Chuuk Lagoon - May 2011 - Dive Trip / Vacation
| Chuuk Lagoon - May 2011 - Dive Trip / Vacation | |||
| Name: | Rating: | ||
| Chuuk Lagoon - May 2011 |  |
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| Dive Centre: | Country: | ||
| Blue Lagoon Dive Resort | Federated States of Micronesia | ||
| Start Date: | End Date: | ||
| Thu, 05-May-2011 | Fri, 13-May-2011 | ||
| 14 dives on this Trip / Vacation: | |||
| 321 | 322 | 323 | 324 | 325 | 326 | 327 | 328 | 329 | 330 | 331 | 332 | 333 | 334 | |||
| Buddy/Buddies: | |||
| Laurent Ailleres, Peter Chew, Leo Scicluna, Peter Fear | |||
| Comments: | |||
| Chuuk Lagoon trip organised through: The Scuba Doctor (Rye, Victoria) -- https://www.scubadoctor.com.au and Dive Adventures -- https://www.diveadventures.com.au Stayed at the Blue Lagoon Dive Resort https://www.bluelagoondiveresort.com/ and dived with the Blue Lagoon Dive Shop. THE JOURNEY TO CHUUK LAGOON The Scuba Doctor and Bass Strait Aquatic Club combined to use Dive Adventures to book a total of 18 people for 5 days of diving at Chuuk Lagoon. Not everyone was from Melbourne, with two from the U.K. and one from Perth included in this large dive group. Officially, the trip started from Cairns. Thus, we all made various plans as to how and when we'd get there. I joined those who decided to fly to Cairns early on Thursday, 5 May 2011. So it was up at 5 a.m., leaving early for Melbourne Airport at 6 a.m. to avoid peak-hour traffic, and ending up in my usual area in the long-term car park. At the Virgin Australia check-in, there were long queues, even for those dropping off bags only. The airline will need to improve this if it truly wants to compete with Qantas for business travellers, as it claims to do. My two bags were weighed at 22 kg and 19 kg. And they didn't charge me for any excess baggage. Yippee! On arrival at Cairns, I went to the international terminal to try to check in for the flights to Guam and Chuuk, plus leave my bags there — no such luck. So I joined up with the others coming into Cairns early, as we took the courtesy bus to the Cairns Colonial Club Resort. Lunch and dinner at the pool bar, and then off to the international terminal at Cairns airport at 9:30 p.m. At the Continental Airlines check-in for the Friday 12:30 a.m. flight to Guam, I tried to get an emergency exit row for the legroom, but was told they were all taken. I was also told that if there was a no-show, the crew might be able to move me. I managed to get allocated an aisle seat. Later, aboard the aircraft, I found the emergency exit seats weren't in use! The crew wouldn't let me move. The consolation was that I had three seats to myself. Officially, our trip started from Cairns; thus, it was here at the airport that everyone came together from all of their various flights. In The Scuba Doctor group were Peter and Valerie Fear, Peter Chew, Laurent and Adelle Ailleres, Leo Scicluna, Damien, Paul Wembridge, Shook Ri, Jeff and me. In the BSAC group were Denise and Paul Ridgeway, David and Shirley, Phil Watson, Roger (Ginge) Crook and Sophie. Two other dive groups, one from Sydney and one from Brisbane, were also on their way to Chuuk Lagoon and checked in for the flight to Guam. Eventually, we all boarded the plane and were on our way to Guam. Transit in Guam was simply stupid. We're in transit, yet we were required to go through immigration/customs, plus a security check. Long queues and bureaucratic stupidity made this a totally negative, more than an hour-long experience. And they fingerprint-scanned us. When did I agree to that invasion of privacy? What absolutely useless and senseless security theatre. Next, they'll be making a cavity search mandatory. In Guam, I did manage to get Continental Airlines to change my seat allocations for the rest of my three flights with them to Seat 21D, an emergency aisle seat. It cost me US$50 per flight extra, which was worth every cent for the extra legroom. We had a long stopover in front of us at Guam airport. Duty-free wasn't very comprehensive, and the food options were ordinary. We did find free Wi-Fi access at gate 9, but it was unsecured and thus of limited use. Eventually, we boarded and headed off for Chuuk. I was quickly back into my usual flight mode, with my Sennheiser PXC 450 noise-cancelling headphones playing a music selection from the 15,000-plus songs on my Apple iPod Classic 160 GB. We were about 20 minutes from Chuuk when Peter Fear came and interrupted my listening pleasure, telling me that it had just been announced that we were heading back to Guam because of problems with the aircraft. I thought he was pulling my leg, but sadly, he wasn't. We disembarked at Guam and waited a few hours as they moved everything to a different plane, plus got a new flight and cabin crew. Eventually, we were headed off to Chuuk again. Immigration, customs and baggage claim at Chuuk was quite an experience. What a total shambles. Someone went to a lot of trouble to make that as bad as it was. It's easy to improve it, but no one wants to. People have to queue in the sun while waiting to get processed by one of three customs/immigration people who, of course, were working at island pace. Baggage claim was totally shambolic. Eventually, we all had our bags and headed outside the terminal. Our bags were loaded onto trucks and we started a most educational, non-air-conditioned bus ride to the Truk Blue Lagoon Resort. We were travelling on the island's main road, and it was about the worst pothole-riddled, mud-rutted track I'd ever seen. The bus had to travel at a walking pace for most of the way, crisscrossing to either side of the road as it went, based on the road conditions. As we bounced along, I took in the sights. The tropical vegetation provided lush evidence of Chuuk's average annual rainfall of 254 cm (100 inches). The barefoot women showed a preference for muumuu-type dresses of brilliant parrot-plumage and floral colours. The cars and light trucks sighted were a mixture of left and right-hand drive, and even those only a few years old were in advanced stages of fatal corrosion. The dwellings ran the gamut. I saw a few carefully restored Japanese-style houses. Some cubistic structures made of concrete blocks. Some are double-storey, but most are single-storey, with the steel reinforcing protruding from the roof, ready for the