What Bopha did

Joedyn’s older son, Fonzie, was sick this morning, so he was not able to make it out to Peleliu with us this morning.  Instead, we were with Bernard, who led dives on Peleliu for about 8 years before coming to Sam’s.

The ride out was the smoothest I have ever had, we were there in about an hour and 10 minutes rather than 1 1/2 hours.  And it was sunny!

Our first dive was supposed to be Peleliu Wall to Cut, unfortunately, the current was against us, so we turned around and drifted along the wall almost to Orange Beach.  At the very beginning, I was looking for long nosed hawkfish, but found a pipefish instead.  It was neat to be able to find it, but boy did I miss using my camera.                            

All along the way, we were followed by bumphead parrotfish that were hunting and feeding.  They were interesting, and apparently interested in us!

Dive two was supposed to be the Peleliu Express, taking it down to the corner.  Unfortunately, we worked against the current the entire time, and the dive was extremely depressing, despite being my 950th.  There were two sections in the reef that were totally torn out, and the soft corals were stripped away.  I cried to myself, inside.  The effect of Typhoon Bopha was an absolute devastation of the eastern side of the island, to include the reef below the surface.  There is some life coming back, but I think it will be 5-10 years before the east wall is really diveable again.

Our final dive was Orange Beach.  At last a dive site with a lot of coral and life again!  It was nice to see, especially after the second dive.  We had a gentle current drift dive, we saw giant clams and a very small anemonefish, and finished up with, if not a good feeling, at least a better one.

We were back early, and went to Mog Mog for dinner after a little rest.  It’s an interesting local/Japanese/seafood restaurant, and we had some excellent clams, tempura, grilled calamari, and garlic shrimp.  All quite excellent.  The staff was one that was more attentive to male guests than female, so I had to flag people down to get service for me.  Oh well.  The food was great, and we will be back some day!  A good way to end a fairly sad day.

Heading to German Channel

Today we were back on the boat with Joedyn, hooray!

We headed out early to German Channel, and were the first boat to arrive.  Wayne and I expected nothing, after all, in 12 years, we have only seen mantas under water at the channel once, this past summer.  Can lightning strike twice?  It seems as though it can!

We also saw sharks, a single Napoleon wrasse, and more gobies and garden eels!  On the bad side, I noticed condensation in my camera housing (I had seen some yesterday at the wreck, and brought it home to clean the o ring out), but was lucky in that the camera was unharmed. 

I tested out the housing without the camera on the next dive, and sure enough, it flooded.  I’m glad I left the camera on board.  Although I was sad since I could not photograph all the wonderful life at New Drop Off.  The joint was jumping, and there were many big fish in the water, as well as a giant moray nearby.  Wayne has become the photographer of the trip, unfortunately.  But, as he says, it just means it is time to upgrade to a new camera.                  

Our last dive of the day was Blue Holes, drifting towards Blue Corner.  We actually spent about 30 minutes in the hole, much longer than we had before.

No, it really isn’t jail!

It was pleasant to spend that much time there, especially since the corner was crowded.  We got some wonderful shots of the disco clams inside the cave, aka electric clams. 

While on the trip, I convinced the two German couples, as well as three other people on the boat, to sign up to go to Peleliu.  I’m quite excited about that!  Of course, when we went into the shop to pay for the upgrade that Joedyn confirmed, the gentlemen at the front desk threw up his hands and told us how impossible it would be to do that.  He ran out to check with Joedyn about the boat booking, and then made a show about calling to get Peleliu permits.  Fawn was dispatched to get them, and we paid for the upgrade, which none of the staff seemed to know how to do.  In fact, if I hadn’t sold the trip, I don’t think we’d be going tomorrow.  A theme keeps repeating on this trip for me right now, and it’s not looking good for returning to Sam’s in the near future.

After we got home, we headed first up to WCTC for the thermos (got it!), and then to its grocery store for cocoa and soup and snacks (success again).  The grocery store was remarkably well stocked, had plenty of fresh produce, and, surprise, Red Rooster beer in a can.  :)

We continued on to the former Outrigger to pick up wifi cards for the network in our hotel, and then trudged forward to Dragon Tei, an Okinawan restaurant up the hill.  Wayne misjudged the distance, and we wound up going about 3 3/4 miles to get to dinner.  My ankles were quite sore today, so we did wind up taking a ride back to the hotel.

Dinner at Dragon Tei was excellent - tuna carpaccio, sushi, and Okinawan seaweed noodles.  Definitely a place to go back to, but you have to be prepared for the mostly uphill hike.

Peleliu tomorrow!

Ungil Kurismas!

Promising skies this morning!

I did a little test of FaceTime this morning to see if the voice only worked, and it sort of does, so we will try it tomorrow with the family for Christmas on the other side of the date/time line.

We got an awesome Christmas present this morning, we led ourselves on the first two dives of the day.  The first was Ulong Channel.  This morning, there were about 3 or 4 sharks circling the mouth of the passage, and there was a mild current.  After we saw them for a while, we headed down the passage.  We got to my favorite part, the lettuce coral, unscathed by the surrounding titan triggerfish.  There is less lettuce coral than I remember, but it is still stunning.  After seeing the coral, we came across a shark looking like it was getting its chin petted - of course, it was being cleaned.

