In Bahasa, “timur” means east. In Portuguese, “leste” also means east. It’s no surprise than that Timor Leste is the furthest east I’ve ever been from home. What did come as a bit of a shock is Timor Leste is also the place I accidentally drowned. Not the coughing and spluttering type of drowning either… Full on, bobbing face down with lungs full of water kind of drowned.

If this were an intro to a shitty movie there’d be a picture of my floating body and a voice would say, “how did he end up here”, which I think should suffice for this article. In Lieu of said picture, here’s a drawing to recreate the dramatic scene.

Dili is Timor-Leste’s capital city and boasts not one but two burger kings. In the lead up to Jaspers arrival I indulged in the 2 for 1 whopper deal as many times as I could. After 2 days of non-stop burger eating Jasper arrived with his spear gun, full of energy and questions:

“What have you learned? And what’s the best method of transport? Can you use rupiah here?”

“… There’s a deal on at Burger King” I replied…

“Have you literally done nothing?”

“Two whoppers for 7 dollars Jasper…”

“…Let’s go to Burger King”

Although Jasper was temporarily appeased by the finest cuisine Dili had to offer, it wasn’t long before my apathetic approach was again called into question. From the outside my slothful demeanour didn’t appear to be getting us anywhere. What Jasper didn’t know though is – by a stroke of sheer genius (not luck) – I had booked myself into a hostel room that contained the solution to our problem. That solution was in the form of a Singaporean girl called Lavita.

Lavita had been in Dili for a month, researching and interviewing people for a documentary she was making, and she had some useful connections. One of those connections was willing to give us a Toyota Landcruiser for $100 a day. I don’t know much about off-road vehicles, but I do know Land Cruisers are beasts. Jasper and I had previously been part of a trip that navigated the unforgiving terrain around lake Turkana, using a Land Cruiser. If a car’s good enough to get 8 stoned morons to Ethiopia it’s good enough to do anything.

The day before we set off, we went to look at a giant statue of Jesus. What better way to take in the awe of Christ than by flying a drone right up to his giant face? Which is exactly what we did.

(Cue childhood memories of singing “he’s got the whole world in his hands”)

We hadn’t come to Timor to look at the world’s second biggest Jesus though. We had come to do some spearfishing (Sorry Jesus). One of the problems with Spearfishing in Timor-Leste are the saltwater crocodiles.

As you can see from this map, Timor’s pretty close to northern Australia. Northern Australia contains between 100,000 and 200,000 crocs. After a quick Google on the way to the beach we were given cause for concern. When Timor-Leste was under Portuguese, then Indonesian rule, crocodile culling was the norm. After Timor-Leste gained independence in 2002 – due to the crocodile being sacred to the Timorese – the government granted them protected status. Crocodile numbers have skyrocketed and croc/human conflict has increased dramatically. Of the total attacks, 82% were fatal and 50% were fishermen taken from boats… We didn’t even have a boat.

I then discovered this map of crocodile distribution.

What was reassuring was there were no attacks in Dili. What was less reassuring was the further East we drove, the more likely we were to be eaten. Granted the odds of it happening are slim, but the fact there was any chance of being eaten at all was disconcerting.

With this on my mind I gingerly swam out into the water, clutching a 6-inch metal spike that I convinced myself could stop a crocodile. It ended up being a pretty standard day of spearfishing. Jasper shot some fish, I missed multiple shots, same old same old. With the sun turning into a big red ball on the horizon, some poor bloke offered to drive us back to town. His car definitely still smells of fish to this day.

The next morning, an American girl (Catie) caught wind of our expedition and brought our number up to 4 in the car. $25 a day each for a Landcruiser… less than hiring a scooter. My plan of eating burger king till an opportunity arose had clearly worked to perfection.

We drove for 60km up the coast until we arrived at a decent campsite. Secluded, on the beach, with trees to hang mosquito nets from.

We cooked and drank whiskey under a clear night sky before heading to bed. By “bed” I mean one of those spongy mats, with roads, that kids push toy cars around.

