As afternoon turned into early evening, the trail gradually narrowed to a meandering capillary. We wound through thick scrub congested by fallen logs, and ducked grasping branches that rained spiders at the slightest provocation.

“Has anyone seen a signpost since we left Floyd’s Prairie?” I yelled behind me. “No,” came the reply through moist air. And after a pause, “Can you see anything up there?” Only the trees, I thought. “We’re heading in the right direction,” I answered optimistically, looking at my compass. “And I haven’t seen any forks in the trail.”

Ultimately my uncertainty was misplaced, and it transformed into a mixture of relief and pride of accomplishment as the bank of the low-lying island came into view a little before sundown. “Piece of cake,” I announced as I hauled my boat out of the water. The group gave a tired, half-hearted laugh and started hauling supplies up the trail to the small cabin where we would pitch camp for our first night in the swamp.

Despite its theme-park-sounding name, the Okefenokee is a pretty serious place. The name itself means “land of the trembling earth” in the language of once indigenous Native American groups, referring to the swamp’s many floating islands of peat that shake when walked upon. Located on the Georgia/Florida border, this Deep South idyll covers roughly 400,000 acres of primal, tannin-stained wetlands, making it the largest “blackwater” swamp in North America.

We had launched our boats earlier that morning from Stephen C. Foster State Park, the only access point on the western edge of the refuge, and initially paddled upstream along the Suwannee River, one of two slow-flowing rivers that originate here (the St. Mary’s River is the other). After a couple miles of easy paddling, a well-marked crossroads pointed us into the 120-mile-long network of boat trails maintained by the National Wildlife Refuge.

Visitors can arrange self-guided trips along these trails with the refuge office, which provides permits for 12 designated overnight trips of varying difficulty, from one to four nights long. The permits allow exclusive access to the trails and the overnight spots along them, making it entirely possible to venture into the wilderness for days without encountering significant signs of civilization, or even another person, along the way.

Paddling alone through this wilderness, the place has an ethereal rainforest feel to it, dense and steamy, packed to the fern fronds with some of the region’s most exotic plants—like micro-forests of predatory pitcher plants—and more than 200 species of birds, including endangered species like wood storks and sandhill cranes, not to mention lurking alligators, venomous water moccasins and an endless barrage of orbiting mosquitoes and biting flies. One can easily imagine that, when the Devil came down to Georgia—presumably for the weather and the company—he holed up here.

—

Once we settled on Floyd’s Island, night came quickly. There are eight campsites scattered throughout the swamp, but Floyd’s Island is the only one on dry land—the others feature stilted, corrugated-roofed wooden platforms built over the water or above peaty hummocks—and the breezeless, tree-covered island harbors significantly more biting insects than the open-air platforms. So, thanks to the flies and mosquitoes, we retired early, with their fitful buzzing, and the humidity, lulling us into a shallow, malarial sleep.

The next day, after portaging our canoes across the island, our time spent slogging into the heart of this vast wetland seemed pulled from the pages of A Journey to the Center of the Earth. Like Jules Verne’s explorers, we had delved into meandering tunnels, battled exotic creatures and emerged through the backdoor of the swamp to find a prehistoric paradise where the canoe path skirted the heavily wooded fringes of shimmering lakes, wide-open wetland prairies bloomed with blankets of fragrant water lilies and the trees and clear blue sky reflected off the water’s famously mirror-like surface.

Each stroke of our paddles set off a cascade of action alongside the boats: Frogs croaked with alarm before belly flopping into the water, dragonflies the size of small birds alighted from their perches to buzz around our airspace, and the protruding yellow eyes of log-like, and otherwise submerged, alligators tracked us cautiously before slipping below the surface.
Occasionally, we’d steer into shady grottoes buffeted by the breeze flowing over the canals and nose the boats into the reeds to sit motionless and watch a crane fishing in the distance or an owl swiveling its head 180 degrees in its treetop perch.

After about four miles, we passed under a canopy of interlocking cypress branches and turned onto a modest river with trees tall enough on either side to block the mid-afternoon sun. And nestled into the underbrush, we found the spacious wooden platform of the Canal Run Shelter boasting an irresistible waterfront view. With plenty of daylight left, we unloaded the boats, set up camp and spent the afternoon exploring smaller side trails unencumbered by the ballast weight of our gear.

After a peaceful night sleeping alongside the dark water with frogs and insects volleying their choruses across the canal, the next and final leg of our three-day expedition pointed back to the start, and like the inbound trail to Floyd’s Island, returning from the center of the swamp proved challenging. The eight-mile path included six miles of the notorious “Orange Trail,” which at times appeared indistinguishable from the surrounding scrub brush and frustrated our forward momentum with a mixture of downed logs and thick peat quagmires that slowed paddling to a crawl.

At one point, caught in one of these dense patches of vegetation, I inched alongside a wide lily pad piled with a handful of chirping newborn alligators about the size of my forearm. The encounter was briefly exhilarating, but in the back of my mind, I knew babies must have a mother nearby. So, I dug my paddle in deep and pushed forward with newfound gusto.

After a full day of paddling and the persistent uncertainty about our direction that one gets when bushwhacking through a particularly dense jungle, an opening appeared in the underbrush like the mouth of a cave, and the trail spit us back onto the wide course of the Suwannee River like walking out the front door. Almost immediately, signposts pointed downstream to Billy’s Island and onward to Stephen C. Foster State Park, bringing the trip full circle, and reminding us we were never all that far from civilization.

