

The Blue Hole did not live up to its reputation and that I expected. Many people back in Utila had told me just that but I still enjoyed it since I had never ever done a dive that special and got to see sharks for the very first time as well. Otherwise, it was just a big, deep, dark, blue hole; like seeing the Eiffel tower is a must on a trip to Paris, the Blue Hole has to be dived on a trip to Belize. The two other dives afterwards were interesting and considered by most the highlight of the tour, but for me, swimming at 41 meters deep between stalactites with sharks watching us from far off into the hole is what made my day.

From Caye Caulker, Belize to Tulum, Mexico

A solid day of travelling later and I had reached my second stop, Tulum. Compared to the rest of Central America, going places on the Yucatan peninsula was a piece of cake: no chicken buses, plenty of departues and reliable services. Tulum is a popular destination, praised for its beaches and the many activities you can do around. After all it sits just at the edge of the Cancun region, a resort paradise. But beside a quick trip to the local Mayan ruins, I was not there for that, I was there for diving the cenotes.

Consider world-class diving sites, the cenotes are simply big sink holes in the jungle. As a side note, the Blue Hole is also a cenote, it just sits completely underwater now but it was formed in the same fashion before the level of the seas started raising. Little life is to be found in there, blindfishes, shrimps, small isopods, the cenotes are not popular for their fauna and flora. They are famous for their rock formations, the lighting effects you can see under the right conditions, and cave diving in general. The Yucatan peninsula lies over a huge network of underwater rivers of which the extent is not very well known, but every time a cenote opens up on the surface, a new access to that labyrinth is created. You can enter through one and come up another a few kilometers away, but that is serious cave diving and done by very few highly trained people; if you get lost, you die. I am not that crazy yet, but I feel that if I keep subjecting myself to compressed air at depth, I could get that mad eventually.

The entrance to the pit

Crystal clear water, infinite visibility, no currents, mind-blowing rock formation and being deep enough in a cavern not to be able to see the light of day make for an out of this world experience. However, the highlight of my diving there was not swimming between millions of year old limestone columns, but going down the pit, where two very impressive natural phenomenons can be witnessed: a sulfur cloud and a halocline. The sulfur cloud lies at the bottom of the pit and is the result of vegetation that has fallen down to the bottom slowly decomposing in the water. Everyone is accustomed to seeing clouds in air, but water being a different fluid, their formation takes in a different shape, especially when it is perfectly immobile. From a distance, the result is layered perfectly even and opaque clouds, as you close up, fluid dynamics patterns start emerging, disrupt (it take a few days to reform) the cloud by passing your hand through and create some more, move your flashlight around at the same time and you are in for a trip. The halocline is not as impressive but provides for another interesting effect on the way up. It is the interface between salt and fresh water and because the two have different densities they do not mix. Well, only across their fuzzy boundary, which has a varying refraction index and consequently distorts light traversing the layer that you just pass through going down but actually swim in going up (as part of the dive), making everything look blurry. A similar effect happens between cold and hot water called a thermocline, but the difference in density not being as high, the blurriness is a lot more subtle. With the halocline, you vision is severely impaired, everything you see takes the appearance of a painting from the impressionists and if it was not for the flashlight of the guide, I would have totally lost him. Best dive ever. Here are links to two images from the cenotes I dove in (they are not my own so I cannot post them here), one is from dos ojos cenote and the other is from the pit.

From Tulum to Cancun, Mexico

Initially, the only reasons I departed from Cancun was because I wanted to dive the cenotes and because the plane tickets were cheap. Back in Utila tough, I befriended Rodrigo, who worked as a dive master at Isla Mujeres, an island a couple kilometers off of Cancun, so I decided to shorten my overall way up to meet him over there.

I did two dives with him around the island which were fine, apart for the insane currents on the first one, but the highlight was supposed to be a wreck the next day, which got cancelled because the two other idiots had partied too much the night before. I was hangover myself and still showed up because I knew that operations like this need a minimum amount of people to justify going out, but apparently they did not and decided to sleep in. Quite frustrating. My plane was leaving the next day early in the morning (as usual, I slept at the terminal) so I could not dive in the afternoon and was stuck killing a full day’s worth of time on the island, which is extremely touristic. After 4 months of travelling and being so close to the end, I was not in the mood to enjoy it, all I wanted was to get home.

