Once More Unto the Sea

Back Into the Blue After Drowning

The calm before the storm — All images courtesy of the author

I cradled my camera bag against my chest as the wind and rain mocked the cheap fabric of my ten-dollar shelter.

Lying in a hammock strung between two coconut trees on the northern shore of Siargao, I cursed the tarpaulin sheet flapping above my head. It was two feet too short.

The tarp had served me well on my 2,000-kilometre journey from Manila in the north of the Philippines to Mindanao in the south, but it wasn’t built for this. The typhoons that batter the eastern shores are like nothing I’ve ever experienced.

They come growling off the Pacific Ocean, apocalyptic spinning tops with the power to level towns and villages. In 2021, Typhoon Rai’s 200 kilometre per hour winds had brought Siargao to its knees.

I started laughing, imagining one of the coconuts above me dislodging and putting an end to my chaotic night. All those near-misses driving tuk-tuks through Africa, only to succumb to a coconut under the throes of gravity.

You foolish boy

Suspended beneath these three-kilo cannonballs, I reflected on the choices that had brought me here. I only had myself to blame.