I dont actually remember the first two or three days very well, it was
raining a lot, but warm and actually almost pleasant, and my already by default
setting jungleproof Maeuschen was showing me the work place, and we got to know
the team. Big up to the team, really
good people, marine biologists Marc and Darwin,
...(my surprise at those kind of english names wore off quickly as more
people introduced themselfes throughout the day, so next time a small featured (for
your standards.. are there actually more asians than whitekids in the world?) ,
brown skinned asian looking doode comes to you and says his name is
Fitzpatrick, just take it as given, and admit that yours is River Rainbow
because your parents wanted it this way)...
Community Organizers and Educators Laura, Rolie, Jimmy and boat and car
drivers Daniel,
This email is being written in small chunks of half hours of
concentration, thats why, when i started telling about the team and college, it
was because i thought it might be interesting, but actually today, there is a
much more presing issue to be adressed.
I cant
The project is basically a coproduction with the local University, so
right now, until our "own" building, the COASTAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
center, is finished, the whole operation is based in the University guesthouse.
I am probably over simplifying and leaving stuff out when i condense
that the project is:
Keeping a scientific eye on the reefs and coasts of the area, and on how
its changing because of human fuckups, like slash-and-burning the surrounding
mountainsides (thus allowing for the soil to be washed into the sea, from the
very sad looking natural graveyards that are left after the fire), overfishing
and general (often innocent) destruction of the eco system around the coast,
like Mangroves.
Trying to raise awareness and educate the local folk to sort it out, and
re-plant, and protect and patrol, and respect protected areas and also suggest
and provide other ways of making a living that are less dependent on the
already overstressed reef world. And
make all of this important stuff deeply understood, so that when the project
finishes, not everything is going to drift back into the desperate (gotta eat
yaw!) abusing of the coast. This is no
easy business, because the communities are sometimes far away (actually not far
at all, but still hours and hours by 4x4 or boat) and range from the
"city" dwelling Baler captains, to the indigenous canoo masters of
the universe, of the places that are not yet reached by roads. Infact, to be fair, all the boats here are
of the kind of postcard canoo-with-outbording-anti-tip-over-construction
variety, they just vary in size and the fact that they have or havent got a
motor. The anti-tip-over construction
brings me back to the big wave business, but lets not get anxious....
hahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrgggggggghhhhhhhh....
The other day we went to visit Dibut, one of the most remote communities
in the projects reach. Its a 1,5 hours
boat ride around rocky mountains and loads of reefs. For me it was the second time to see a
indigenous community, after the indian village i had passed walking in Brasil
on the trip in 2001. Then, i had been
very scared to behave wrongly, and basically had been sitting at the entrance
of the place,
This time it was very different.
Going there with the whole team, all Philippinos apart from the white
"financer boss woman" (something that is luckily never felt, we are
part of the team iīd like to think) and her even whiter husband with the scary
colored eyes (the other day i freaked out a little girl so much that she
wouldnīt stop crying and suffering the whole two hours i was around her family
home). Laura from the team is the main
voice in situations like this, she is upbeat and "hosting" and
introducing everybody and making everyone feel peachy about these, at times,
"clashy" situations. Amazing
skills. When shooting the documentary
starts for real, i will need her a lot i think. Anyway, we spent a day at the village, and
it was one off the most soothing experiences, walking around the reef and
surrounding forrest, seing funny animals, making friends with a dog who came
with us whereever we went the whole day, and encountering really open and
friendly people. Smiling. Strangely, or maybe not, the folks from Dibut
had a much easier time getting their heads around Juīs and my differentness than
the people in Baler. My guess is that
thatīs because the encounter wasnīt mixed up with this kind of "aspiration
to be american" that we find in the more connected places like Baler.
It sounds so commonplace, and if i had photos to show you, of how
beautiful this village and its reef and mountains are it would be worse: for
me, Dibut, this place without cars, without electricity or phonelines, at the
absolute bosom of mother earth, was the closest i have seen to humans living
happily together and being the opposite of full-of-shit, if that makes
sense. Hmmm. Words like paradise spring
to mind inevitably......
