While snorkeling I bump into my blue-green fish friend from the Maldives; he must have swam all the way here. I know the markings well. And just as we're getting nicely reacquainted, my pal dashes under some coral, and all I can see is a turquoise fin fluttering in distress. I turn around and detect a shoal of black predators thrashing on the surface.
Hey wait: it's not sharks, but a large group of Chinese tourists clad in identical life-vests, flapping and doing a great job of trying to drown each other in panic. About fifty are clamped to our boat like black, sinister barnacles, unable to swim, suspicious of their life vests, curious yet terrified, stuck. One has attached herself to the engine, gripping the rusty casing, propellers, wires, black oil, all - and spewing a crescendo of gasps, sea water and incomprehensible pleas.
No one does anything about it. And when one of our party drags her back to her countrymen by her vest - a process that sounds a lot like an exorcism - they all, ALL! remain stony, as if saying 'What? We've got nothing to do with this floating house-of-horrors.
We leave them to it. And, at the next diving spot, we find an underwater landscape that consists of a chrome bar and a forest of black cables leading to the surface, swinging languidly in the current. Attached to this equipment, a long line of bodies. The heads are stuck into large, spherical white bubbles.
There they stand, clutching the bar, weighted down by lead belts. Varicose veins, wide haunches, black Speedos. Pale torsos, cosmonaut helmets. Undernaut, rather. Nautilus-Tops. Poseidon Caps. We float above and watch them, fascinated, horrified, struck dumb. They squirt a liquid and their heads are instantly surrounded by clouds of frantic fish. Occasionally one is pulled up and another is sunk. They wait in line on their boat, in their black rubber panties, squinting in the sun. Another group of Chinese tourists.
My pal the turquoise fish from the Maldives is nowhere to be seen. Clever nut. Wish I could vanish too.
Hey wait: it's not sharks, but a large group of Chinese tourists clad in identical life-vests, flapping and doing a great job of trying to drown each other in panic. About fifty are clamped to our boat like black, sinister barnacles, unable to swim, suspicious of their life vests, curious yet terrified, stuck. One has attached herself to the engine, gripping the rusty casing, propellers, wires, black oil, all - and spewing a crescendo of gasps, sea water and incomprehensible pleas.
No one does anything about it. And when one of our party drags her back to her countrymen by her vest - a process that sounds a lot like an exorcism - they all, ALL! remain stony, as if saying 'What? We've got nothing to do with this floating house-of-horrors.
We leave them to it. And, at the next diving spot, we find an underwater landscape that consists of a chrome bar and a forest of black cables leading to the surface, swinging languidly in the current. Attached to this equipment, a long line of bodies. The heads are stuck into large, spherical white bubbles.
There they stand, clutching the bar, weighted down by lead belts. Varicose veins, wide haunches, black Speedos. Pale torsos, cosmonaut helmets. Undernaut, rather. Nautilus-Tops. Poseidon Caps. We float above and watch them, fascinated, horrified, struck dumb. They squirt a liquid and their heads are instantly surrounded by clouds of frantic fish. Occasionally one is pulled up and another is sunk. They wait in line on their boat, in their black rubber panties, squinting in the sun. Another group of Chinese tourists.
My pal the turquoise fish from the Maldives is nowhere to be seen. Clever nut. Wish I could vanish too.
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