I had not always wanted to go to Palau. In all honesty, I had never heard of the land until recently. So when we told a friend we wanted to go to an island paradise for our next visa run, she suggested this country in the middle of the Pacific ocean and our hearts were eager, maybe too eager, in the way a child gleefully stuffs their eyes with wonder over every minute they are alive.
Also known as the Rock Islands, Palau is made up of about 250 islands in a chain known as the Caroline Islands. Something we didn’t know going into planning this trip was that the Rock Islands are aptly named; the islands are indeed all made of rock which meant our intended “beach vacation” was not going to include much of any beaches at all. In fact, the main city of Koror, where everyone stays, has no natural beaches, only two man-made beaches on the resorts, Palau Pacific Resort and Palau Royal Resort. All the fun actually is not on the main island but in the great big wilderness of the mostly uninhabited islands, which are very very hard to get to if you don’t have a boat. Or many many monies to rent a boat. Or if you don’t like being prodded like cattle in tour groups.
Our boat was too big to check onto our flight so we had to leave it at home 😛 (just kidding, we do not own a boat. But we are very much in the market for a best friendship with someone who does 😉 )
That is when we, whilst frantically researching what to do, discovered that there is an eye opening intrepid alternative option to the choices previously mentioned. We could rent a kayak and a tent and a map and explore the islands ourselves.
Say whatttt.
So we have super wilderness explorer friends who would get along with Bear Grillis just fine but Hubs and I are definitely not some of those people. We love them, admire them, respect them, secretly do indeed want to be them, but dreams are not reality and we are not true wilderness explorers. So when we first saw this option we were like yeaaaa….ok…..uh huh… close internet browser and make excuses as to why that is a bad idea while spooning pampered yummy ice cream down our throats.
But slowly we watched as the potential adventures meandered on the horizon and realized the possibility that maybe we could do this…. and maybe we wouldn’t die in the process.
In all honesty I don’t think I was fully convinced until we tied our kayak back onto the dock on that last day but I’m getting ahead of myself.
This is what we had planned for our epic Palau-ian journey:
Two days of three dives each
+
Five days of independent kayaking with nothing but our maps and whatever gumption we could muster.
I am speechless but my heart is full. Full of memories, full of gratitude, full of pride that we pushed ourselves past our comfort zones, full of amazement and wonder.
To get to this place we used miles to book a flight via United airlines. The cost of the flight alone from the states makes Micronesia available only to the most zealous of travelers or the tour groups from Asia, particularly Korea and Taiwan. (At the time of this travelogue) If you have miles though, you can get to Micronesia from Asia for only 15,000 miles each way. If you do a round trip you also get a free stopover, which we did and we used it in Saipan. Two islands, plus a fifteen hour layover in Guam, all for the price of none. Well, except taxes. Ain’t no one who can escape taxes….
The downside of our gratuitous voyage was that all our flights were red eyes, oye….. red eye flights are getting harder and harder as we get older. But that’s the price you pay for… not paying.
Any who, so we landed in Palau at 4am and since we didn’t want to pay for an extra night of lodging just for the morning hours we loitered in the lobby bobbing our heads to sweet slumbering whispers while reception would come over every once in a while to let us know sir you are not allowed to sleep in the lobby. But they DID let us on the roof so we could watch a gorgeous sunrise. The waters over the ocean were so calm, they offered a perfect reflection of the plump clouds in the sky; a welcome respite from the heaviness of exhaustion. We spent the next few hours sleeping at the pool loungers and then took care of preparations for our subsequent scuba and kayaking days, then after lunch we were allowed in our room. So we slept, showered and went out to get dinner. Long first day of travel but it was worth it to get here.
In case you don’t know, Palau is one of the most desirable yet elusive scuba dive locations on earth and I feel privileged as a novice diver to be able to be a tourist in such an elitist club.
I had a few firsts on this trip. It was my first shipwreck dive. If you have never done a shipwreck dive before, I highly recommend it. Palau is a great place for this as the island is host to many wrecked ships as it was the location of quite a few battles between the Japanese and Americans during World War Two. In fact, you can find many leftover vestiges of war scattered among the islands including tanks, pill boxes, shells, and caves dug by soldiers. That is on land. In the water, there are fighter airplanes and war ships galore.
Our first dive day we acclimated to the underwater realm and did two fairly basic dive sites where we interacted with Squirt and found Nemo and then hit up a cave dive.
Day two we went to the Blue Corner and the Manta Ray cleaning station as well as the ship wreck dive. The Blue Corner Dive Site is where the scuba diving technique of hook diving became popular. Because of the many ocean currents that run through this particular corner of the sea, the area breams with sea life, schools of fish and their subsequent shark hunters in tow as well as sea anemone and coral. We just held on and observed as the inexhaustible variety of life passed us by. It was a Parisian cafe people-watching extravaganza, except instead of people, you have the colorful world that Pixar tried to bring to life (and whereas I love Pixar and will always think they do fabulous work, nothing compares to the real Planet Blue that you see with your own eyes). It was the most incredible scuba experience I have ever had. And after that we got to see Giant Manta Rays. And a shipwreck. It was a feast for the senses for sure.
But the true diamond in the rough is our kayak trip. Which we will explore in a future blog post!
photo credit: .holger Palau drone via photopin (license)
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