I think maybe I am by experience a bit of a city boy, ..or anyway when
smart poeple talk about modern urban life being a postmodern bubble, everyone
living alienated from the people around them, faced with a world too complex to
see as a whole and with too many choices, most of which are completely
irrelevant, ...or something.., then i know what they are saying and i think
they are essentially right. So why not
call Dibut a paradise? Such a simple
place, easily explored spacially in a few days, the community open to everyone,
and small anyway, natural food everywhere, and happy, naturally healthy and
heartwrenchingly innocent and well funny youth giving a constant upbeat touch
to everything... Sounds top-billing
to any city survivalist i guess, I remember being deeply impacted by the Brasil
trip when I came back to my - then quite difficult - Lodon life. Thinking about it now, with the prospect of
actually spending some real time here having to organise a life in a country
where you can take very few things for granted, i realise that i am actually
quite happy to have access to medical urgency care, glad that i had a higher education,
that i have money/independence earned by working in a job, and even something
as loose as "an idea about what else is going on in the
world"... The Dibutīsters normally
dont. Their life is a life of complete
dependence. If the ecological and cultural
balance that keeps them fed is rocked, and it is increasingly rocked, then they
are basically fucked. I guess its no
secret that people like them basically are.
Maybe thats what is meant by this horrid expression of "lost
paradise".
Ah and a true one: Paradise is no
place outside of yourself.
On the way back i fell asleep in the nose of the boat, trying to cover
myself as best as possible from the sun and flashing out on the feeling of calm
waters drifing past my back only a few centimeters from my shoulders, on the
other side of the boats body. This
made for an even more shocking waking up, because when suddenly a big Bang
shook the boat, my first thought was that we are running onto a reef and my
shoulders were about to get ground into fish food.
We had been passing a medium sized Banca (E.Coppola calls them Bonka)
with two guys sitting on it. Our
speedboad had been shooting past quite
closely between them and the reef, and the "Bang" had been the
outboarder motor having cut what seemed to be a line swimming in the
water. Everybody was highly
alert. We stopped, then turned around to
see what was going on. Our captain
Daniel is meant to be quite experienced, so something out of the ordinary was
to be expected. After what might have
been fifteen seconds a diver appeared from the water, armed with just his
goggles, and wearing a shocked and numb look on his face. Some words in Tagalog were exchanged between
Daniel and the captain of the Banca, while teh diver sat down staring on the
outrigger of their boat. The two
captains were shouting in this tone of voice that is still impossible for me to
assess, ..angry maybe? Or just loud and clear??. In any case, it sounded like the diving crew
had done something wrong, not us. We
went on our way and Marc explained what happened. They had been diving (for reef harvesting of
some kind) using the air compressor normally used for airbrushing or car
painting, pushing the air down a long hose directly to the diver. This technique seems to be as common here as
it is unhealthy, dangerous and illegal, bacause the air coming out of the tube
is contaminated with all kinds of shit, but even more, because it is not a
reliable air supply, and a diver working at, say 15 or even just 10 meters cant
just come up quickly if something goes wrong, because of the compression of his
body. The body is exposed to a lot of
pressure in the deep, and needs a slow adjustment to surface pressure when
coming up, otherwise the blood consistency goes al funny and you can die or get
seriously disabled. So basically, we
had passed the boat too close, because Daniel hadnīt seen the warning gestures
by the fishermen. We had cut the airhose
of this diver, and I guess the poor doodeīs facial expression is now
explained. In a nutshell, he probably
wasnīt deep enough to get into lethal trouble, nonetheless we could have easily killed him, probably
harmed him a little, and definitely seriously ruined his day. Marc told me to watch out for partly crippled
people in the fisher communities. Seen
two so far. Its part of the project
to put some organisation and control into the fishing goings-on in this part of
the coast.
So. You made it up to here. Here comes Da Waves! If you are Rodrigo or Kai Madsen or Simi or
Nacho or far-away-Andre and Diego, you might want to go to www.surfersvillage.com and somehow go
to the Southeast Asia Meteorology section and you will get all excited about
the beauty of Taifuns. They make for
beautyful swirls of cake-cream on the satelite images and for quite incredible
waves on the surrounding shores. And
given all this beauty, i think its only fair to dedicate this report to
Rodrigo, my fellow stormy-shitty-stinky-mediterranean-wave hunter. No beating around the bush here:
mediterranean surfers are the true Soul Surfers (i.e.: they do most of their
surfing inside their soul, not the water.........)....
