Ready at 7:45 AM, we headed to Sam’s Tours and hopped on some boats equipped with kayaks for all of us. I stupidly decided to stick my foot over the side of the boat in the water while we were hi-tailing it and I splashed myself and everyone else near me. Correction: I drenched myself.
We headed to a secluded beach and waded around in the water a bit, swinging on a rope swing on a branch over the water. I found hermit crab city, a pile of garbage absolutely overflowing with hermit crabs of all shapes and sizes.
We headed out on our kayaks to explore the rock islands. I opted to have a single rather than share with someone, I guess because I like to go off and explore things often and I didn’t want to get annoying to anyone.
At one corner of the still water in the rock islands, we saw a whole bunch of baby black tip sharks! I wove my way around some dense mangroves, and found another baby shark! This one wasn’t scared away by me as much as the other ones, so I tempted him with my fingers in the water. He did indeed come up close to my kayak. Eek! I wanted to touch him so badly, but I decided that might not be a great idea. Our guide explained that the two sharks fight each other and one ends up eating the other while still in their mother’s womb. That it how the winner learns to hunt. Then they are raising in the lagoons of the rock islands to improve their hunting skills with small fish. WHOA.
Riding under the jut out of the rock islands was nice, cool and shady. It was like a half-tunnel shape on the edges of all of the rock islands and we followed it around the rock islands. We saw a baby ray! It was so little!!! And a sunken WWII Japanese fuel tanker, sticking out of the water. We also investigated a pretty cool cave.
We headed back to the beach; Bento boxes for lunch!, and kayaked to another beach site. We had to pass under a sort of tunnel. And guess what... it was shaped like a DELTA! Ahhhh rush is so soon.
I didn’t hear the memo about wearing shoes this time... and it hurt my feet to walk on the beach where we landed. There were so many crabs and hermit crabs, you couldn’t step without landing on at least about three at one point. Yikes.
We were visiting an old village site. There were lots and lots of crab holes in the ground, then our guide brought us over a full grown crab and it was HUGE. I didn’t not want to touch it. It had big ‘ol claws. Laura held her water bottle up to his claw and he grabbed hold of it and would not let go. It was intimidating. He also was moving his claws around like a ninja ready to attack. So funny!
We walked around the island, looking at places where there used to be a well, houses, etc. Now it’s just overgrown jungle. Kind of awesome!
We found a translucent ball that David and the guide got really excited about. Apparently, the Japanese fishing line balls float over to Palau and Guam and other islands occasionally, and people go crazy collecting them. David has a few, some of them really big. It is just a ball of some kind of clearish materials that is plastic/rubber and floats. Not actually too special... but when David held it up and made a big deal about it and wondered what to do about it, I suggested, “put it in the ENST [Environmental Studies] office!” Everyone else seemed to hear me and excitedly agreed. Yes! Success!
Also, just as a funny side note, DanK decided to wear a red beanie all day and sit around alone occasionally. He looked just like Waldo. From where I was balancing on top of a beached rubber floating fishing ball thingy on the beach, he was just showing through the branches and trunks of trees. I called over people walking by and told them to stand directly in front of me, turn and look, and then I’d say, “where’s Waldo?” Everyone laughed.
We kayaked back to the first beach for some snorkeling. We all headed out. Our guide was great! He really knew his stuff. This one coral we had been seeing all trip but not being able to identify turns out to be razor coral. He picked it up and passed it around. It was not given that name accidentally: it’s very, very sharp, dense and heavy. Cool! Later I discovered from Pearl that it is the only mobile coral. There are little tentacles all over them. Hehe cool!! I saw some anemones, scary fish staring at me, and even a moray eel hiding away in a rock! Then the guide yelled shark! I put my head above the water to see if that meant danger and that I should do something, but he pointed furiously towards me and yelled, “look in the water!” When I plopped my head back in the water, there it was: a SHARK! He was swimming right towards me. Terrifying. Then it (he?) swam next to me and away. I started to chase after it, along with Squirt and Pearl. It was exhausting! Eventually, we were nearing the reef crest and he swam out into the ocean, so we let him go. That was awesome though.
We headed back to shore, took everything we had with us (oh, I had another coconut :] ), and kayaking in the other direction. We went for a long time and my arms started getting sore. At least I didn’t have to walk too much, because my ankle it pretty swollen and sore. We stopped eventually at shallow, protected area in the rock islands to snorkel. We tied all the kayaks together and jumped in... right next to an open giant clam. Eek! I was speechless for a moment. I motioned for Squirt to come over and see where I almost landed. I could have for realz lost a foot, folks. Once a giant clam closes, it doesn’t open. You put a finger in a giant clam underwater = you drown. Yikes!
This snorkel site was supposed to have mandarinfish, a colorful little guy that is rare adn hard to find. I had no idea what I was looking for, but I looked mercilessly for something colorful and rare. Needle in a haystack.
I did some free diving here and started to feel like I was getting good at it. The visibility was the best I have ever seen in the ocean, probably like 50 ft. or more. I could see everything! And I swam all the way down to the bottom. I had to equalize/clear my ears every time because of the pressure on my ears. I saw a spade fish! (One of my favorites). Its amazing how much more you can see when you get down to the level of the fish. I met up with most of the group and Chloe showed me that when you put a piece of small coral in the home area of a damsel fish (female), she will pick it up in her mouth and move it away from where she wants to raise her kids. So cute! I didn’t not see any mandarinfish though. On the way back to the boat (the boat appeared and we left the kayaks there for someone else to come pick up), we found a crocodile fish! It was sooo cool because it was changing colors right before our eyes.
I was very very sad to get back on the boat because that was our last snorkel of the trip.
We headed back, got a free T shirt, and headed back to the hotel. I showered and we went out to The Drop Off (again) for dinner. I had the blackened sashimi again. It’s just so good! There was a lot of lightening in the distance that looked really cool. After dinner, a few of us headed to Rip Tide bar and restaurant. Our local friend, Sue, recommended it to us the other night. The people there were really friendly. I was sitting at the end of the counter and kind of excluded from the group at one point, and a local guy in a Hawaiian shirt who works at the bar came over and talked to me. He asked where I was from, etc. Then he walked over to the stage, grabbed a guitar, and said, “this song goes out to a girl from Illinois, Bridget, from USC!” Bhahahaha! He said “You’ll Always Be My Baby,” a Mariah Carey song. Bhahahhaha! That made my night. We started dancing like weirdoes in front of the stage (no one else was dancing there), and soon decided to leave because we were really sweaty and getting tired. We headed home and some people wanted to night snorkel, but I wasn’t up for getting in the salty ocean water and feeling sticky and gross afterwards. So Squirt and I had some vanilla ice cream and watched the fishies from the suspended table at the bar at the hotel.
A group of us tried to get up to the roof to watch the meteor shower, but some Asian woman was salsa dancing by herself behind the door to the roof, hilarious! So we turned around and ran away. No roof tonight.
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