Finally at CCC!

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So I finally made it here! Twenty-one months after my original start date, I arrived at the Coral Cay Conservation base in Napantao with scuba instructor Pip who had picked me up at the tiny Tacloban airport at the other end of the beautiful, lush island of Leyte.

The base location is amazing- from my bedroom window (bedroom name= the Saucy Sweetlips) we are just a few metres from the sea and the most amazing coral I have ever seen. The place puts the base in 'basic'- there is no running water and so to flush the toilet we have to stagger in with heavy buckets filled from the sea, but there is a nice outdoor shower and a diligent roster of chores and Saturday morning deep clean keeps the place nice and tidy. The power is very patchy at the moment with three hours on/ three hours off due to a recent earthquake in nearby Ormoc which is an improvement on the previous week where they had no power at all. Amusingly, I broke my headtorch very soon after arrival so have had to resort to carrying around my dive torch balanced in a cup of water to stop it from overheating in the air.

So anyway, I arrived on Wednesday along with Pau and Guisla, a couple from Barcelona who Pip and I collected en-route from Tacloban. We were shown around and met the other volunteers and then soon it was dinnertime. The dinner tables were moved outside and the volunteers and staff sat down to eat. We were soon introduced to the CCC traditions of Creature of the Day and Dick of the Day, a nightly ritual where we democratically elect the best creature (human occasionally, but most often a critter of the sea) and greatest act of foolishness for Creature/ Dick of the Day respectively.

On the night of our arrival, the sea was placcid and completely flat but the long awaited monsoon season decided that it was time to make an arrival and we awoke to huge waves crashing against the beach wall. It was hardly the ideal setting for confined dive training so we spent the morning with a CCC induction and watching
some very exciting Padi training videos. During the induction we learnt more about the purpose of Coral Cay Conservation- we volunteers get trained in reef surveying techniques through the rigorous Science Development Programme and this data is used to map out the reef in order to set up marine protected areas (MPAs).

After lunch, prepared by the excellent cook Nang Pedang who luckily always includes vegetarian options for awkward people like me, the sea was a bit calmer so Ben, the field base manager, and Pip decided that I, along with the Filipina scholars Debbie and Iris who had also arrived the previous day and who would be learning to dive alongside me, could do our swim test after all. After watching an exciting video of all the potentially deadly biting and stinging creatures of the local area, we donned our masks, fins and snorkels and hopped into the water.

The reef starts almost immediately from the beach steps and the sheer abundance of coral types and fish is incredible. The fish are the biggest and most brightly coloured that I have ever swam with and it was so exciting to see such amazing wildlife in all directions. I am looking forward to the Skills Development Programme that will teach us about the underwater world and help us identify the creatures within it.

We completed our 200m swim test (which was much more fun than the eight laps I had previously done at Sydney's Victoria Park Pool where it is much flatter but with fewer fish) then returned for dinner and more Padi videos, the last of which was conducted in pitch darkness as the power was out again (of course).

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