It’s a special thing to escape, even for day or two, and explore unhindered through one of the country’s last true wildernesses, and that sense of isolation is realtively comfortable and accessible when it’s supported and maintained by the National Wildlife Refuge like it is here. In a way, we came to the land of the trembling earth hoping to get a little lost. But of course, I never admitted it.

Away.com, Dec. 2009

Calling Papua New Guinea a diverse country doesn’t even begin to describe the variations on culture, language, landscape, and wildlife that perpetually bombard the senses when traveling here. This island nation, which sits just north of Australia in the South Pacific, is comprised of more than 1,000 distinct cultures and 860 native languages, packed into an area the size of California. The histories, beliefs, and traditions of the people fluctuate so wildly from one group to the next that in some places even neighboring villages remain notably disparate.

Despite the presence of modern cities like Port Moresby and Lae, nearly 80 percent of PNG’s population lives in rural areas where many villages and clans still have one foot in the Stone Age. PNG’s interior jungle is, in fact, one of the world’s few regions—second only to the Amazon Rainforest—where native tribes still exist with no contact or knowledge of the outside world.

Not to be outdone, the land, the landscape, and the adventure-travel potential of this practically untapped experiential resource boasts an equally diverse range. For travelers who make the journey, with aid from our PNG Travel Guide, expect introductions to storybook cultures, tours of smoldering volcanoes and geothermal hot springs, artifact hunting expeditions into swampy lowlands populated with brutally friendly (former) cannibals, history-laded treks that follow in the footsteps of the Australians and Japanese who fought desperately here during World War II, scuba diving among the most biologically diverse coral reefs in the world, and so much more.

To tempt the palate with a taste of these—and more—of PNG’s most incredible attractions, click to the next page to uncover ten can’t-miss adventures from around the country.

10. Climb an Active Volcano
In September 1994, plumes of hot ash exploded from the Vulcan and Tavurvur volcanoes on the eastern end of New Britain Island, raining hellfire onto the lively island town of Rabaul, which is flanked by PNG’s most explosive peaks. And even now, much of Rabaul remains charred and buried like a tropical-island Pompeii. A new volcano observatory keeps close watch on things today, and volcano watchers can explore the eerie moonscape of the ruins before hiring local guides to lead day hikes up any of the half-dozen active volcanic vents that ring the Rabaul caldera. Along the way, take a dip at one of the geothermal hot springs found around the vents. Since the last eruption, many people and businesses have left Rabaul and relocated to nearby Kokopo. Managers at both Kokopo Beach Bungalows and Rabaul Hotel can arrange personalized volcano tours with local guides.

9. Ride a Secret Surf Break
Imagine swells rolling through clear-blue South Pacific seas, tossing up consistently beautiful barrels as they pass over lush coral reefs on their way to virgin shorelines, the breaks empty of people except for the smiling, sun-bleached local kids riding shoreward on handmade surfboards. That’s the scene off Lido Village, near Vanimo, in the far northwest of the country, and prime surf spots like this can be found in Kavieng, Weewak, and even Port Moresby. The waves are easily on par with other world-class surf spots in the region—like Indonesia, Tahiti, or Fiji—except for one thing: no crowds. And luckily, even when the word does get out, the waves will remain blissfully secluded due to a surf area management plan enacted by the Surfing Association of Papua New Guinea that limits the number of riders allowed into the water on any given day. Head to the north shore from April to October, the south from June to September. And bring a board—equipment is still hard to find on island.

8. Scuba Dive Kimbe Bay’s Undersea Pinnacles
Located on the north side of New Britain Island, Kimbe Bay sits along the southern edge of the Coral Triangle—a swath of Pacific Ocean famous for its unparalleled marine-life diversity. And true to form, Kimbe Bay boasts more than 900 species of fish among its reefs and more than 400 types of coral—nearly half of the known coral species worldwide. The diving here runs the gamut: nearshore coral gardens burst with color, and offer shallow, sun-drenched reefs loaded with macro-critters like harlequin ghost pipefish and pygmy sea horses. Out in the bay, dive sites like Susan’s Reef fringe the edge of the undersea shelf, where divers can explore the steep walls overflowing with waving soft corals and clownfish hiding among the tentacles of their anemones. And just outside the bay, coral bommies and undersea pinnacles—like Inglis Shoal and Kimbe Island Bommie—rise from the open ocean to within 50 or 60 feet of the surface and attract swarms of roving sharks, great schools of Pacific barracuda, and other pelagic predators.The Walindi Resort is the only dive operation on Kimbe Bay. From the resort, which is nestled into an oil-palm plantation overlooking the bay, guests can make day trips out to the diving grounds. For hardcore divers, Walindi also offers itineraries on its liveaboard dive boat Febrina, which explores the farthest reaches of Kimbe Bay and beyond.