The next day, keen to break my fishing duck, I joined Jasper for a morning session. As my frustration grew, my patience failed and determination set in. If there’s one thing you don’t want to be when spearfishing, it’s impatient and determined. If you’re impatient you take shots at the wrong time and if you’re determined you stay down for too long. To top it all off I was hyperventilating to try and force more oxygen into my blood, which is also stupid. This decreased my blood CO2%. You breath out based on your C02% becoming too high, not oxygen levels getting too low. So in effect, I could now run out of oxygen and my body wouldn’t tell me to breath. You can probably see where this is going. I went down to 20/25metres and saw a rock cod stick its head out of a cave. I lay flat on the floor aiming at the opening and waited for it to come out again. It popped its head out; I shot it, managed to give a fist-pump to Jasper then began to swim to the surface.

On the way up I was experiencing euphoria, which I assumed was down to getting a decent fish, but on recollection, was probably due to oxygen depravation. 5 metres before the surface I passed out, which wasn’t great because now I couldn’t consciously stop myself inhaling water. In my head I was tripping balls; a very strange out of body experience, definitely fuelled by my brain dishing out DMT. Back in reality Jasper had discovered me floating at the surface, foaming from the mouth with eyes rolled to the back of my head.

Jasper at this point had two choices:

Drag my body back to shore and chalk this one up as a loss. Perform mouth to mouth on a foaming extra from a zombie film.

Jasper chose option 2.

This is his account:

“We had swum around 40 meters from shore to a typically tasty Timorese drop off. I watched josh descend into the deep making his way towards a cave sitting around the 20 meter mark. With the 30 meter plus visibility, I was clearly able to follow the telltale signs that he had spotted a decent fish.

I watched the cat and mouse process unfold before he triumphantly began his ascent with a hefty rockcod in tow. As he reached the surface I took his celebratory fist pump as a que to dive down and secure the catch. With the fish in my hands, I looked up to the sight of a motionless Josh face down in the water.

I made a quick ascent, dropping the fish, removing his mask and flipping him onto his back. Still unresponsive and not breathing I manueverd myself behind him and started to perform chest compressions in a similar fashion to the Heimlich maneuver. About a minute into this process his body began to stiffen, convulse and a white foam started making its way out of his nose and mouth.

Half a minute of this and all tension from his body dissapeared, with a final few twitches and frothy ejections he became entirely limp. The panic this sparked increased both the intensity of my chest compressions and the work/fin rate to keep both of us afloat and heading to shore. Still unresponsive and spurred by the terror of the conversation I would have to have with Andy and Kathy, I adjusted his body to the point where I could access his pale blue lips.

Kicking as hard as my fins would permit to keep our heads above water I began the mouth to mouth. Within 30 or so seconds my growing hopelessness was met with a slight response from his lungs. Then came the foam. I took the hit and swallowed it, on each inhale hoping to maintain both his growing breath cycle and my grip on his head amongst the waves. When foam was being coughed into both mouths I guaged he had enough life in him for us to make a more concerted effort to shore.

The relief of reaching the shore was coupled with the most interesting aspect of the whole event. Lying on the rocks dribbling foam I watched Josh try and orientate himself with the situation.

Brokenly he half mumbled where he was and what had happened. A shell of a man. Then the broken demeanour was gone, replaced by a sense of clarity, understanding and a coherent sentence. “You will never fucking believe the place I have just been nor what I saw”. A regression to creature mode quickly followed, the memory of his DMT fueled journey slipping away.”

If you’re without oxygen for over 4 minutes then your brain starts to die, and I may have woken up with a yearning to watch “Love Island”.

Shout out to Jasper for ingesting a shit load of lung foam to keep my spasming body going…

That’s pretty much it. Went to hospital, got a tube stuffed down my knob, medivac’d to Dili and that was the end of the holiday… Or was it? Dun, dun dunnnnnnnn.

End of Part 1