Somehow, my time in Indonesia is already coming to a close…

I wanted to get one last dive day on my old boat, but some rudder problems took it out of the water. I also wanted a dive day with Aitor, but he was too busy with the IDC. So, I booked a dive trip by myself to say goodbye to the Komodo National Park.

As we motored out to Komodo North for some epic current diving, we went by an island named Sebayur Besar, where it was possible to see the remnants of a resort called XPirates Dive Camp. I could tell straight away that the floating dock was gone, and several buildings had disappeared since I lived there in 2020, in what was yet another layer of the devastation I experienced during shutdowns.

Let’s go back to that period when life was much more complicated.

At the end of 2019, my shop Azul Unlimited was doing really well. Our first 8 months had been a success by our standards, so Aitor and I partnered with a friend to take over the XPirates Dive Camp on Sebayur Besar. It was a huge project.

There were 20 or so huts, a restaurant, a dive shop, and 7 boats that serviced transportation, provisioning, snorkel, and dive trips.

We signed the contract in December, got everything ready over the rainy months (which, in Komodo, are January and February), and opened the business the last week of February to our first group of clients. We had a team of awesome humans to support the business, but the logistics were a little chaotic.

There were a lot of moving parts with operations besides the basics of getting people from Labuan Bajo to the island and meeting all of the client’s needs in an off-grid, barely functioning resort. Business is always hard in remote places and we got a trial by fire until it all came to a screeching halt.

The lack of clients forced us to send almost everyone home. All of a sudden, our huge team was suddenly whittled down to a handful of locals and 6 of us foreigners who didn’t really know where to go or what to do. We were alone on an island during a global crisis. That might sound like a dream vacation, but a lot of it was the stuff of nightmares.

We didn’t know what to do, but we knew everyone was online,  so we started creating content. We worked on our computers from sunrise to bedtime. The days passed in a blur, so we kept a day count on a chalkboard like some weird reality TV show.

The stress and unknowns of the pandemic exacerbated interpersonal problems within the original Azul Unlimited team. It was a perfect storm of spicy emotions, where everyone was scared and lashing out at one another. Lawyers got involved and I have to say, navigating the Indonesian legal system is something I don’t wish upon anyone.

We went diving. We knew how lucky we were to have the house reef and a compressor. Most of our friends were stuck in Labuan Bajo, unable to dive for months.

We taught courses amongst ourselves. One of our quarantine crew members was a Divemaster Candidate from Azul Unlimited, so he got a unique experience in the course, with lots of hands-on experience fixing equipment, working with the compressor, and other odds and ends as we went through course requirements.

Our little group trauma bonded in a way that I have never experienced before. We cried a lot. We also played. Each of us had our own demons to face. Island fever had many iterations and eras.

As the summer of 2020 went on, it was clear the country was nowhere near opening for tourism. My bank account was dwindling and with each provisioning trip, I stressed about how we could keep paying for things. Then, it hit me. I needed to go back to the United States and get a job.

My university degree is in Viticulture and Enology, which is grape growing and winemaking, and it was just the right time of year to apply for harvest jobs in California.

I had worked in the industry for about 8 years, making it up to the level of Assistant Winemaker before leaving my career to pursue scuba diving and teaching yoga. Thanks to my experience, I had several job offers within a week.

After that, things moved quickly. Our employees started heading home as emergency travel became available. When it was finally my turn, I got to experience international airports, like I had never seen them before.

I dove into work and started to feel peace again. It wasn’t only that I was doing something to help my business and keep paying the few employees we still had. It was the fact that I was safe. I was staying with family and borrowing a reliable car to commute to my job. I was in my home country where I fully understand the language and laws.

And that brings me back to this last day of diving. We continued motoring into the park and I couldn’t help but reflect on the last 10-ish years of being a scuba professional.

Don’t get me wrong, I have loved and appreciated the years I lived in other countries. The lessons are invaluable. However, 2020 showed me that I had been fighting against the natural flow of life for far too long. Everything was telling me to let go. So I did. And somehow going with the flow has brought me back here for this full-circle moment.

I didn’t share details about what was happening in real-time those years because I was too heartbroken. I continued making content on YouTube while I was sorting out my life, but I was lost. I just kept putting one foot in front of the other. I accepted help from others. I did the 12-week course outlined in The Artist’s Way and found my way back to my creativity.

I wanted to share more of this part of my story because I have worked through resentments and it doesn’t hurt anymore. I hope it will be a reminder to myself and anyone watching, that we can make it through hard things, but also, that we don’t have to choose to make life difficult for ourselves.

Sometimes the hard stuff is inevitable and the only way out is through, but I have learned that I tend to be the orchestrator of my own madness. I have to choose to be more gentle with myself. It’s ok to choose an easier path. And wouldn’t you know it? Things tend to work out, one way or another, and I don’t suffer as much through it.

This is the final episode of my journey back to Indonesia. I don’t know when I will return, but this country will always hold a special place in my heart.

See what trips are coming up. I always give my community first dibs on spots, so you can sign up for Patreon (and get trip discounts) or my email list to be the first to know about new expeditions in the future.