7. Hunt for Artifacts in the Sepik River Valley
The people of the Sepik River valley are famous worldwide for their distinctive carved spirit masks, cassowary-bone daggers, and other artwork. Even the design of the PNG government’s Parliament building in Port Moresby is based on the haus Tambaren, or spirit houses, of the Sepik Region. But despite their renown, the incredibly diverse people who populate the banks of the Sepik River and its tributaries live today much as they have for hundreds of years, hand-line fishing from dugout canoes, subsisting off the starchy pulp of the prevalent sago palms and passing down stories of their war ravaged, cannibalistic past through their art, dances, and oral traditions. No roads permeate the thick jungles and grasslands that flank the country’s largest river, so the only access into this remote section of the country is by bush plane or boat. Trans Niugini Tours operates the riverboat Sepik Spirit which visitors can live on-board and make forays by flat-bottom boat on artifact-hunting expeditions to nearby villages.

6. Spend the Night in a Sepik Family House
Go beyond simply visiting the villages and shopping for artifacts in the Sepik River region, get a firsthand look at local life by spending the night with a native tribe. The Karawari Lodge arranges overnight trips at the Kungriambun, Konmei, and Kaiwaria villages along the Karawari River, a tributary of the Sepik. The villagers provide accommodations in one of their stilted, sprawling family houses, and the accompanying guides furnish it temporarily with sleeping pads and mosquito nets. During the day, visitors can take nature walks or go fishing with the village women, and at night join the meals and storytelling around the fire before heading off to bed.

5. Hike the Historic Kokoda Track
World War II buffs shouldn’t miss an opportunity to hike the infamous Kokoda Track. The full length of the track stretches nearly 60 miles across the rugged mountains of the Owen Stanley Range, following the path of a bloody WWII campaign between Australia and Japan from Owen’s Corner to the village of Kokoda. While it’s the most popular trek in PNG, and a veritable rite of passage for many Australians, Kokoda is not for the casual hiker, as it passes through sweltering jungles, up and down impossibly steep ridges, and across fast-flowing rivers. However, along the way it offers the opportunity to explore historic battlefields, hand-dug trenches, and war artifacts, as well as to make overnight stops in local villages to learn the culture from natives and each village’s history along the track. Hiking end-to-end can take anywhere from four to 12 days depending on the pace and fitness of the hikers. Numerous trekking companies like Kokoda Trekking [link to www.kokodatrail.com.au] offer expeditions along the track, arranging logistics like track permits, village visits, and porters to carry gear and supplies.

4. Scale Mt. Wilhelm, PNG’s Tallest Peak
At 14,790 feet, Mt. Wilhelm is the tallest mountain in PNG, and while the climb is relatively challenging, it’s not technical and doesn’t require extensive mountaineering gear or experience. The hike to the summit passes through tropical, temperate, and alpine forests—there’s even the possibility of snow at the peak—and from the top it’s possible to see both the north and south coasts of the country. Excursions to the summit with PNG Trekking Adventures start with transport from either Goroka or Mt. Hagen to Betty’s Lodge at Keglsugl on the side of the mountain. The following day involves a leisurely 3-hour hike to the base camp, where climbers can stay for a night or two, taking short walks and acclimatizing to the altitude. For the summit hike, climbers leave the base camp around 1 a.m. in order to reach the peak by sunrise and then make a full descent back to the lodge at Keglsugl before catching a ride to town the following day.

3. Dance with Highland Tribes at the Country’s Largest Sing-Sing
Every August, more than 50 different native tribes converge on the Kagamuga Showgrounds in the Highland city of Mt. Hagen to perform traditional “sing-sing” dance celebrations in full tribal dress for the Mt. Hagen Cultural Show, the largest of its kind in the country. The Highlands of PNG are home to some of the country’s most colorful and impressive displays of native culture—like the ornately plumed Huli Wigmen of Tari who emulate the bird of paradise, and the elaborately sculpted masks of the Asaro Mudmen, which depict malevolent forest spirits—and this cultural show is a can’t-miss for visitors who want to join the festivities. Trans Niugini Tours has been offering Mt. Hagen Show itineraries for nearly three decades with accommodations at the Highlander Hotel in Mt. Hagen.

2. Spot the Elusive Bird of Paradise
All around PNG, bird watching is big business. There are around 700 species of exotic birds to be found across the country’s many ecosystems, but one bird in particular—the bird of paradise—seems to top everybody’s “must-spot” list. The Huli Wigmen have prized the lavish feathers of these birds for hundreds of years, as evidenced by the Huli’s elaborate headdresses featuring bird of paradise feathers and their traditional dances, which mimic those of the birds in their natural habitats. The Tari Gap region is the place to see as many as 13 different species of bird of paradise, as well as visit the Huli in their own villages. The Ambua Lodge offers bird watching and Huli village daytrips from its Tari location, beneath a canopy of mountain rainforest.

1. See the Skull Caves of Milne Bay
It is believed that many years ago, in the pre-missionary days of Milne Bay Province, an important person who died was buried upright in the ground with his head poking out, covered by a clay pot, and over time, once the skull disconnected from the body, it was taken to a special cave to be stored along with the skulls of other important tribespeople. Jump forward to today: These caves are no longer in use, but a number of them have been opened up in the vicinity of Alotau. The Tawali Resort offers day hikes through the jungle to visit these skull caves—some literally loaded with ancient craniums. The day starts with a boat ride to the trailhead, ends with a refreshing dip under a tropical waterfall, and includes bird watching and orchid hunting along the way.