This is it. That was the end of this Central America trip.

Oh Utila! (Central America month 3 and 4)

“Would you like to hold a fetus?” Doctor John said. Where am I ? I was at a birthday party ten minutes ago, now I am drunk out of my mind sitting on a casket next to a skeleton with a dried-up human fetus in my hands.

“If you shake it you can hear its brain rattling inside its skull”. I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. Dive master Dave and Trav seem not to be grasping what just hit them. Screw it! Mighty interesting Dr. John, now can I have some of that rum?

A crazy island full of awesome people

The people I was diving with

Utila had its three lies way before Bocas del Toro. The island is about two things and two things only: drinking and diving. Bars are as abundant as are dive shops and the partying is unending and relentless. Every day you (do) dive, every day you (can) drink. Janne’s blog post struck a point, it is excessive, shallow and quickly you reconsider choosing this destination, but in no time you make friends and realize that no too deep beneath your hangover neighbor lies an awesome person. Other divers, your instructors, the boat captain, the local baleada lady, you get into a routine, the old man sitting in front the corner store says hi everytime you walk by.

Doctor John’s place

The diving industry has this particularity where almost no one that works in it ever thought they would ever become divers. For the majority, it is a second, third or fourth career and as a result this brings a huge variety of backgrounds together in the same place under the same ideal: to have fun and to share it with others.

Consequently, many get sucked in the “vortex”. Travis only wanted to do his open water course and ended going all the way to divemaster. Dave quit his job over the phone. Nora and Meta decided to miss their flight back home so they could stay here longer. I wanted to visit El Salvador and Guatemala.

I never saw that coming

Sometimes, life has other plans for you, all I wanted was to dive: maybe do one or two courses, do some fun-dives, get a t-shirt and move on with my travelling. Problems started when I met Rebecca in Nicaragua, the boss or Bay Island College of Diving (BICD) (she did not tell me at the time), I told her I wanted to be under water and she was quick to convince me that I should just go ahead and take the divemaster course because with it comes free diving for life. The maths are pretty simple, the formation is more expensive, but paying for each individual dive I would get to do over there would cost me many thousands of dollars more.

The Bay Island College of Diving

Two days of chicken bussing north, a night in Tegucigalpa (not much to write about it except that it is super sketchy) and the next day I was starting on my advanced and then rescue diver courses. Rebecca told me that I would be starting the divemaster with Janne, “someone” from Finland. She did not specify the sex of that person, so I was left thinking my diving buddy for the coming weeks would be a Finnish lady. Wrong! Janne is actually a man’s name. I knew I was dreaming in colors. In the end Janne made up for his lack of feminine features through awesomeness in many aspects of his personality, but I felt sort of dissapointed. Anyway, with our catching up done, we joined Travis, Dave, Nora, Meta, Reba and John aboard the divemaster program at BICD.

Things were starting to pick up and already I was starting to wonder why I was doing this and what I was doing here. All I wanted was to dive.

Underwater fun

A divemaster is basically a diving guide. He equips you, takes you diving around, shows you pretty wildlife and brings you back to the boat all while making sure you are safe and enjoying the experience. Diving in itself is a risky activity for the very simple reason that while all life forms started in the water, the many hundred million years we have spend out of it has made us completely incapable of staying lengthy periods of time under it. Technology has filled the gap (SCUBA: self contained underwater breathing apparatus) by making this possible again, but not without risks. Breathing compressed air under water without training or careful supervision is extremely hazardous but if done correctly, it is about as dangerous as golf.

The risks cannot be overstated, but through relentless quality management and research, the diving community has made the sport (in its recreational form) extremely safe. As a divemaster, you become a central part of this risk mitigation effort, but that takes training and experience, which the  course is here to provide by teaching you a wide array of skills and knowledge such as diving theory, search and rescue techniques, leading dives, wildlife identification and so on.

Having all this responsibilities makes diving sound more serious and it does, but it also makes it more enjoyable. As a beginner diver, you crave the adventure, but most of your attention is devoted to maintaining buoyancy, monitoring your air and depth and keeping whoever is leading the dive in sight. As a dive master, you lead the dive, which comes with a moral duty of course, but the confidence and the experience transform what is an extreme activity for most into a sort of meditative experience, something otherworldly.