addition of a second floor at a later date. You've just got to love their optimism. However, most common of all were haphazard shanties of corrugated tin and wood. In my research, I'd read how some years earlier the women of Chuuk cleverly countered a growing drinking problem in the district by organising a prohibition referendum. The clever part was in the timing of the voting for Sunday morning, when most of the menfolk were still too indisposed to participate. However, this prohibition is now long gone. The Truk Blue Lagoon Resort provided a startling contrast to the somewhat laid-back aspect of all we'd passed on the way from the airport. Carefully manicured, emerald-green lawns, with colourful shrubs and rows of stately palms, greeted us. Initially booked to share a room, Damian and I had decided to get separate rooms the weekend before, and appropriate arrangements were made. But none of these arrangements had made it to the people at the reception. Thus, I had a 45-minute wait for Room 411, upstairs in the long block of resort rooms between the resort office and the dive shop. The room was spacious with wall-to-wall carpeting and twin double beds. It was comfortable thanks to the air conditioning. There was a new TV, but no aerial connection or DVD player, so it's possibly for decoration only. Floor to ceiling windows faced the water and slid open to allow me out onto the private balcony, where one could take in the magnificent views of the lagoon and islands. Before dinner, I took a short walk to the local shop to purchase provisions of Fuji apples and bottled water, which all managed to fit in my room's bar fridge. I was just as intrigued by what the local shop did stock as by what it didn't stock — a real insight into the lives of the locals. Dinner that night involved a 30-minute wait to be served and an additional 45-minute wait for the meal to arrive. A large, cold, salty rib-eye steak cooked very well done, not medium rare as requested, plus cold chips — no choice of sauces available. Obviously, after the cook plates the meal, it sits around for ages before being served. After dinner, I made my way back to my room and was sound asleep by 8:30 p.m. Saturday, 7 May 2011, started with breakfast at 6:30 a.m. There was a 15-minute wait to be served and a 30-minute wait for the wrong meal to be delivered. Part of the meal was never delivered. On my trips to Bali and Vanuatu, the places I stayed at were run by ex-pat Australians. Here in Chuuk, the resort and dive shop were run entirely by the Chuukese, so one has to adapt to the differences this brings. Time to go diving. THE JOURNEY HOME Thursday, 12 May 2011, saw me up early, packing dive gear. After breakfast, I settled my US$310 bill for all meals and extras with the Blue Lagoon Dive Resort. Very reasonably priced. Then it was back to the room to finish packing. Once the packing was complete, I called reception, and they had two guys come down to take my bags. I then waited for the bus at the reception. The bus ride to the airport was slow, as was check-in and the security check at the airport. But then we were through into the air-conditioned gate lounge area. Finally, we boarded the Continental Airlines Boeing 737 aircraft and were on our way to Guam. Guam was a repeat of the same stupid handling of transit passengers. If I can avoid going through Guam again, I will. Some 60 or so Japanese high school girls joined the flight for Cairns. It was amusing to see the highly organised way they did everything, plus how most of them wore face masks. After waiting a few hours, we were finally on our way to Cairns and the delight of being back in an efficient system through the airport. The Japanese schoolgirls all had their face masks securely in place as they disembarked the aircraft. Someone must have told them the air in Cairns is poisonous. Made me wonder if the customs guys were go to run Geiger counters over them to see how radioactive they might be. While waiting on the courtesy bus to the Cairns Colonial Club Resort, we learnt some of the others were being delayed because the baggage carousel had broken down. Oh dear! The system wasn't so efficient for everyone. We eventually arrived at the Cairns Colonial Club Resort, checked in and made our way to our rooms. I was sharing with Damien. Friday, 13 May 2011, started with a full breakfast and a bus trip back to the Cairns airport — no queue at the Virgin check-in. My bags were weighed in at less than they were at the start of the journey, but this time, they insisted on charging me $200 extra for baggage. Bugger! And the flight was delayed 2 hours. Hey, I thought only Crapstar did this! The consolation was that Cairns has a pleasant airport terminal to be in. I purchased some magazines and read. Finally, we were aboard the flight and back in Melbourne. LESSONS LEARNT ON THE TRIP I purchased a copy of Franko's Chuuk Lagoon Dive Map -- http://www.frankosmaps.com -- from the Blue Lagoon Dive Shop. It's printed on waterproof, durable synthetic paper and provides a handy guide to the locations of the wrecks relative to each other, plus their main features. Avoid Guam airport if you can. You'll need at least two hours between flights to make it through their stupid, totally bogus procedures. I didn't need to take my Apeks DIN to Yoke converters, my OMS twin cylinder travel bands, or my Analox nitrox analyser. The Blue Lagoon Dive Shop had this covered. There were so few people using nitrox that there were no queues for the dive shop's Trimix analyser. The Blue Lagoon Dive Resort is the place to stay. I didn't see any other land-based places that would come close. I'm unsure of the benefits of staying on either of the two liveaboard boats, especially since they appear to dive from the same size dive boats anyway. The wreck diving at Chuuk Lagoon is the best I've experienced so far. I'm told my planned trip to Bikini Atoll in 2012 will top it, but the value for money at Chuuk Lagoon is simply unbeatable. I'll be heading back there again. Indeed, I'm now questioning why I'm heading off to dive the Darwin and Wolf groups at Galapagos in August 2011. For the price of that dive trip, I could go back to Chuuk Lagoon three times! See also: https://www.borrett.id.au/downloads/dive_article_chuuk_lagoon.pdf |
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