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Belted into the passenger seat of a four-door pickup — the bed full of dive gear — I’m rolling down a narrow stretch of paved road that cuts through a buzzing swath of Yucatan jungle listening to my dive guide, Nat Wilson, explain the mythology behind the freshwater-filled caverns we’ve been diving for the past couple of days. He’s just finished the part about how the ancient Maya believed the openings of these cenotes served as portals to Xibalba, the Mayan underworld, when he hits the brakes and swerves to the shoulder. “You see that?” he asks, his outstretched finger pointing out my side window. “What?” I ask. “The jungle?”

“Through this hole in the trees. See its tail?” I look harder — fairly impressed that he could spot anything through the dense underbrush — and I see it, a blue bird about the size of a pigeon with a twitchy tail. “That’s the motmot,” he says, adding that the Maya considered mot- mots to be the guardians of the cenotes. “In reality, they hang around the caverns because it’s the only access to fresh water out here,” Wilson says. “And these days, us cave divers watch for the birds to help us find the entrances.”

Of course Wilson — the training director and in-house cave guru for Dressel Divers — doesn’t need a motmot to help him find the cenote we plan to dive. Though there are dozens of cenotes open to divers, one of the most popular is the Dos Ojos system — the name means “two eyes” and refers to the two primary cavern openings, called the “East” and “West” Eyes, which when seen from afar look like two eyes protruding from the jungle floor. And while this area is increasingly subjected to throngs of swimmers who splash around the entrances, Wilson assures me that deep inside the caverns it’s a whole different world.

In order to get underwater before the tour buses crowd us out, Wilson rolled up to my resort bright and early. Luckily I’m staying about midway between Playa del Carmen and Tulum — in the heart of cenote country — and when we show up, we have the place to ourselves.

We park next to the trailhead that leads to the main entrance at the East Eye, strap on our gear and head down. I notice smoke billowing up from brush fires around the opening, and when I ask, Wilson explains that the locals, modern-day Maya who own the land around the cenote, build the fires as offerings to the gods. “Really?” I ask hesitantly. “Of course not,” he answers with a laugh. “They’re for the bugs.” I slap a handful of mosquitoes slurping from my ankle.

Despite the bonfires, the mosquitoes are drinking their fill from our exposed feet and hands, so we make quick work of a back flop from the dive platform into the crystalline water, do one final gear check and descend to the floor of the pool, where two guidelines are tied off at the mouth of the cavern. The right guideline, called the Barbie Line, follows an easy, well-lit path. On the left, the Bat Cave Line extends 65 feet into the opening of the submerged cavern before hanging a left into a darkened side passage. We take the latter.

Wilson assumes the lead, hovering skillfully a couple of feet above the line to avoid stirring up the bottom, and I frog-kick gently to keep pace as we slip into the dark passageway, flashlight beams bouncing off the stark-white limestone formations — thick floor-to- ceiling columns and hanging stalactites that formed eons ago before these tunnels filled with water.

After swimming a few minutes, we make another left turn into a large chamber, where a narrow beam of light coming through a small hole in the distance provides dim illumination while we follow the contours of the wall. From here, we follow the guideline as it slopes upward, leading us into the dive’s eponymous feature: the bat cave — another large, circular chamber, this one only partially filled with water, leaving an open-air space in the top of the room.

Bearing left, we circumnavigate a jumbled pile of rock slabs, which had fallen from the ceiling to create a mesalike mound in the center of the room. Along the circumference, we explore a fissure beneath the limestone that constitutes the jungle floor 40 feet or so above our heads. And meandering through the tight maze of stalactites and stalagmites, we pass underneath some of the most delicate formations I’ve seen in any of my dives through these cenotes. The ceiling bristles with soda-straw stalactites — pencil-thin protrusions that blanket the surface en masse like a bed of nails.

At the far end of the chamber, Wilson stops and motions me to the surface of the water, tinged green by sunlight from a small opening in the roof. Popping up into the air pocket, I remove my regulator and take a breath of the cool, damp air. True to its name, the ceiling of the cavern boasts clusters of small bats; occasionally one swan dives from its upside-down perch and — wings spread — glides over the electric-green pool only to arc upward and alight once again.

Eventually we drop back down and continue around the other side of the room, following the line back the way we came and emerging along the edge of the West Eye. Here, our line runs into itself at the passageway back to our starting point. We hold our lights to our chests; from this vantage point, the sunlight filtering through the main entrance puts the cavern in silhouette, and “laser beams” of light stream in along the edges.

After we climb up to the dive platform, Wilson starts back up the trail, but just as I’m about to turn and leave, I see it again: the small blue bird, tail bouncing disjointedly, perched on the lip of the cavern as if overseeing our departure.

Need to Know
Getting There: The majority of Riviera Maya’s divable cenotes are off the main highway between Playa del Carmen and Tulum. Most U.S. airlines fly to Cancun. From the airport you can drive, take a taxi or hop a colectivo (shared van) for the 60- to 80-minute drive down the coast.

When to Go: Water temps (75-77°F) and calm dive conditions are constant year- round. The Yucatan’s high season runs from December through April with cooler air temperatures and less rain. The rainy (low) season runs from May to November, but many resorts offer reduced off-season rates, so it’s worth considering.

