This past February, Kirk and I used our air miles to get to Palau! It's a tiny set of islands due South of Japan, near the Philippines and Guam. We love being able to jet around for free with our United miles. We flew into the Koror airport at 3am on Sunday morning, picked up our rental car, and met up with the owner of our bungalow who graciously met us so we could follow her to their guesthouse where we could crash until morning.
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| Since we arrived at 3am, and the bungalow we booked was still 45 minutes away from the airport, the owner allowed us to stay in a spare room at her home minutes from the airport so we could get a couple hours of sleep and a good breakfast before we hit the road up north. |
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| The guest room also served as an office... |
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| ... and the office/guest room was inside a wood shop. The hosts were so gracious in allowing us to stay in their home, which they have constructed themselves over time and made into a giant family community house. So, from day 1, Kirk and I became familiar with the Palauan sense of family and connectedness. We felt so welcomed and included right from the start. |
After an awesome breakfast that included Spam (gotta have Spam in the Pacific!), Kirk and I drove our rental car up to the North side of the island to the capitol city of Melekeok. FYI: most of the vehicles on the island are Japanese so the steering wheel is on the right side of the car. BUT, you drive on the left side of the road, so Kirk and I had a fun time re-adjusting once again to a new way of driving.
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| This is the bungalow we stayed in! Again, constructed entirely by the family and maintained by the owner's brother-in-law, Ely, and his family. |
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| It had 2 rooms - this is the front room/kitchen. Everything was rustic and basic. Just what we wanted. No frills. The real beach life. |
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| Side view of the bungalow. |
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| Low tide at the beach across the street. Notice the super long pier? It was awesome to walk out to the end every day to lay out, snorkel, or just sit and read. At night, with the wind, moon and stars, Kirk and I agreed we could do this permanently. |
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| Resting area, literally. Throughout the day, Palauans would come here and sleep on the tables. |
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| We were able to request meals from Ely and he made some amazing food! We had breakfast every morning, lunch the first day and a couple of dinners. He was definitely inspired by Filipino and Hawaiian food, which was fine with us! He always set up a table in his outdoor pavilion that doubled as his wood shop/laundry room/all purpose gathering place. It was the real deal - several of the nights, Ely and his brothers gathered to repair siding from one of the local meeting houses (will explain later). SUPER cool to observe. |
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| Coconut water straight from the coconut with fried fish and cabbage salad. |
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| This is Sparky. He joined us everyday for feeding time, along with his brothers and sisters. Ely told us his name was Sparky, but Kirk named all the other pets and adopted them as her own for the week. They did love her (because she snuck food to them). They would literally wait outside our bungalow door for her to come out. |
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| Ah yes. We played SO MUCH Settlers of Catan. Hours and hours and hours... nothing more peaceful (and competitive) than playing Settlers in Palau with our Japanese travel set. |
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| Our Mazda Demio - great gas mileage and surprisingly good on inclines and through muddy back roads. |
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| Driving around, we found WWII remnants. |
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| This is the Capitol Building in Melekeok. We were told that Palau law stated that the capital city had to change every so often, so it recently moved from Koror to here. However, most of the federal employees remained in Koror (which is the "happening" city in Palau) even though they built this stunning new center. Sadly, it's in the middle of NO WHERE. There is nothing around it except our bungalows and some residences. We never saw more than 2 cars parked there and they were probably Japanese tourists. It's on the top of a beautiful mountain with great potential, but extremely under-utilized. |
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| Behind our bungalow was a cleared path that went up the mountainside that we just had to explore. |
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| Sparky the dog accompanied us the whole way |
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| At the top of the hill was the local Men's Meeting House called a Bai. In ancient times every village in Palau had a Bai which served as the meeting hall for the governing elders, which each had assigned seats along the wall according to rank and title. |
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The view from the mountain top!
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| When driving from our bungalows back to the city, this is the turn that we made to go back to the highway, couldn't resist taking a picture they showed where they just stopped paving. |
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Our bungalow neighbor Justin, a Californian archaeologist, told us about a really great fish market where local fisherman bring in fresh fish daily. We decided to check out the Happy Fish Market for the Catch of the Day.
And this is what we bought... |
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| Unknown Ugly Fish |
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| Parrot Fish |
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| Red Snapper |
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Unknown Red Fish
We took these fish back to our bungalow for a fish fry! It was a difficult endeavor considering what we had to work with, but we got them filleted, dredged in flour, and fried in oil on a pan/hot plate in our little kitchenette. Delicious! Kirk creatively came up with a potato/vegetable hash to accompany our fresh catch. Justin joined us for the feast and provided the blade for the filleting and good, archaeological conversation.
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This sign was in a a grocery store in Koror. Betelnut is a seed from the Areca palm tree that grows in the tropical Pacific and is chewed in betel leaves for its stimulant effect, similar to drinking coffee, but the juice is spit out similar to chewing tobacco. It is apparently a very popular practice in Palau however neither of us tried the nut to tell you if the stimulant effect is for real.
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| Getting ready to take off on our snorkeling tour for the day. It was just Kirk and I and a Japanese family on this boat for our Rock Island & Giant Clam tour. |
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Kirk wanted her parents to know she didn't forget sunscreen!
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This is a typical rock island.It's neat to see how the water has eroded away the base of the rock. There are somewhere between 250-300 Rock Islands total. They are made of limestone and a result of volcanic activity.
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| This is the famous rock bridge where the water has eroded away the rock to form a bridge. |
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We also saw the remnants of a Zero fighter plane from the WWII era that crashed on this rock island!
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We stopped at the beach of this island for a shore lunch. Our guides cooked us grilled chicken, corn, peppers, zucchini, okra, eggplant. Delicious!
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Eaten with chop sticks and a side of rice, of course!
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The snorkeling was simply amazing! It's an entirely different world underwater.
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This is not my picture, but these are the Giant Clams that we saw under water, they were huge!
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| Again, not my picture, but we saw so many blue star fish! |
As you can see, the first few days of our trip were a combination of beach relaxation and some excursions and explorations. Stay tuned for our next blog post on the rest of our trip that included scuba diving, a day trip to the north part of the island where we discovered the waterfall and stone monoliths, and some really great Palauan food!
