Seriously, sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live the normal, stable life of a 9 to 5 at a desk somewhere. Then we have a port visit like this one and I remember why I do not and why I am totally ok with that. I just spent two of the most beautiful days of my life on the islands of Palau. I took 450 pictures in 2 days and still feel like I did not capture the beauty of this place.
I had duty on the first day, but the second day, my birthday, we went on the dive trip I put together. The first dive was a drift dive called Baxter’s Wall. I saw my first shark there (first of many many more) and about 5 sea turtles. This is my friend Parina in the yellow suit.
Then we went to the most famous dive spot, featured in many dive magazines, Blue Corner. It is a 45 ft ledge at the edge of a steep drop off. They give you hooks on a string that you secure to a rock or dead coral and you inflate you BC so you flat there like a balloon. The up current coming up the face of the wall keeps you stationary. You sit there and feel like you are on the inside of the shark tank at sea world. Black tip and white tip sharks cruise in front of you at about 20-30 feet. And then we went to a wreck dive of a Japanese WWII depth charge dropping ship (it has no name…they call it Helmet Dive or Depth Charge Dive). That was surreal. You could see fire hoses, the wheel house, Kirin Bottles, sake bottles, boots, and a hold full of air plane engines.
That night we had my Wetting down which was a great time on the beach at a great bar at our hotel. Tiki torches and the whole deal. Good food, fruity drinks with lots of fruits and umbrellas. Perfect!
The next day we went on a snorkel trip. They take a fast boat through the Rock Islands, a group of about 200 limestone islands that are covered in trees, and stop at various spots for snorkeling. One stop has a famous white mud that is very good for the skin and Japanese people pay tons of money to get it exported to Japan. Then we went to a nice coral spot, we stopped for lunch at a beautiful white sand beach and got to swim with more sharks in about 5 feet of water. We went to Clam City, an old clam farm where they still have dozens of giant clams. Jelly Fish lake, a lake that is fed by the sea through the limestone holes and is full of 7.5 million stingless jelly fish. Then we got stuck in a rain storm and pulled into a cave to get out of the rain and had an impromptu snorkel, that one felt like real pirate stuff, I would have hidden my ship there, totally Goonies stuff. Then we went to Cemetary Reef or Fishbowl and I know why it was called fishbowl. Every kind of tropical fish was in there, amazing!! The island there is called Two Coconut Island and it was used in a Super Bowl add with Dan Marino a few years back, a Yahoo commercial.
It was so great!! We leave tomorrow and head to Brunei. I think I will dive again there and maybe do some white water rafting, who knows.
Thank you all so much for all the nice birthday emails!! I feel so loved! It was pretty much the coolest birthday ever.
Love you all!!
Linda
PS In the original email I had the pictures in the email. Not so easy on this site, so I made a slideshow!!
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