Operator/Accommodations: The Barcelo Maya Palace (barcelomayapalace.com) is part of the Barcelo Maya complex, which sports five amenity-rich all-inclusive resorts of varying price points stretched along nearly a mile of white-sand beach. Arrange your dives at the on-site PADI IDC center, Dressel Divers (dresseldivers.com), which has a multilingual staff and certified cave/cavern guides.

Price Tag: Rooms at the luxe Barcelo Maya Palace start at $170 per person, per night, all-inclusive. Dressel Divers’ excursion to the cenotes is $70 and includes lunch. Tanks are about $40, but you’ll get discounts for buying multiple fills.

Can’t-Miss Topside Adventures: Tulum is one of the best-preserved coastal Mayan archeological sites and has some of the region’s nicest beaches. (Tip: Go early to beat the crowds.) You can also explore tropical jungles and coastal mangroves at the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve.

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It’s a little after daybreak. The quiet on board breaks without warning, replaced with loud commands delivered in terse Arabic as the agile crew swings into position to man the lines. We have arrived.

My dive boat has been motoring along the coast of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula for nearly four predaylight hours. I walk out of the main cabin, where I’ve slept most of the bumpy ride huddled on the thin cushions of the bench lining the wall, and see the divemaster disappear over the side, bounce-diving to tie a guide­line from our stern to the wreck. I pour a cup of thick Arabic coffee and groggily prep my gear in the early morning light. In a few minutes, I’ll hop off the stern myself and make my way to the seafloor to penetrate the deepest bowels of what is arguably the most famous and histori­cally rich shipwreck in the Red Sea.

A dive trip to the British supply ship SS Thistlegorm requires no small amount of effort, but it’s unquestionably worth it for an opportunity to slip inside this veritable World War II time capsule, bur­ied by a hailstorm of German bombs in 1941 while en route to deliver her cargo of supplies to Allied troops in Suez. After sinking, the Thistlegorm lay undisturbed for about 14 years, explains John Kean, an experienced Thistlegorm guide and author of the book “SS Thistlegorm: The True Story of the Red Sea’s Greatest Ship­wreck.” At which time a budding explorer named Jacques Cousteau — piloting another soon-to-be-legendary ship, the Calypso — moored up to her and made the first-ever scuba-fueled explorations of her decks. Today, the Thistlegorm draws tens of thousands each year.

I make one final check of the condi­tions. Out here at the mouth of the Gulf of Suez, current and surface chop are common, and today has both. So I giant-stride off the stern with an empty BC and make a beeline down the guide rope to the shelter of the Thistlegorm’s hull. Descending over the blast zone — where German bombs detonated munitions holds near the stern — I can see both sections of the 415-foot-long ship: The front half sits mostly intact, upright at the shallower end of the slop­ing seafloor, while the stern, twisted 90 degrees, rests on its port side in about 95 feet of water. As I approach the opening in the hull, I glide over the tracks of a pair of Mark II Bren Carrier tanks, upside­down in the pile of munitions.

Unlike a passenger ship, with an inte­rior full of winding passageways and cabins, the Thistlegorm features wide-open cargo holds and no shortage of vertical exit points. Slipping inside the wreck at Hold 3 feels a bit like walking into a war museum where shafts of sun­light illuminate the displays through skylights in the roof. I find myself sur­rounded by piles of  hand grenades and anti-tank mines scattered in a state of dis­array pretty much as they fell after the ship touched down on the seafloor. It’s an impressive collection, but I know the most striking is ahead of me in the for­ward compartments.

The Thistlegorm’s first and second holds overflow with a payload of large war material. My gaze extends across row after row of Bedford trucks, intact down to the tires and packed in the belly of the ship like sardines. And each truck bed is loaded to capacity with BSA motorcycles. Stacked along walls sit crates of medical supplies, Enfield rifles and endless boxes of ammuni­tion. The gravity of this cargo hits me like a wave. It’s a drop in the bucket of what was required to keep that massive Allied war machine moving, but peo­ple’s lives depended on this stuff — they never got it, and good people died try­ing to deliver it.

My time is running short, and I make my way shallower by traversing through the upper holds and spend a few brief moments exploring the rail cars, davits and a torpedo on the upper deck before finning to my guideline. My bottom time is maxed out, so I make a slow ascent and take an extra-long safety stop.

When I climb back on board, the boat has fallen quiet once again. It seems like we all need a moment to digest the experience. But before we can think too long, the cook swings up from the galley, cracking jokes through a smile as thick as his accent and ushering us inside for a hearty meal before we move on to drift the walls of Ras Mohammed.

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When you start thinking about diving for a living, you ultimately come to a fork in the road, as there are, simplistically speaking, two professional diving paths: the recreational side and the commercial one. A career in recreational diving is what most scuba divers fantasize about: tropical islands, white sand beaches and easy, shallow reefs where people fin around and marvel at the marine life. Follow the commercial diving path, and you enter a world of underwater roughneckery. Scuba tanks are replaced with diving hats and surface supplied air. And clinging to the struts of an oil platform, laying down a bead with a welding torch while fending off sharp-toothed creatures of the deep is just another day at the office.