Last Friday and Saturday we had a trip planned, to the northernmost
community within the project. It was
meant mainly for getting to know the communities and their Mayors and to maybe
do some recreational snorkeling inside the bay that the places are grouped
around, which appeared to be completely sheltered from the open pacific. When a few days before, the Internet
predicted a Taifun passing by close to the Philippines, our surfing fellows
(Basically Marc, Joel the local Surfing overlord and our guru, and Julia and
me) were getting a little excited, although not overly worked up, because the
last two times, the same prediction had produced absolutely nothing, with the
waves going west, away from here. When
then, a day or so before the Taifun was meant to get close, it looked like this
time we are in for some real waves I was
getting well anxious and cursing its timing, because according to the internet,
the waves would come just when Ju and I are supposed to be out of town,
splashing around with goggles on our noses in a calm-watered bay.
The night before leaving it
was certain that something was coming, the weather was already changing, and i
was admittedly torn, tempted to even cause a Taifun between Ju and me by
staying and enjoying the one at hand.
But of course, with the whole idea of divine patience and Zen-ing up the
place, a responsible decision was made: We go, my board stays here for the boys
to use (there is a constant shortage of surfboards in Baler). Next morning I teeth-grindingly left the
board and some repairing materials outside the room and we jumped into the 4x4
for yet another driving experience with Noel, who makes trips short but
horrible. The road led us up the
incredibly beautyful coastline of Aurora on some quite rustic
"roads", on the one hand a very nice thing, one the other hand, namely
the right, where the water was, a very testing experience for the
pacience-theme as we sped past some increasingly big waves.
I think i Could rant on like ths for quite a while now, beacuse there
were millions of things and experiences on this trip, that actually turned out
to be the most filled two days we have had so far, but i think we should slowly
get to the beef.
The Outer Reef.
We stayed the night at the incredible cottage of a guy
called Allen, who not only was the only surfer in his community, but also rode
a chopper motorbike and was the starplayer of the local basketball team, who
played and won that night. Heīs the Mac. On top of that heīs a really nice guy,
living with his army of little kids, who adore him and follow his every
instruction. After an evening
conversation (over grilled fish and rice as usual) about surfing and the fact
that there were a shitload of waves in this bay after all, breaking onto sand
and reef, left, right, big small... the whole bay was an absolutely mindblowing
place for surfing and diving and and... well, okay, i dont want to get lost in
paradisic desciptions again... after this conversation... oh how difficult it
is to get to the point given the sheer scale of it all .. we decided to go out
in the morning and try surfing the big waves on the "outer reef", the
reef in the middle of the bay that was hit by a swell that was probably
compressed into hight by the conical shaped bay. According to Allan, surfng the really big
waves is the only really good thing.
We were listening... scared. Ju and me had had a walk along the coastal
reef in the evening, and seen the monster with our own eyes, far out in the
bay, big, rediculously big walls of water breaking with spine shattering
thunder, rolling for a while and then phasing out into nothing...
We arrived at the outer reef by boat in the early
hours with a crew of ten, some of Allenīs kid friends, his Cousins, who were
steering the big Banca, Seb, the guy from Ascot College that we were travelling
with, Allen and us. And one surfboard, that already had been broken in half and
repaired once. Everybody was well excited to even be so close to these waves,
let alone at the thought of surfing them, but i guess for me it was a little
different, because I was supposed to be the guy standing on the board while it
happens. I had told Allen that i was
relatively new to the game and anyway hadnt ever surfed reef in my life, but it
didnīt seem to matter. On the boat
then we agreed, that he would go first and check out the situation. We drifted close (about a hundred meters,
there was no way the captain would have wanted to go any closer to the breaker)
to the right shoulder of the wave, which was closing out over a width of
sometimes 80 meters, leaving a messy right and a fairly goodlooking left on its
sides as it rolled into the bay. But
anyway, it wasnīt the horizontal dimentions that were stealing the show, it was
the vertical ones. One indicator might
be, that the reef is meant to be around 20feet under the surface. Stll it made the waves break powerfull and
sometimes even a little hollow... .. As
Allen jumped into the water and slowly went into the distance paddling, until
only a small skincolored dot in front of the muscly backs of the waves was
visible. The boat carried on until the
"safe zone", way before the breaker.
How were we supposed to see Allen Surf from here? Or...err..rescue him? We could still make out where he was
though, every time he would be lifted up and over one of the waves. He stayed well away from the zone for maybe
ten minutes, paddling, looking, and probably feeling kind of unsure about the
whole idea. Then he entered carefully
and probingly from the side, leaving again, entering deeper, and finally it
looked like he had actually paddled for one, bacuse he just didnt come up
anymore. Everybody was
We didnt talk a lot about his experience that morning,
Allens only comment was that he needs to shape up, that he isnt a fast enough
paddler anymore. It was quietly agreed
upon that the idea of me trying the left was a bad one, and we went back to
shore, for more fish and rice.
