Million dollar waste

Luganville in Vanuatu boasts a couple of sites that are on many divers must-do list – the wreck of the President Coolidge and Million Dollar Point.

The Coolidge, a 200 meter long luxury liner, was sunk during World War II in a case of friendly fire (it struck an American mine – though the own goal wasn’t publicised until much later). Fortunately there were very few casualties. The ship however was totaled, leaving divers the opportunity to check out weaponry, tools, and a swimming pool, a porcelain statue known as The Lady and the personal belongings of the 5000 soldiers who bailed out of there as fast as they could.

The Coolidge site is quite deep and if you want to see much further than the outside then you need to do a decompression dive, which I am not qualified to do yet. So, while some of the cruisers checked it out, I gave it a miss.

Paddy has a horror story about diving the Coolidge during an earthquake that put me off a little as well. He was inside a lift shaft at the time which silted up completely, leaving him unable to see the light from the torch he was shining right into his eyes. Then the dive guide wrapped Paddy’s hand round something and left him there while he looked for the other divers. While everybody did get out safely, as far as I am concerned sitting in a black lift shaft deep under water, unable to tell which way is up, where the exits are or how much air you have left is the stuff nightmares are made of. It has cured Paddy of deep penetration wreck dives and I think probably me too!

Million Dollar Point however is a nice easy shore dive that doesn’t go below about 25 meters and, in my out-of-diving-practice state, I figured it would be more my sort of thing.

The story behind Million Dollar Point does make you despair about mankind a bit though. It dates back to the end of WWII when the US navy pulled out of the Pacific. The Americans left behind thousands of tones of military paraphernalia that wasn’t worth their while taking home – but at the time Vanuatu had both a British and a French government and neither could make up its mind who was going to pay for the gear. In a fit of pique over this the US navy decided nobody was going to get it and dumped everything into the sea. So cranes, bulldozers, tanks, trucks, boats and an entire field hospital are now disintegrating on the ocean floor.

It makes a great dive site (once you are able to work out what the twisted bits of metal actually are) but it’s such a senseless waste. The people here don’t have a lot and probably had even less back then. Who knows where they would be now if they had actually been able to make use of that infrastructure and health care?

Paddy and I met an Australian couple who were using their boat to provide transport for doctors visiting the islands. The medics come from overseas, set up in villages and in some cases spend days doing conveyer-belt consultations and operations. There is such a need that they just have to churn people out one after the other.

We were told that one of the reasons ni-Vans have such poor health is dehydration. They simply don’t drink enough water. Ironically it is water that is one of the other leading causes of illness here. When villages build wells they just dig a hole in the ground, instead of lining them with stone (I am guessing mostly because they lack the raw materials). The stone filters the greeblies out of the soil and helps purify the water. Without it run-off in the form of pig poo, chicken poo and people poo leeches into the soil and makes people sick.

Its little things like that I never would have thought of and it’s such a shame because the people here are so lovely. When you are in towns or villages and people come up to say hello it’s not “hello I want to sell you something” it’s just “hello.” They seem genuinely interested in who we are, where we come from and where we are going and, despite what they lack, they always seem to be smiling.

On a slightly lighter note, the dive at Million Dollar Point was very cool, even if it did make me feel sad. Lots of fishies and coral have taken up residence among the tires, tanks and number plates, which makes a lovely juxtaposition. Also, I surfaced with nearly the same amount of air as Paddy, which is a record. Paddy barely breathes (I suspect he is hiding a pair of gills somewhere), while I usually hoover air in the same way my cat inhales food – so I must be getting better!

Paddy had a WWII find of his own as well when we were snorkeling at a little bay on Aese’ Island. He spotted a bottle buried in the sand which turned out to be a WWII era Coke bottle. There were crates of them dumped at Million Dollar Point but most have been souvenired (we also noticed quite a few popping up in souvenir shops in Luganville). You can tell it’s the real deal because the bottle is shorter than the remake ones they did and it comes in fluid ounces instead of mls – so we thought it was a pretty good score.

We’re thinking of you guys back home and hope you are managing to stay warm. We are struggling with the humidity a bit at the moment (it doesn’t get much below 30 degrees and 70/80 % humidity) but are acclimatising more and more each day. I honestly have no idea how I am going to cope when we get back to the real world. My money is on me having a cold or flu within the first week of being back! xx