Commercial diving is labor-intensive work that often requires divers spend months at sea or abroad in less than appealing destinations. But the money’s good. A commercial diver fresh out of training can command close to 50 thou a year—not bad for someone without a college degree. And then there’s the lifestyle. Like commercial fishermen, the stereotypical commercial diver loads up on women and booze between one fat paycheck and the next. “There’s a reason so many of us marry strippers,” jokes Mike Oden, career advisor for the Ocean Corporation, one of the leading commercial diving schools in the country. “When you’re offshore for months at a time, you go a little crazy when you get back on land.”
Ten years ago, as an 18-year-old fresh out of high school with a penchant for underwater adventure, I stood at that fork in the road, simultaneously doing my divemaster training and putting my feelers out to commercial diving schools like the Ocean Corporation—which actively seek out impressionable youths in search of adventure and a decent paycheck. Ultimately, I took the leisurely fork in the road and made my way as a dive instructor in some of the world’s most enviable diving destinations. But one question always lingered in the back of my mind: What if?
And last August, the Ocean Corporation gave me, and 14 other average Joes from all walks of life, the opportunity to see how the other half lives. By signing up for the school’s annual Commercial Diving Experience (CDE), I got an all-access pass to spend a weekend in a commercial diver’s shoes—and diving hats—and answer that question for myself.

Nestled into the urban sprawl that is Houston, Texas, Ocean Corp has an unassuming appearance. From the front, its gate opens onto a small parking lot, and its façade gives every impression that it’s just one more in the string of office buildings sharing its street. But when I crack the front door, a shelf of antiquated hats, spearguns and photographs greets me, and by the time I pop out the back end into the staging area, I’m transported to a more familiar world. Gear cages hold racks of drysuits patched with duct tape, banks of compressed air, scuba equipment and huge coils of hose. And a multilevel wooden platform behind the building is where the magic happens. The 4.2-acre campus has six diving tanks—three eight-foot tanks for underwater welding and cutting training, two 12-foot tanks and a 24-foot tank complete with a mock oil platform inside—not to mention a permanently installed medical decompression chamber, a portable decompression chamber and a 400-foot-rated lock-out diving bell.

Saturday morning, I join my fellow campmates, the student helpers and a handful of Ocean Corp instructors. The schedule says we’ll start off with an equipment orientation and safety meeting before we “mobilize” at the 12-foot tank for some hat time, basically a meet and greet with the gear we’ll use throughout the weekend. Two by two, we each strap on a harness with an emergency-bailout scuba tank, pull the neck dam—a metal ring with a drysuit-style neoprene seal—over our heads, and lock the hats down before leaping into the tank. The hats weigh 30 to 40 pounds each, so a weight belt isn’t necessary, and topside, the weight puts a fair bit of strain on my neck. Underwater, I’m only slightly negative, albeit top heavy, and I hop my way around the tank like an astronaut on the moon, getting a feel for the flow adjustment valves and the less-than-clear communication system before running an out-of-air drill.

That afternoon is devoted to a mock work-dive scenario. I gear up on the edge of the 24-foot tank with my dive buddy, and when we’re both ready to go, we make the leap and grab the down lines running to the bottom. With a loop of rope around one hand, I use the other to force the hat in and up on my face, which crams the hat’s nose plug into my nostrils so I can equalize as I descend. Once I touch down on the bottom of the tank, my first task is making the switch from nitrox to mixed gas—a helium, nitrogen and oxygen mixture. “Crank your free flow, and count to 20,” says the voice in my hat. “One, two…breathe…three, four…breathe,” I respond. By about 14, my voice takes on the twangy, high-pitched character that lets my tenders know the mixed gas is flowing, and I turn to make my way hand-over-hand, low-gravity style, about 10 feet up the mock oil platform to the pipe flange we’re here to assemble.

It’s a relatively complex process requiring lift bag maneuvers and indirect communication with my work partner—we can’t talk directly, but rather speak via the tenders on the surface—made even more challenging by the limited field of vision offered through the hat’s faceplate. After about 15 minutes, we finish the task, put our tools back in the basket hanging from the surface and I return to my down line to switch over to nitrox and make my controlled ascent.

Because it’s a simulated work dive, we feign a long, deep bottom time, and once we get out of the water, we have five minutes to strip down and climb into the decompression chamber before our blood starts to “boil.” It’s 100-plus degrees here in Houston, and a cramped metal tube baking in the summer sun doesn’t look terribly inviting. But we climb in and make our way through the locks system into the main chamber where we’re taken down to 50 feet and slowly brought back up to sea level over about 15 minutes. Amply decompressed, we scramble out of the chamber—it feels a bit like climbing out of pressure cooker—and go through a quick neurological evaluation before the instructors give us the all clear.

With the next day comes the highlight of the weekend, the moment many of us in the camp have been waiting for: Underwater cutting and welding. The cutting part uses a thermic rod—ignited by direct current and fueled by liquid oxygen—that burns at 6,500 degrees and cuts through damn near anything. The welding, in terms of the tools and basic concept, is similar to welding above water, but doing it underwater requires different techniques and an added safety concern—namely avoiding the electric current running through the water. Les Joiner, the former president of Ocean Corp, is on site today to take us through the two processes. “Like everything else in this industry, the safety rules for underwater welding and cutting are written in blood,” Joiner says at the start of his safety briefing. “And all you have to do to avoid electric shock is not find yourself between the ground and the lead. If you get between where the plate’s grounded and the end of this torch, you’ll find out why they call it direct current.” It’s a simple rule. As long as we don’t walk to the other side of the tank or point the end of the torch toward our bodies, there’s no real risk of shock.

