Wednesday, November 12,
2014
My dad
picked us up around 4:10 a.m. and we headed to the airport to start the long
journey to Palau. The first leg of the
trip was from Phoenix to Los Angeles, which is just under 2 hours. Our layover in Los Angeles was only a couple
of hours, which went by rather quickly.
Then the next leg was from Los Angeles to Honolulu, Hawaii which was
around 5 hours. Then we had another
approximately two hour layover in Hawaii, which we took advantage of to get
something to eat.
The airlines are getting so cheap
they don’t even give you food on international flights now. They have food available for purchase, but it
is mostly snack boxes. So after having a
bite to eat in the terminal we headed back to our gate for the 8 hour flight
from Hawaii to Guam. The layover in Guam
was only a little over an hour, so we stopped into the United Club to use the
bathroom, get something to drink, and see if they had any decent snacks.
Then we began the final leg of the
journey, the Guam to Palau flight which was around 2 hours. After flying for all this way and not being
offered any food, we finally had hot food service on the short trip from Guam
to Palau—does not make much sense. We
were so hungry by this point we were happy to have anything.
We got into Palau around 9 p.m. and
Jennie and our driver greeted us at the airport. Our driver took us to our apartment right
across the street from the dive shop.
Apparently they got confused as to what day we were arriving, so we were
told we would be staying in a third floor apartment for the first night and
then the next day would move to a first floor apartment for the rest of our
stay. By this time we did not really
care, as long as we had a bed to sleep in.
After we got our five bags and two backpacks into the apartment, we
pretty much collapsed into bed for the night.
The next morning we were up bright
and early and wandered across the street to the dive shop. Shallum was in the shop so we said hello and
talked with him and Fabio for a while.
Next month is the 30th Anniversary celebration of Palau
Pacific and Neco Marine and Mandy has come out with another book in celebration
of the occasion. So we sat and looked
through her new book which will be released early next month. It is packed with tons of fabulous new pictures.
We then came back to the apartment
and got all of our dive gear put into one bag so we could roll it over to the
dive shop so it would be ready for diving the next day. We decided to take the first day in Palau as
a rest day to get our stuff organized and relax a bit. After rolling our dive gear over to the shop
we decided to get some lunch at the Drop Off Bar and Grill next to the
shop. It was nice to just sit in the
shade and enjoy the cool ocean breeze coming off the water.
After lunch we made our way back to
the apartment and ended up laying around and relaxing as they were not ready
for us to move to our other room yet.
Finally, around 3 o’clock we got the key to our new room and moved all
of our luggage down to the first floor.
After all that, we were ready for another nap! We unpacked some of our stuff and tried to
get organized and Eric started getting the camera gear put together and ready
to go. Then we headed back over to the
Drop Off to get something for dinner.
The Drop Off has become quite the
night-time hangout place, so much so that they had to expand the kitchen area
within the last year or so to handle the volume. They now also have more dining space under
the covered roof—which is nice when it rains.
After having a light snack for dinner, we decided to go back to the
apartment and hit the sack so we could get up the next morning and be ready to
start diving.
The next morning we got up around 6
and had some breakfast before heading across the street to the dive shop. We chatted with Fabio for a while before the
rest of our dive group arrived. Today we
had a group of about 11 people, 6 of which today was their last day of diving.
Our first stop was German
Channel. We split up into two
groups. There really was not much
current if any in the channel. We swam
around for a bit and then we spotted a leopard shark resting in the sand. Of course there were already a bunch of
people crowding around it and by the time we got there it had had enough and
proceeded to swim off. I did get footage
of it swimming off, though, so at least we have proof! Toward the end of the dive Fabio spotted a
ray buried in the sand and he swam down and tried to get it to swim off, but
the ray was very happy with his position in the sand and would have no part in
obliging us by swimming off.
We were not successful in spotting
any mantas on that first dive, but it was still a nice dive. We all got back on the boat and headed for
the second dive site, Blue Corner—which is always a good sight. You never know what you will see at Blue
Corner. Every dive there is totally
different and dependent on the current.
There was some current today, but not really very strong. We hooked into the corner for a little while
and watched the sharks circling. There
were also some schools of barracuda (black-stripped and yellowfin (I think)),
along with schools of several other species of fish.
After Blue Corner we made our way
to a nice white sandy beach for lunch.
After enjoying our lunch in the beautiful surroundings, we made way for
Jellyfish Lake. Most of the group went
to the lake but Eric and I and another person in our group waited on the
boat. Eric and I have been there twice
before and we did not feel the need to go again. It was nice to just sit in the shade of the
island and relax for a while, while the rest of the group experienced the
jellies.
After the jellies, we enjoyed the
beautiful ride back to the shop through the lush rock islands surrounded by the
turquoise blue water.
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