We left around noon, hoping to be back in Baler with
the Sunset. After all we had seen, it
was almost like a calling, to be back for the evening surf, at our home
beachbreak.
P is for Panic
And we made it.
There was maybe an our of good light left when we got into Baler, and
although the terrace and everything was a big mess because of the Taifun, i
just got the board, which miraculously was there and not in the water already
as i had horrifiedly expected, and ran for the beach. A Big Shoutout goes to Ju, who cleaned
everything up, blessed as she is sometimes with that pacience thing (and
experienced with surfers like any brasilian girl would be i guess), while the
following happened to me...:
Ah just one thing, dont read this if you cant stand
the follies of wave-flashed first hand travel/surf-writing. And: its all true.
This was the first time since we are here, that I felt
a need for stretching my body and kind of get ready mentally before entering
the water. It looked well big from the
beach, where a little spectators party of tricycles had gathered and the
excitement was quite present in the air, but there were maybe six or seven
people in the water, two outside the zone, and the rest struggling against the
the big amount of foam rolling towards the sand. These were the super young kids that in the
normal smallish beachbreak of this season surf really well and do all kinds of
crazy turns and stuff, but that just didnt seem to have the bodyweight needed
for the bigtime paddling trough the zone.
I donīt know how, but i was very lucky to get trough first try. Waves of this size would be absolutely
impossible to cross in barcelona (hahahaaa thats why we jump from the pier!)
because of the amount of water these stormy bastards are transporting, but here
its different, they are high but kind of thin, and they break beautiful. And Ordenated. And smooth. So anyway, for me personally the paddling
experience is a two part thing: one is
the studid and exhausting struggle through the rolling foam, and the other
starts when you see a not-yet-broken wave for the first time (and hope it
doesnt break on your head..). This is
the moment when you are halfway there,and the moment when you can actually judge
the waves hight and shape. And its the
moment when its good to have a lucky gap between the sets. This time, that second moment was basically
one of awe, and quite honestly: fear.
Later the opinions about the hight of the days waves
varied between 2 and 5 meters, mainly because of the different ideas of how to
measure a wave. It sems the official
standard to measure at the back of the wave, and that means, given that the
surface of the water goes down in front of the wave, a wave that is officially
2meters, has a face of 4 meters, because of the sucking up of water. Once and for all. Lets all agree on that. In this way, the wave of this day is now
officially approved (even by Julia, who always wants to take off at least half
off what any surfer says) a two meters, 6-7 foot wave, meaning the face was
just over double head high. Back to the
text.
So. Double
head high is quite a lot of high to paddle into, and thoughts about how to get
back to the shore come to mind.
Actually surfing? I made it out
of the zone surprisingly easily, the paddle and kind-of-surf-sessions twice a
day paid off at least in a physical way.
Didnt help much with that fear factor though. In this first attempt lack of faith and
bollocks got the better of me and after some half-assed atempts to paddle into
waves that were still far from breaking (but already so high!) I just paddled
back towards the shore and took the foam train of a big one on my belly. By the beach shower, a plastic hose that
comes out of a wall by the only hotel, i met Marc, shining in his eyes, "I
rode one"....hmmm. We were back
in the water a few minutes later, I was trying to approach the whole thing a
little more prepared. I kind of knew it was just my mind playing tricks, and
maybe also the memories of getting dangerously washed in Barcelona by stormy
waves smaller than this were playing a part.
This time we went together, seemingly the last two people to go out, as
the light was already fading. I had a
lucky break paddling again, Marc didnīt and the strain of already having
paddled a lot that day made him return to the beach. So i was alone. Literally now, there was noone outside the
zone anymore. I went out into a safe
distance from the break, trying to keep an eye on any drifting out that might
happen because of the very strong offshore wind, a last reminder of the
Taifun. Trying to get calm. Imagining it all as a game. Mentalising to go through the washing in
case things go wrong. Knowing they
will. I was paddling here an there,
trying, maybe a bit like i wrote above, the thing with the indian village (ah,
isntīt surfing full of metaphors!... told you not to read on),
Ha! Thatīs it! Until next time! Much love to yall, please dont mind me going
on about these things, and yes, Andre, I
know there are much bigger waves
Peas!
Peter