First, I hop into the cutting tank. A length of pipe stands upright on the cutting table. I pull the handle to let the oxygen flow, spark the torch and pierce the solid steel pipe with the tip of the rod. It slides through like the proverbial hot knife through butter. With a slight sawing motion, I attempt to cut a straight line across the pipe, but the result is a jagged mess. The welding process is equally simple to enact, but equally hard to do with any dexterity. Pulling the torch along what I hope is a straight line with one hand, while holding the bucket bouncing on my head with the other and trying to see anything through the billowing bubbles of smoke and the one- by three-inch welding lens duct taped to my mask, I gain immense appreciation for the focus and skill this school’s students master on their way through the program. And when I get out of the welding tank and head for the showers, I realize my question has been answered.

Everything we’ve done this weekend is set up in a controlled environment so we can get a feel for the work these divers do every day without experiencing the true danger and desolation of a real working situation. But I get the picture. These divers are essentially living tools employed by the massive machines—usually the oil business—that they work for. They hang like bait on a hook in the open ocean, power tools in hand, doing work that’s not only dangerous in and of itself, but also because of its depth and offshore location. The instructors who’ve been showing us the ropes are survivors. They beat the odds in a dangerous world and came out the other side to train the next generation, but the hardened looks on their faces and the gruff tones in their voices tell more about this life than any words could do. It’s a job for the young. It’s a job for the brave, maybe even the stupid. It’s not the job for me. But for divers who have that same question gnawing in the backs of their heads, Ocean Corp is alone in the commercial diving world as a place that provides this camp to let people find that answer for themselves.

Sidebar: The Ocean Corporation is one of the world’s leading commercial diving facilities. It’s an accredited technical school that offers a variety of diver and nondiver training. The Commercial Diving Experience is offered annually at the beginning of August. Participants must be scuba-certified and 18 years or older; cost is $499 per person. For more information visit oceancorp.com or campcde.com

Sidebar: Get More
Want to see Ocean Corp’s Commercial Diving Experience in action? click the “on assignment” channel at scubadiving.com/video for original video, shot on location by ShrimpTank Productions.

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“You want to shoot it or stab it?” Fischer asks me on the phone as I’m arranging my custom hunt. “Most people want to stab‘em.” Days later, in the back of a mudsplattered 4WD pickup, dogs whine and scrape at the doors of their cage as we pull to the side of a rutted dirt track. Joe Fischer and Phillip Dickerson, local hunting guides of the good ol’ boy variety, train these dogs from birth for a single purpose: tracking feral hogs. And they live for it. When Fischer cracks the door to the cage, the muzzles, tongues and paws of a seemingly uncountable number of canines push through the cracks, and when he lets it fly on its hinges, the barking mass spills onto the ground. As a pack, they’re on the scent before they even catch their balance. “Let ‘em go,” Fischer says. “When they start barking we’ll know they’ve got one.” It’s maybe 7 a.m., already a little late for hog hunting—these nocturnal animals are often well on their way to bed by this time of day—but within just a few minutes, I hear what he means. When the pack catches up with its quarry, the dogs “bay” the pig (surround it), usually in a clump of Lowcountry swamp brush, and bark at the top of their lungs from all sides to keep it penned into the area. The change in the dogs’ cries is unmistakable, even for a first time hunter such as myself. The hunt has already begun.

Once we slip into knee waders and collect our hunting gear—a four-inch hunting knife, .357 revolver and one muscle-bound pit bull on a chain for backup—we ford the roadside canal and push through the low-lying shrubs and spider webs, making our way toward the frantic barking. Ten minutes of slogging through the swampy forest that surrounds the private cornfield that we’re here to protect and we’re getting close. Fischer stops short, looks at me with a furrowed brow and puts his finger to his lips in the universal signal for, “keep your mouth shut, noob.” Then he slips the revolver into my hand. “We’re gonna creep around this side,” he whispers, gesturing with his left hand. “When you see the hog through the bushes, make sure you’ve got a clean shot, and take it down.”

We move around the perimeter and the telltale snout comes into view, then the light tan body begins to take shape through the leaves and branches. Almost 150 pounds of sow now stands before me, frozen momentarily, as dogs stand jumping and barking all around her. With a mixture of relief and regret, I lower the pistol to my side. I came here to shoot a pig, not a dog, and I decide I don’t want it bad enough to risk a shot with the dogs so close.

Just as I turn to explain my dilemma to Fischer, a hole opens up in the pack, leaving the pig a clear escape path away from her canine captors. She bolts for the one thing standing in her way: me. With visions of cloven hoofprints dancing across my chest, I raise the pistol, crack off a shot from the hip and the charging sow takes a nosedive not ten feet from my knocking knees. Fischer slaps me on the back. “Nice shot, John Wayne,” he says with a laugh. My voice cracks with the complete opposite of confidence when I ask what would’ve become of me had I missed. “Aw, she probably would’ve just bumped into you—it ain’t like she’s got any tusks or anything,” Fischer answers in his jocular Georgia drawl.

