Well this is our last day on
Palau. The time has gone by very quickly. Elan has gone to swim with the Dolphins, and I’m just having a quiet reflecting morning. This afternoon we’ll go see the main town of
Koror, which will take all of about - - ten minutes. Then tonight onto
Yap for the last few days of the trip.
We’ve spent four days here in
Palau and we found that on the first day of checking into Sam’s
Tours who provide our diving and Kayak tours that we were assigned to the same group of people for the dive days. That group included myself, Elan, and Josh who is a submariner and the same age as Elan, and a family of five from
Utah, we nicknamed the
Flanders, after the cloyingly cheerful neighbour of Homer Simpson. The
Flanders consist of three teenage boys, dad and a manic mom who herds them around like a mother hen on Crack Cocaine. You could
say that they are infectiously cheerful – infectious like Athlete’s Foot, annoying itchy and irritating. Lots of hoping, hollering, and family high fives. As Josh said, “No Family can be that cheerful all the time!” They seem to operate like the sharks they’re so fond of: If there’s food or drinks to be had, they grab them first, leaving the rest of us the scraps.
The
Flanders seem to be on quest: They want to catalogue the entire ocean. They have a list of things they have to see, and they scurry from here to there to check off each thing:
“Wow, a white tip shark!” One shouts.
“Where?” shouts another.
“Over here.” The first responds.
And the remaing
Flanders make a bee line over elbowing out of the way anyone in their path.
“That’s the sixth one! Family High Five!!”
The strange thing is that nobody, I mean nobody else sees these things! Now I know I can’t be relied on as a quality observer, because most of my time is spent watching my ever decreasing air supply, the elusive Dive Master, and the Elan’s flippers. I keep Elan in front of me at all times as a buffer should we actually ever come face to face with a shark. After all I do have a spare kid back home, but there’s only one of me. But neither Elan or Josh or the Dive Master sees these mythical fish the
Flanders seem to find, which of course, led us to the game.
When we’re snorkeling, Josh, Elan or I would cry out to one of the others:
“Look, Look! Shark!”
And of course all five
Flanders would come scurrying for a look see.
“
No, No, it’s over here!” one of us would shout, “And there’s two!”
And of course the
Flanders would head off in the other direction. They never seemed to tire of this game. The closest I ever saw them to an argument is whether our sightings should count.
Over the three days we did three dives a day, and some of them were absolutely incredible. I mentioned Jelly Fish lake, and yesterday we dove into three dark caves (with flashlights). The stalagmites look a lot likechandeliers, hence the name “Chandelier” caves. We’ve also dived on two WW2 wrecks and countless coral reefs and rocks. I’m going to let you in on a secret, after one or two coral reefs, they all begin to look the same to me: It’s like someone had a bottle of cheap red wine, a Hawiian Pizza with Green Peppers, and threw up over the rocks. Sorry folks, doesn’t sound romantic, but that’s my thoughs on a bunch of coloured rocks. The Dive Masters say their alive, but I know it’s not true, otherwise the
Flanders would have counted them.
Yesterday was our last day with Sam’s
Tours and it was to be a Kayak Tour. We showed up at the assigned time, and looked at the board and there was good news and bad news. The bad news was we were once again assigned with the
Flanders, the good news was Josh was with us and another couple: An Opthamologist and his valley girl wife. I wanted to do the German LightHouse Tour, but all other tours had been cancelled because they were filming Survivor there, and it would ruin the illusion that they’re stranded away from civilization of a bunch of Kayaks floated through every ten minutes. I can only imagine what would happen if one of those groups happed to contain the
Flanders.
So the only option was the “Tarzan Tour”, something that appeared a little more enthusiastic for me, considering I’ve got about 25 years on the next closest person in the tour. I asked if they had a “Jane”
tour. I’d pefer that, but given no alternative I went along. Elan really wanted his own Kayak, but the
Flanders had grabbed most of them, even though they would be towing their youngest in one, so Elan had no alternative but to spend the day grumbling and looking at the back of my head in a double Kayak and criticizing my paddling form.
The kayak trip consisted of about four 30 – 40 minute Kayak trips to different
Islands and about an hour stop at each place for snorkeling. At the first snorkeling stop I swear I heard a 9 year old girl squealing andshrieking. I asked Elan if we had someone join us I didn’t see. He said the noise was coming from the Valley Girl Wife.
Now I’ve heard “low talkers”, and “fast talkers” but this was a first: a grown woman who sounds exactly like a 9 year old girl! It made me wonder what the doc saw in her, but I don’t think we want to go down that road.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, they were bonding with the
Flanders!
At the lunch break, I stayed behind with the Kayaks while the Josh and Elan went snorkeling on one side of the bay, and the
Flanders and the Doc and Valley Girl went to the other. It was beautifully ideal, except for the racket coming from one side of the bay. There was something very different about the racket and it took me a few minutes to figure out what it was. The Valley Girl and the
Flanders were actually communicating through their snorkels underwater – sort of like mutant dolphins talking in “twin” talk.Even the guides who stayed behind with me and were having their own conversation, fell silent in stunned amazement.
On the last leg of our voyage to “lost lake” we had a monsoon. It just pelted rain, but it was warm and over in 5 minutes. At Lost lake, we put on our snorkeling gear and went in the water. I poked around the reefs by myself for a while, and when I looked around everyone was gone! I had no idea where they went! Eventually the guide showed up and took me through the underwater entrance to a little totally enclosed Lagoon.The evening was spent at Kramers – our restaurant of choice and then home to bed early, as we were both quite tired from the long strenuous day. Josh was very depressed about Leaving and having to go back to Guam – especially when he found he’d be sharing the flight with the
Flanders. He was seriously looking at upgrading to business class just to be rid of them.
Tonight off to
Yap, then off to yap to be Self Propelled Bait (SPB) –my term for SCUBA to dive with the Manta Rays and Sharks. Hopefully there’ll be Internet there, otherwise you’ll have to wait till I get to
Saipan on
Thursday for the final chapters.
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