Diving is really all about fun

Relaxation techniques tell you to concentrate on your breathing, to inhale and exhale slowly, to empty your mind. Under water, this is exactly what you are taught do. SCUABA equipement adds resistance to your breathing so it has to deep and slowly. Your hearing is not that useful, you cannot talk, your sense of touch gets overwhelmed by the contact of surrounding water. All that is left is sight and luckily, coral reefs are among the most spectacular environments on this planet. It has to be experienced to be understood. Everything down there is mesmerizing in its own right. Hovering still in mid-water, watching an hawksbill turtle gnawing at a piece of coral not minding your presence at all sort of gives you the feeling that for that  brief moment you are underwater you are part of it all. Fish are generally no too scared of divers: a squid will acknowledge your presence by turning black, but it will not flee. Everything is captivating, the rules or nature are very different than on land.

Some creatures are extremely hard to find, somehow turning diving into a game of pokemon. I found a toadfish today ! I have only ever seen a batfish ! For some others, its a game of luck, they see you but you will only be able to see them if they choose so, such as is the case with the elusive octopus. I cannot think of something more gracious and beautiful to look at underwater, it is a show of colors and shapes, one moment it is looking at you all bright red in color, the other moment, it turns a shade of gray and tries mimicking a coral bush. Lose sight of it and it will most likely vanish forever. The right creature can turn an ordinary dive into a memorable experience. It takes patience and it takes luck. Some clueless idiots come diving expecting to spot an eagle ray. Sorry for you, but the only places where you are guaranteed to see animals are zoos and aquariums. Do not feel disappointed because you failed to spot that special creature, you just spend 45 minutes breathing underwater, that is also cool.

Getting ready for a staff night dive at the wreck.

There is more to diving than wildlife spotting, especially when done with friends. Explore the hulk of an old cargo ship at night. Get chased by and green moray eel. Map a dive site. Drive a spear through the skull of an unsuspecting lionfish. Come back up on the surface and seal in that memorable dive around a conversation with your buddies.

Island fun

Good times were abundant on the island as much as they were underwater, albeit with reduced options compared to the mainland. Of course, you had a beach, a few possible hikes (freshwater caves), you could rent kayaks, but in all truthfulness, much of the entertainment revolved around the consumption of alcohol and other types of drugs. And the going out was good. Most people came over to take their open water course, which limited their stay to only a couple days, but some faces would always come back and soon you would realize that they either work there or got stuck just like you. You made friends fast.

There was the bar scene, which was limited to only a handful of places. At the dive shop we had a thing called Thirsty Thurdays, which usually started as a casual barbecue and ended in a night of heavy drinking. Once in a while (in normal time that is quite often), there would be the odd memorable event. One of those was a water caye trip which turned into a massive rescue operation.

Thirsty Thursdays

Every two sunday afternoon a bar on the island would organize an afternoon of partying on a deserted island half-an-hour boatride away from town. That sunday started out like every other one, but due to miscommunication about which boat were to take what people and everyone’s desire to spent as much time as possible on the caye, about forty individuals were left stranded there. The ball got passed around a few times until Rebecca, the manager at BICD decided we should be the heroes for that night. With but an hour to sober up from an afternoon of adult fun, I was back on a boat with divemaster Dave and Chad who, all excited by the perspective of saving all those pretty topless girls from a night with the sandflies, actually kept on sipping a bottle a rum they snuck aboard. The sun had set, the sea was a lot rougher that on the way back and finally, the ride was a lot slower because had to take a much larger boat that would fit everyone. The island having no dock, this also meant that it would not be possible to beach that boat. Upon our arrival there, I remember hearing a loud cry of relief before chaos ensued. We could not get closer than about 50 meters from the island and the seafloor was too loose for the anchor to take hold, so we had to yell to everyone there they had to swim to us.

This had to be done in a couple waves as the boat was getting pushed towards shore but in the end, everyone got onboard. Reflecting back on the event, we were extremely lucky it went without incidents: everybody was drunk/high, some were poor swimmers, it was dark, the sea was rough. We were praised more than once on the way back, with promises of free thank you drinks and everlasting gratefulness. None of that would ever be fulfilled.