This is hog hunting, Lowcountry style. It’s an activity of necessity as much as it is one of sport. These swine are invasive, omnivorous pests that will eat just about anything—from grain, roots and acorns to carrion, livestock and earthworms—they’re pigs after all. “They turn over food plots and front yards, damage roads and destroy endangered native plant species and the natural habitats of native animal species in their hunt for food,” explains David Mixon, game management supervisor for the Department of Natural Resources (DNR). “And the hog population grows fast. One female can produce three litters annually, with 10 to 15 piglets per litter.”

Hogs aren’t actually native to North America, so all of our hogs today, feral or otherwise, are descendents of livestock brought over from Europe as early as 1498. Different colors, shapes and sizes—from squat, fat farmstyle piggies to the lean, longtoothed razorbacks of Southern lore—can be found running wild all around Savannah’s perimeter, across Georgia and much of the U.S. for that matter. These days, they all fall under the blanket term—”feral hog.”

Adult hogs usually grow to be about three feet in height, weighing anywhere from 100 to 500 pounds depending on their access to food and how hard they have to work to get it. And while they range pretty much anywhere they can find food and shelter, feral hogs generally prefer the cover of dense brush for protection. When the temperature rises, however, the swine spend much of their time wallowing in swamps, wetlands, ponds and streams close to protective cover.

As a sport, hog hunting comes in many flavors. The hardcore outdoorsman can crawl through the brush of late dusk or early dawn, examining pig signs and stalking prey on their wits alone. Pigs can be hunted from a blind with a hunting rifle or bow and arrow or on private land, with the appropriate permits, they can be attracted by bait at night and shot under 12-volt lighting. One of the most efficient and effective ways to hunt hogs is with dogs. Hunting guides like Fischer and Dickerson, or any of the hunting plantations scattered around the Savannah area, use well-trained hunting dogs to offer softer-skinned stalkers with a penchant for pig sticking a virtually guaranteed, customized killing experience.

Shoot or stab? I ponder my decision and see the dog-hunting technique first-hand when Fischer loans me a DVD of some of his past hunts. There are two types of dogs: “bay” dogs, in my case Catahoula and Parker Curs, and a fiercer breed, like a pit bull, known as the “catch” dog. Bay dogs can pick up a scent as old as four hours and the hunters amble through the forest until the dogs have cornered or “bayed” the prey. Then, the catch dog is unleashed—taking the hog down and pinning it to the ground. This allows the guides to grab the swine by the legs and hold it belly-up while the hunters make quick work of the beast with their weapon of choice. In my pre-hunt
DVD, the killers are clad head-totoe in camo and whooping encouragements like “git ‘er done” and “stick that pig” before thrusting their knives up to the hilt to the tune of Deliverance-style pig squealing and licking the blood from their dripping blade.

“I think I’ll shoot it if you don’t mind,” I decide. “I understand,” Fischer says as we walk through the forest. “Honestly, I get worried that some of those guys will go home and stick their wives afterward. And all that blood licking, that’s disgusting. I bet those people get sick something awful.”

Having dispatched my pig with what I hope is a minimum of pain, suffering and squealing, it’s time to
take on the task of dressing the animal; getting it home and butchered before the flesh goes bad in the sweltering Georgia summer heat, which Fischer explains can happen in as little as an hour on a hot day. Because of restrictive USDA regulations, it’s almost impossible to find a butcher in the Savannah area willing to dress a wild hog. Hunters mostly take on this duty themselves—and hunting guides will often butcher the pig as part of the experience.

Fischer doesn’t have any qualms about undertaking this role. With a hunter’s skill, he makes a slit up the belly and deftly removes the guts before looping a chain around the upper jaw and dragging the carcass back to the truck. Back at the house we toss a rope over the low-hanging branch of a tree, hoist the hog up by its hind legs and hose it down while it spins spread-eagle. Fischer makes cuts in the skin around each of the four legs and peels the hide down over the hindquarters, slicing through the fat that connects it to the muscle. With the skin hanging inside-out like a macabre cape, he uses a hefty butcher’s knife and hack saw to remove the backstrap (the loin running on either side of the spine), shoulders (front legs), hams (back legs) and ribs, and puts them on ice in a large cooler.

The majority of the meat stacked neatly in the freezer, I set about making my first meal. A wild animal, the meat of a feral pig is less fatty and much tougher than farm-raised pork. This makes a stiff marinade and a slow cooking process a requirement not to be ignored. After soaking the backstrap in an orange and lime-based Cuban Mojo sauce for 48 hours, I pop it in the oven on low heat until the meat reaches the requisite 170 degrees (to kill any risk of trichinosis) and sit down to a dinner that puts every pork chop I’ve ever tasted to shame.

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Ripping drift dives along lush reefs and dramatic walls draw more divers to Cozumel than any other location in the Caribbean. I took a look at the varied reef environments here and gave a service-heavy breakdown of Cozumel’s best dives, along with insiders’ tips from on-island diving experts that help readers dive Cozumel’s hardest-to-get-to reefs.

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When I stepped off the plane in the Bay Islands’ central hub of Roatan, two distinct faces of the dive tourism experience here immediately presented themselves. Outside the arrivals gate, taxi drivers jockeyed for fares for the 25-minute drive to West Bay, where the crowd is young, a variety of languages fills the air and the price tag leans toward budget. There, oceanside dirt streets lined with island guesthouses hum with divers loading docked boats and attending open-air certification classes.

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