Swimming with a dugong, East Timor

It was our second day diving in East Timor, and so far we hadn't seen anything too extraordinary - unless you counted the strange dearth of fish life. On every dive the sites had been eerily still. This was, a diver in the group presumed, due to overfishing. It was something about the kind of fish he had seen street hawkers selling that led him to that conclusion. They tended to be too small and not the kind you'd catch if you had a choice.

And so we learnt to dive without any harbouring any expectations. There was, however, still one animal Ihadn't given up hope on though - and it was the dugong. (The animal I fervently hoped not to see was the salt water crocodile, and as it turned out we had a narrow miss with it. A week after we left Dili, the divemaster sent us a photo of a saltie lounging at the beach in front of the dive shop. They are apparently not an uncommon sight there.)

Dugongs are completely fascinating creatures. They look so ungainly, and they have the face of something you'd expect to see on land. I remember visiting River Safari in Singapore and seeing a young manatee hug its keeper's legs as she dangled them in the water. Incredibly cute, and a world of difference from the other fish and cetaceans you normally get to see when diving.

So, on every dive, I kept one eye over my shoulder, hoping that a dugong would magically appear out of the gloom. But no such luck - until one day, between dives at a site carpeted with seagrass, the dive guide casually looked over at me and said, "You know what you wanted to see? There's one swimming about twenty metres from the beach."

In the blink of an eye Jared and I had our fins and snorkels ready and were swimming for our lives into the surf. "Left!" the guide would cry from shore, and we would veer a little and kick furiously; or "Right!" and we would gasp for air and do a sharp turn. It was a tough job keeping up with the big fella's acrobatics alright, but just as we were about to give up, a huge wave buoyed me high above everything else, and I caught sight of a huge dark shadow just in front of us. Dugong!

We popped our heads into the water instantly - and there he was - his huge tail barely a body-length away. All in all we had about five minutes with him as he swam around, before he vanished back into the depths.

Check out the videos below (credit to the divemaster who was with us)!

Timor-Leste

East Timor. The roads are long and dusty. The grass is brown, dry, and crunches with every footstep. Above all the overbearing heat and humidity weighs down on you, making your shoulders slouch with exhaustion. It is worse in a wetsuit.

We drive over an hour to each dive site, on roads that wind along the coast. At first the scenes that flash by our windows are punctuated with restaurants and pubs aimed at the rich expats who work at NGOs, then with schools, embassies, and first-aid posts. A police road-block separates them from the villages, and then even they soon peter out into sun-dried nothingness.

Uncomfortably we waddle into the rocky surf and descend. Within a few fin kicks we are at the edge of an underwater precipice, where it is much, much cooler. Even here, however, as above, there are few signs of life.

On shore, a local man smiles and hands us barbecued fish on crooked wooden skewers. His dogs gather around us as we flick pieces of meat at them and learn about the bloody history of the land.

His story starts with personal pain. The crinkles of laughter around his eyes disappear for a moment as he gazes into his memories and recalls his family and the war. It was a difficult period, he pauses. I decided to come here to sell phonecards on the streets.

How old were you?

Seventeen, he answers.

Did your family come with you?

No. And then he breaks into a smile. But I have a wife and a daughter here now.

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There is a triumphant rebelliousness in the tenacity of life. We all fight to survive, as individuals and collectively as a species, in the ways we each know best. Like a single bloom of flower in the frost, or a lone nudibranch in an expanse of rubble, there is beauty to be found if you open your heart to it.

On the journey back home, the sunlight filtering through the dust in the air somehow seems more golden; and in the distance under the rosy sky, a pod of dolphins joyously breach the surface, as the waves pound the shore again and again, endlessly, long after we are gone.