Palau

To get to Palau from the US you go through Hawaii, Guam, and Yap and eventually arrive in Palau about 2 am local time.  We had a full day in Yap before we caught the 1 am flight to Palau so we were all falling asleep even before we boarded the 45 minute flight.   As we arrived over Palau all we could see were city lights, yes compared to Yap everything is a city.  I could tell right away that Palau was much more populated than Yap.  We arrived tired and crabby to a large open air lobby at the Sea Passion Hotel and had a bit of a bumpy check in with unorganized staff and a broken air conditioner in the room.  After a few hours of sleep everything was all better.  The Sea Passion has one of the most scenic swimming lagoons I have ever seen; the perfect crescent shape, surrounded by perfectly shaped palm trees, water that is 10 different shades of blue/green and a white sugar sand beach.  Sadly I never once swam in that lagoon.  After a two hour round trip boat ride to the dive sites and a full day of diving I was ready for a shower and  dry clothes when we got back to the hotel.

Often when I travel to a new location I find myself saying, “This looks like….” But that was not the case with Palau.  Granted there are a lot of places on this globe I have never seen but, so far, no place looks like Palau!  Most Pacific Islands are either one huge mountain volcano covered in lush vegetation, an atoll, or an ancient flat coral reef that looks like it will be swamped with one good wave.  To me, what set Palau apart is how there are thousands of tiny little dot islands so close together.  Like God tossed a hand full of huge limestone pebbles into the ocean and said, “Let there be Palau.”  The larger islands are not just one big mountain, like Fiji, they look as if some of the pebbles all bunched together and grew vegetation.  The small islands are 50 to over 100 feet tall, have really steep sides covered in tropical vegetation, and most don’t have any beach.  The sides plunge straight into the water where the sea has eroded a perfect undercut making each little island look like a cartoon mushroom.  It is hard to describe.  I never got tired of inspecting each island as we flew passed in the dive boat on the way to and from the dive sites:  looking at its shape, looking to see how far the sea has cut into the base, looking at the different trees, none of which were palm trees unless there was a sandy beach.  There are very few islands with a sandy beach.

Since the hotel was just around the corner by boat, our dive master picked us up every morning in the boat, took us straight back to the hotel in the afternoon and we left all our gear on the boat.  It was great not to have to wash gear every day and schlep it back and forth to the boat!!  A girl could get spoiled!!

Palau is a lot more populated than I expected and it is full of people from other places.  Everyone I met was from somewhere else; India, Philippians, China, Japan, Canada, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and any other place you can think of.  There is a large population of young US expats and I am not sure why; some were doing the bum around the world thing, some were working and I think some were going to school.  It looks like there is a lot to see and do in Palau.  The main island of Koror was full of resorts, shopping and restaurants.  We never made it up north the largest main island where the capital city of Melekeok is located.  It would be good to have a car and be able to take a day or two and just explore the island.  I would think it would be pretty easy to spend a couple of weeks just in Palau exploring the area and diving.