Blue dreams at Coron

A secret underwater

cathedral. Japanese war

ships destroyed in battle. A

lone barracuda inhabiting a

freshwater lake. No, this is

not the Monday night

program line-up of the

Discovery Channel--these

are actually the real and

surreal highlights of my

scuba diving trip to Coron, Palawan. Together with my diving

buddies from Diveshoppe in Timog, we shut off our cell phones,

stepped aboard the Super Ferry, and said goodbye to stress and

the city to experience the wonders of Coron.

Getting wrecked

Coron is located in Busuanga, in the Northern area of Palawan.

It has fast found itself in the log books of scuba divers,

primarily because of its extraordinary underwater attractions

that you won't find in nearby Anilao. Its main attraction are the

wrecks of massive Japanese war ships that lie at its water's

depths, ships that were simultaneously bombed by American

planes at the onset of the Liberation more than fifty years ago.

Today they have become eerily beautiful underwater sanctums

for divers who wish to explore their chambers and mimic the

Titanic feeling.

The first wreck we had checked out was the Irako ship, which

lies at about 100 feet underwater. I was honestly quite spooked

as I entered one of its dark chambers guided only by the beam

of my flashlight. Bizarre thoughts had raced through my head

that first time exploring a shipwreck that size, like, are there

ghosts underwater? or, did these ships carry gold? But weird

thoughts aside, it was nevertheless an awesome sight--I

remember looking a hundred feet above me and staring at the

immense structure that was both man's and nature's creation.

A consortium of fish fills the passageways and holes of the

Coron wrecks. At the Akitsushima wreck, I was dizzily watching

all the schools of giant batfish, parrot fish and lapu-lapu

swimming about. From atop the ship, I'd flash my light inside the

dark chasms of the ill-fated ship, and it would reflect back like a

hundred stars, off the tiny bodies of silvery fish.

Cathedrals of blue dreams

The wrecks are not the only mysteries Coron has to reveal. I had

no idea what was in store for me when in one dive, we had

plunged to a shallow depth, and eventually led to a small,

obscure hole. I followed the first few divers who had tied off reel

lines to guide us through the dark passageway. My eyes were

struggling in the darkness, and I was wondering where the heck

I was going. Suddenly, I had caught a glimpse of the proverbial

light at the end of the tunnel, slowly manifesting as lightening

shades of blue. As I looked ahead, giant roots of a tree were set

against a liquid aquamarine sky. When I surfaced, I was

stunned at the sight before me--we had found ourselves inside

the belly of a mountain, inside a cave of massive limestone

formations and dripping stalactites. A beam of light shone

through a small hole above us, as if it were a divine ray sent

from God Himself. It was the stuff of pure poetry.

We were disciples inside Gunther's Cathedral, as what the site is

called. It was discovered by Gunther Alteabernart, resident

German and founder of Discovery Diver, the resort we were

staying in. When I asked him about how he had stumbled upon

his breathtaking sanctuary (which a million other people have

probably asked before), he recapitulated the moment with the

wonder of a child, as if he had been telling the tale for the first

time. Today, Gunther's Cathedral is listed as one of the top 10

best sites in the world.

Barracuda Lake

If you thought rock climbing was a tedious sport, then try rock

climbing with scuba tanks on your back! The experience of

Barracuda Lake does not begin once you hit the water. For to

get to the lake, divers must carry all their equipment and climb

up and down the jagged rock face that surrounds the famed

lake.

Once in the lake, though, all the verbal profanities from the

infernal rock climb are lost as a whole new adventure begins. As

we dove deeper into the secluded waters, the temperature

soared up to a toasting 40 degrees! It was so hot that I was

tempted to peel off my wetsuit! (This condition of a gradient

temperature change is termed as a thermocline). The underwater

atmosphere was definitely a bizarre experience--almost as if I

was in another planet. Barren rocks formed awesome cliffs

underwater, inhabited by tiny snails and near-transparent fish.

Barracuda Lake is known the lone, great barracuda (obviously!)

that resides in its thermal waters. To this day, people can only

guess and romanticize at how it had found itself from the sea

into the secluded lake, fueling theories of underground caverns

and passageways.

Thoughts on a hammock

At the end of all my underwater sightseeing, I sat alone on a

hammock back in the resort of Discovery Divers, wondering

what to write in my diver's log book. Indeed, I was at a loss of

words for quite a while, realizing that sometimes, there are no

perfect words to describe an intense experience. Eventually, I

wrote this--"Strange is beautiful". For even as someone who

has been diving for almost seven years, I had not expected

Coron to be such a wholly unique adventure.

In both scuba diving and in life, we are immersed in certain

patterns and cycles that we sometimes accept as

unchanging--until the paradigm shifts, and we're not the same

person as we were before.