My final destination was the tiny island of Diego Garcia.  Pretty much no one has heard of it, but that’s because it’s smack dab in the middle of the Indian Ocean and only accessible via military aircraft with military orders. In other words, you have to have a very good reason to be there! Not gonna lie, this is probably the coolest place I’ll ever visit for work, and probably the first and only time my group is going to get to go.  So I better make the most of it!  I did some googling when I first learned we were going here and there were 2 basic groups of results: “oh yeah, my uncle soandso spent 6 months there back in the 80’s. It’s hot and all there is to do is drink on the beach.” and “it’s a black-ops staging site and is where that Malaysia flight 370 is being kept.” and other random conspiracy theories.  Here are some links.

Here’s the Wikipedia site. For more information than I feel like typing. 😉

I could discuss the history, conspiracy theories, geology etc ad nauseum, but it’s all in the above links, so I don’t see the point.  But what’s it really like being on the island? THAT is what I can actually tell you about. 😉 First off, for a group of Seattle, Diego Gargia is HOT. Like you walk outside and your face melts, hot.  Granted, we’re all giant sissies when it comes to anything more than 80 degrees and if there’s humidity involved we’re inside cowering next to our computers whining about it. (granted, we are all engineers, so this is normal for us anyway) But even after having lived in Florida for 4 years, this place is still ungodly hot.  Something about humidity just kills me, and this place felt like a water balloon fight in hell. We also had to work outside, so that didn’t help.  I went to the store and ended up with a cart full of liquids and a bag of chocolate chips. I have priorities.

During our stay in Singapore we holed up in the Holiday Inn downtown.  We got the executive king suites with access to the concierge lounge.  The rooms were huge, and the food was excellent.  The chandeliers in the lobby were some serious “Phantom of the Opera” type shenanigans.  Compared to Singapore, Diego Garcia was like a third world country.  I hadn’t yet had the privilege of staying in the Navy hotel.  Lets just say, I wasn’t missing out.  The building itself was pretty obviously an old military barrack made out of concrete block. (great soundproofing though, gotta give it that…) The AC luckily worked fantastic or I would have definitely died.  There were 2 beds (one for my suitcase to sleep on!) and the shower reminded me of a few prison movies I’ve seen… but the biggest surprise here was the fact that there was no potable water. Wait, what? yeah… you can’t drink the water. It’s like Mexico only with more humidity.  They had small water tanks positioned in central locations around the base for you to fill up your water coolers and you were just supposed to use that.  mmmmmmmm… ok… I ended up buying large bottles of water just because.

The rest of the base was pretty low key.  a few large block buildings for actual work, a few piers for tugboats and whatnot, a bowling alley (4 lanes!), an outdoor theater, a store, housing for more permanent residents etc.  I think most people just hunker down during the hot parts of the day. (note: this is all day) so you only really see a few people out walking around most of the time. It felt like when I come into work on a Saturday: you know there are people there, but you don’t see them.  Overall the island is a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be… I remember reading that it’s like 44 miles tip to tip and there were only a few places where you could see both sides of the island at the same time.  There was even enough space for a few little biking/hiking trails, different beaches, etc.  Either way, the store cracked me up. THE store. There is only one.  I suppose it’s similar to a commissary at a big base, only it’s the size of a large gas station and the selection consists of whatever showed up on a pallet the night before.  I’d imagine if you lived there for a few months you’d have to start getting creative with your food choices.  There was also a food court with pizza, sandwiches, and coffee and attached to that was a legit restaurant run by the Filipino contractors.  In short, the Filipino food at the restaurant was amazing and that’s what I ate every time we went there. My favorite was pork, eggs, and garlic rice. Yum.

Either way, that’s probably more words than I’ve typed in any post in the history of this blog, so here are some photos that are more interesting.

I mentioned above that most people who’ve actually been here or known someone who’s been here say that the only thing here to do is drink. There are actually 2 clubs.  One is on the beach and has live music. (I actually really dislike live music. it’s always too loud.) The other is run by the British and is called the “Brit Club”.  They have random games like darts and cornhole and their DJ booth is an old Land Rover. It was awesome. So, for the first time in my relatively quiet life, I went clubbing. 😮

Wait, you thought I was going to post my blackmail photos that I took while clubbing on my blog? HA! I’m saving those for later. >:)

After sleeping in not quite as much as I needed we all met for breakfast and went and played in the water.  The water wasn’t as crystal clear as I’d hoped; it was slightly murky.  However the lagoon is full of small reefs full of little reef fish and the water itself is the most gorgeous shade of bright blue!  I bought a scuba housing for my camera a while back (thanks, Amazon!) and finally got the chance to (very slowly and carefully!) test it out!

If you read the wikipedia links (which you should have because this post is seriously too wordy for me to retype any of that shit.) you’ll remember that there used to be a coconut plantation on the island.  This makes perfect sense because pretty much all the trees have coconuts on them.  The ground is littered with coconuts in various stages of disarray.  Some are fresh, some have been eaten by animals (human or otherwise), and some have been sitting there long enough to grow roots!

I hope the photos helped to show the contrast that I felt between the militaristic serious side of the island (not that I got photos of any of that.. sorry folks!) and the lush tropical greenery.  The whole vibe of this place was just strange. I’m still not quite sure what to think about it.  Either way, I came home with a camera full of memories and a fantastic tan! 🙂