At the end of the day, it all blends together. At the end of the day, it was just another crazy Utilian adventure.

Learning Finnish

Every time I would be out doing some “serious drinking” with Janne I would ask him for a new Finnish word. Every time he would question my interest in learning his language and my reply would always be that I love the sound of it and find learning languages passioning. For posterity, I shall write down the extend of my vocabulary before it slips my mind. Mistakes are intentionally left uncorrected, Finnish, like Spanish, is written like it is spoken, but it being so foreign still makes it hard to guess the correct orthograph.

  • moi: hello
  • kiitos: thanks (that I learned when I was in Finland)
  • yksi, kaksi, kolme: one, two, three
  • bisse: beer
  • bessi: water (good in between bisse)
  • rarra: money (necessary for purchasing bisse and bessi)
  • koira: dog
  • liahpulla: Finnish meatballs (its what they brought to the “pot luck at cell block C (aka my house)”)
  • minnu nemene on: my name is
  • vissu ma on kandessi: fuck I’m drunk (became extremely useful during that snorkel test night)
  • kiippis: cheers!
  • uva uaatta: good night

Motherfuckin sand flies

All is not fun and games on Utila. Spending so much time high on life makes the landing back into physical reality somewhat rough. For some it is ear infections from diving every day, for me it was sand flies. At dawn especially they are a big issue. A lucky few appear to be immune but I was not part of them; my legs were soon full of bites and the urge to scratch was unbearable. Nothing I would be concerned with normally, the woulds were very superficial, but it got infected. It could be the constant wetness or grey water runoffs directly in the sea or both, I do not know, but what was merely scratches turned into pus oozing deep crater like wounds. Only after a few weeks without any improvements did I decide it was time to act. I got antibacterial cream, pulled out my first-aid kit and made it an habit of disinfecting and putting cream on them once I was out of the water.

Then something else occured, twice. I only remember feeling a small prick on my heel on my way home on night but two days later, a massive extremely painful blister with swelling radiating all around my foot had grown from where the small prick was, leaving me limping quite badly. After a week it went away and I was just starting to recover full mobility when something similar stuck the side of my foot, turning again into the same type of blister but this time a lot more painful and swollen. Now it was time to go see Doctor John.

Apparently he was hangover that day but I was taken care of by his Austrian nurse. “This is not pretty”, yes I know. “No diving for a couple days for you” shit. “This is a staph infection, we will have to scrape it off” shit. I usually am pretty ok with me or other people conducting medical procedures on my body but that time, I had to ask for a glass of water for it felt like I was about to faint, especially when she started cutting away the blister on my foot to uncover what was under: a gnarly infection.

The next day I already felt a big improvement, not only on my wounds but also on my general level of well-being. My immune system was really at war, thank you modern medicine. Concerning the two blisters on my right foot, I am still in the unknown. Staph infections do spread to nearby skin lesions, but this was something different. My first theory was that it was a spider bite and Nick suggested it could have been a brown recluse spider. However, according to Wikipedia, they are not found in Central America. .

This whole story left pretty obvious marks on my legs. Some get tattoos to remind them of places and events, I got scars. Regardless, the jungle is a mean place, if something is wrong, better act quick before it gets out of hand.

Got stuck

I wanted to make this trip about visiting every single country in Central America. Having spent much more time that planned for in Utila, this is not going to happen, I will have to leave mainland Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador for another voyage. Is that a bad thing? No. Am I dissapointed? No. The fact that I could choose to stay in Utila is a perfect example of the range of freedom allowed with no-time-limit trips. Not to forget that staying somewhere for extended duration also counts towards travelling, which some aspects are meant to be experienced this way. Like friendships, which take a while to build. Like ecosystems, which takes a long time to explore. Like baleada places, all which you should try a couple times to truly find your favorite one.

Janne, Dave, Travis, Nora and Meta, spending those two months with you was beyond awesome. Rebecca, Vanessa, Nick, Rimas, Heather, Fern, Kelsey and Captain Seth, you are the reason this was so much fun. For some of you this is only a good bye, as I will most likely come back to take technical diving courses, for the rest, farewell.

Now I need to find a way to put this divemaster thing to good use…