Absolutely..... the Western Pacific is the place to be -- right now, Fiji is
balmy and cool and perfect weather for "suiting up" in the Austral
winter....without working up a sweat... and doesn't have Tahiti's ever high
humidity!  And the people -- I used to say that when you got off the plane --
you felt the waves of love coming to you!

And as for wrecks, they don't interest me too much any more, once I did Truk and
then again-- I guess I'm spoiled -- I treated myself to five different trips
over the years to dive the USS Cooledge in Vanuatu.  The reason for that
was.....on the first trip, I didn't do too well with depths -- sucking too much
air.

But believe it or not, over time.... I built up an ability to go deeper and not
suck so much air.  One time I went all the way down to the boiler room and came
out through the ships funnels, just like in the movie, "The Poseidon Adventure."

Then another time I went down to the swimming pool at 230 feet (70 meters) and
seemed to do fine and got one hell of a buzz and had the dive master photograph
me with my hands on the ladder into the pool as if I were climbing out as if I
had gone for a "dip."

But it wasn't until the 2nd trip that I was able to go visit "the Lady," in the
smoking lounge at 140 feet.  One of Alan Power's assistants or helpers had a
kind of u/w "feather duster" he used to wipe off any "dirt" off the metal
portrait--prior to the arrival of the divers, just like a chamber-maid would do
in feather dusting off the furniture when company was expected.

There's nothing like diving the luxury liner, the Cooledge.  A lot of the
flooring has "dropped out" but the ceiling at the top of the ship is all stained
glass of an irridescent blue hue and the light refracting down into the depths
reminded me of "cathedrals in France."

On one trip, prior to my arrival, Santo had experienced an Earthquake but in
this part of the far Pacific, with the subduction zone, the "quake" was deep
within the Earth's crust and didn't do too much damage -- but it did cause a
wall in the ship to collapse and exposed a part of the structure that had
previously not been seen by divers.

While decompressing, Alan Power had a large grouper named "Boris" who used to
hang out where Alan had buildt an artifical reef.  It seemed like there was
always something going on that was entertaining even while you were waiting
around decompressing.