After that was a dive called the sand bar, which is a fairly deep dive right next to a sand bar.  Funny how these names work, right?  Nice variety of big and little fish, including leaf scorpionfish, garden eels, and shrimp/goby combinations.  I’d do it again.                          

Our last dive of the day was the Hafa Adai wreck, a former Guamanian cargo ship.  It’s fairly intact, and there was a good amount of life on the ship.  We didn’t really do any penetration, though, so we mostly got the outside look.  Going up the mast at the safety stop/ascent was very reminiscent of Chuuk, and the wrecks there, so pleasant.

We got home fairly early, so relaxed a little before heading to WCTC (the all encompassing market) to get a thermos.  Unfortunately, since it is Christmas, it is closed!  We’ll get that thermos one of these days.  It is really, really cold between dives.  My magic coat that Wayne got me has been really helpful for me this trip.

Back we went to the Taj, where I had mangrove chilli crab for dinner.  Ah, the joys of Palau!  But when we walked home, I smelled liked Indian spices and pickled food.  Interesting.  Maybe it will keep the mosquitos away tonight.  :)

Blue skies this morning

Today we awoke to beautiful blue skies, and we were happy about that!

We wound up diving with a new divemaster today, Matsuo, who is perhaps the longest standing dive guide at Sam’s.  It felt a little stilted today, and frustrating.  We were a large group, in a new boat.  We were fortunate to have Matsu realize that we didn’t need a checkout dive, which it seemed where we were likely headed.

Our first dive was at Ulong Channel.  Unlike most other times, there was no current there this morning, so we swam well past the entry into the channel attempting to find sharks.  There were none, but we spent over 30 minutes trying to find them, so we just swam a little bit into the channel, not even 1/4 of the way, and then we were chasing some sort of yellow boxfish, to no avail.

Then it was back to Blue Corner - truly the signature dive here in Palau, and worthy of multiple visits per trip.  There was no current here today, so we traversed the entire corner, and didn’t hook in.  There was not a lot of big life, but the Napoleon wrasses were just as friendly as yesterday, and Matsu found a giant moray, so I smiled and took more pictures.  The turtles shells here are all looking wonderfully clean, even with all the typhoons hitting.  It’s wonderful to see them so healthy, as opposed to all of ours on Oahu that have FP tumors.  We wound up going to a side of the corner we typically do not see, and it reminded me of Kosrae.  Nice location.

For our final dive, we returned to the Teshio Maru, where 8 years before we took our engagement photos.  Sadly, the tower where we took the photos suffered from storms and fell, but, for the first time today, I appreciated Matsu keeping us close at hand as he led us through some very narrow swim thrus in the ship.

Dinner was at Kramer’s - where, although I was sorely tempted by a bacon burger with blue cheese, I ate a cajun chicken sandwich.  We met a Danish gentleman who was without a valid passport, and we listened to his tale of woe about being stuck in Palau because the airlines failed to point out that he had did not have six months remaining on his passport.  Ah well, to be forced to stay and dive in Palau and take photographs while waiting on the Danish embassy in the Philippines to renew my passport would not kill me...yet.

We left and a downpour started, so we searched in a local store for a thermos for warm drinks between dives.  The rain stayed away long enough for us to make it home before another torrent began.  Very lucky.

Grey sky Monday

We got to Sam’s this morning earlier than the appointed time to begin our check in process so we could go out and dive.  What we found when we got there was nothing less than chaos.  It seems like there is an entirely new front desk staff when you check in.  We recognized no one, and no one recognized us.  No one on the staff even realized that Wayne has been coming here for 12 years and I have for 10.  We were treated like brand new divers who had never been to Palau before, much less Sam’s.  In the same year.  The worst part of check in was trying to show them the accounting error in their billing - they billed us for two more days of diving than was physically possible, something I thought I had ironed out in June this year.

When they finally got that right, they then started to still try to bill us for the same extra two days.  And looked completely baffled when I said it was $740 too much.  So there was the call to billing, and finally getting it right, and then showing us that we would have $740 deducted from the bill as the appropriate amount.  Grr.. Then we were told no DIN tanks.  Double grrr.  But as we were leaving, Joedyn and another member of the staff changed out our tanks for DIN tanks.  They were pretty banged up, but functional.

Off we went.  We were on the same boat as Joedyn, but we had Neil as our divemaster.  Despite his reservation in not knowing us as divers, we still had a pleasant time.

We first tried for German Channel, but there had to be at least 15 boats there.  So on we went to Turtle Cove, which was murky, but pleasant, and provided visibility of some turtles.

There was a huge crowd surrounding Blue Corner, so we wound up doing Dexter’s wall.  The dive was awesome, we wound up drifting to Blue Corner, where we saw the “big show” - Napoleons, Jacks and Sharks elbowing for who would hunt.   

From there, we did Blue Corner, which wound up being a lot of work, with very little big show.  The Napoleons were extremely friendly today!  And, the last two words of every dive here is “in Palau,” so it is typically worth it!   

We headed home in the rain, and I got to pull out my new Surf Fur coat (no, not real fur) and ward of the cold and wet of the ride.

Fawn made us dinner reservations for tomorrow (Christmas Eve) at Kramer’s, and we wound up walking to the Taj for dinner.  We made reservations there for dinner on Christmas night, and headed home in the rain.