My First Big Scuba Trip

For those of you who have been following my scuba lesson adventures, I just wanted to give everyone a little update on what I have actually done with my certificate - or "C-card" as it's called. I spent two lovely weeks in the South Pacific - a week in Guam and a week in Palau. Aaaahhh.


Palau today is probably most well known as a place where they filmed the television series "Survivor" twice. While Todd and I were there they were in the middle of filming of a Filipino Survivor and wrapping up French Survivor as well. I can certainly see why, it makes for some amazing and breathtaking background shots, and it is so isolated. Even as tourists, Todd and I were the only ones walking around. We went to a famous Indian restaurant there and were the only ones there. Romantically, he said he reserved the whole place for us. More like he reserved the entire chain of islands for us.




Back during the war years, however, Palau was the site of some major battles, as was most of the South Pacific. The Battle of Peleliu was a tragic story - the US had thought they would secure this little airstrip in a matter of days, but instead the Japanese dug in their heels and the battle went on for more than two months. This would become a trend (Iwo Jima and Okinawa have similar stories). It has become a very controversial battle because of the lack of strategic value - the airstrip was never actually used for the attack on the Philippines as was intended, and the immensely high casualty toll - more than 9500. When considering the number of men actually involved for this little island, the Battle of Peleliu has the highest casualty rate in any battle fought in all of the Pacific Theater. The picture above was taken at the Etpison Museum and shows some of the artifacts that have washed ashore from the battles. I have always been fascinated with these kinds of things (as well I should - I am a Navy brat, and was born in Japan...) and this place is loaded with history. In a related note, Palau has been in the news recently as the possible relocation point of Guantanamo detainees...



Speaking of history, this picture is of a reconstruction of the traditional male meeting house, called a 'bai'. The native Palauans were matriarchal and matrilineal, and were fishermen mostly, for their sheer availability.







For being as small as Palau is, it has its own brewing company. What??? Hell yeah!!! Red Rooster Brewing Company has four options: Amber, Mango Wheat, Dark and Stout. We partook of many at the famous bar Kramer's. And it was good.




Palau is known for its large clam shells, and this is me at a clam farm. We actually later snorkeled out to a place where you can skin dive down and sit into one the size of a lawn chair (those were obviously dead of course). I did see some alive while scuba diving, and they are amazing. Their lips are many different colors all at once - it is amazing to see.


This picture makes me laugh, because the size of the vegetation here is like something a dinosaur would eat - it is the place that time forgot.

This picture is from Milky Way Cove. I took this on our kayak tour of the Rock Islands. When we sailed in to this little grotto my breath was taken away. The water is a completely different color than anything I have ever seen in my life, luminescent. Our guide skin dived down to the bottom and got a bucket of the sand so we could rub it all over ourselves - it is said to hold magical properties for the skin. It smelled like phosphorus, so I could see why. We then jumped in and splashed around like children for a while. It is one of my favorite memories!

Onto the scuba diving. Todd and I did three days of diving, two dives a day, for a total of six dives. Each dive was vastly different. I can see why Palau is such a diver's Mecca. The first time I did a back roll off of the dive boat and let the air out of my buoyancy control device (bcd) and started sinking into the deep blue Pacific, I must admit I was scared to death. There is so much to remember! What hose goes where, which button does what, etc. And there were things that we were doing that I had never even heard of before - like reef hooking. So after our descent - to 70 feet! I had only gone down 20 feet in training! - we swim around for a bit and then approach this sheer drop-off that apparently goes down for thousands of feet more. We then clip ourselves to a cord that has a metal hook at the end and then hook that end to the coral and put some air into our bcd so we were a bit more floaty and we just hang out and watch the goings on of this drop-off. This drop off was actually one side of a trench that was something of a superhighway for all kinds of schooling fish - and the sharks who eat them! I saw sharks on my first dive! Oh my god! I was so friggin' excited and hyped up on adrenaline I guess I forgot to be scared. It was so amazing!

The other dives were as varied as the day is long. One we did was called a 'wall' dive which means we descended next to a sheer cliff that goes down thousands of feet and let the current move us slowly by all the different corals: branch, brain, cabbage and the others I don't know the name of. I saw so many tropical fish in such vibrant colors, and sea stars, and eel. I saw sea turtles twice - slowly making his way past me without a care in the world. Another dive we swam up to a sunken ship grown over with all types of coral and teeming with fish. I cannot believe how much there is to see out there.

This is a photo of one of the famous Rock Islands of Palau. You can see how the ocean is slowly eating away at the base to make the iconic mushroom shape. Some of the islands I saw whilst kayaking were so amazingly structured - it looked like they were about to teeter off into the ocean, for the bases had been washed away to almost nothing.

This is the famous "Survivor" beach, where most of the filming took place. We had lunch here the first day during our surface interval between dives. While we were motoring out here I began to recognize the shape of the islands and knew where we were before the dive master even told us. I can't believe I have been to a place so damned remote that Survivor has been filmed there!

All in all, Palau is an amazingly beautiful place. It is so untouched, so virgin. I cannot wait to go back to the South Pacific and explore more of these islands - specifically Yap, which is known for their large money stones and manta ray, and Chuuk (also known as Truk), which is known for the vast quantities of sunken WWII airplanes. I can see that these unspoiled little gems hidden away won't stay that way for long, and I need to see them before they get any more developed. I remember vividly while walking to dinner one night, seeing a local drinking the last bit out of a plastic juice bottle and then throwing it off of the bridge into the ocean. My jaw dropped. And though Todd and I were, as it seemed, two of the few American tourists, the Japanese come there in droves. And I saw them doing some questionable things while snorkeling, such as chumming the fish with bread (a big no-no in a protected environment), and taking away some coral and shells. It makes my heart hurt, but is also very inspiring to me to see all these things soon.