Fairly uneventful, spending a good portion of the time traveling to Palau. With four flights, layovers and queues from hell, it was probably a 25 hour event. We ended up arriving in Koror late in the evening, around 10p I think, and went directly to the our hotel (West Plaza By the Sea )

Our day started early with breakfast at Rock Island Cafe, a few miles from our hotel. The food and particularly the cappuccino there was excellent. Later I was to find out that this is also a good place to check out and buy story boards, but I never had a chance to go back. This breakfast was the start of a trend that continued throughout my vacation: every restaurant meal we had, my meal was either completely forgotten, or came last, well after everyone else's meals were served and usually eaten and done.

Here we met our guides for the day, who were going to take us to a local waterfall (don't remember the name). In order to get there you either had to take a boat up to a village and hike in or take 4x4 road up to the other side and hike in from there. We were going via 4x4, which turned out to be pretty fun. We had two 4x4 suv things (I think they were 4Runners)

We finished the day with dinner at the Sea Horse, and talked about our upcoming kayaking adventure. There was a 'super typhoon' buzzing around the area, and all day we had experience wind and rain. Reports said it would be the worst in Koror around 11pm. We discussed the possibilities of postponing our trip by a day if the weather was going to be poor. None of wanted to paddle in typhoon winds and rain, yet I think we were all also eager to get started.

This morning significantly better weather made the decision for us, after an early Sea Horse breakfast, we packed up what we were to take with us on our kayaking/camping trip into the provided dry bags, left everything else at the hotel and headed off to Sam's. They loaded up our stuff, us and our kayaks onto a speedboat and off we went. All of this of course happened at a very nice, relaxing island pace, which is easier to get used to then to try to change.

We cruised into a cove, bay thing and there we adopted our kayak for the next week, and said farewell to the speedboat, which was next going directly to our evening camping beach and dropping off our stuff. This would be the only time we didn't carry all our stuff and camp was setup for us.

Among other places we snorkeled at Maderian Bay...with tons of scuba divers. Usually they would not come into Maderian Bay, but with the storm not too far off, apparently the sheltered bay's inside the reef were their only option.

This is where I realized that one of my underwater cameras (thankfully I had brought two), was not so waterproof. The view finder seemed a bit fuzzy after a few pictures, so I surfaced, held up the camera to take a look-see, only to watch a few tablespoons of sea-water trickling out of the water-proof casing. This bummed my out...no Maderian fish pictures and now limited to just one camera. Jelly-fish lake was planned for the last day so I rationed out the underwater pictures keeping a few left for jellyfish lake.

Our last long paddle of the day was to our camp for the next two nights (the only time we were camping in the same spot for two nights).

We settled into our tents, and had dinner. I explored our beach a bit, it was low tide so I was able to walk a fair distance. That night it stormed all night, the rain was incredibly hard, I hoped it was just the tail-end of the storm but was also worried that the next day may be storming, which would be a major bummer to kayak nd snorkel in.

Lazy Summary:

• Kayak out into the surf...fun kayak / snorkel x3
• Cave with remains, really deep cave
• Pill box for lunch.
• snorkeled Disney Lake with colorful corals
• Back to first camp.

This was not the longest paddle of the trip, but (for me) the most challenging simply because of the wind factor and it was a bit choppy

This morning we took down our camp, packed up our large dry bags, and after breakfast decided to go for an early morning kayak and snorkel in search of a sea horse, before loading up our kayaks and leaving our camp for good. After a short paddle and a long search in the sea grass of a small cove, I spotted a large sea horse...pretty cool. After staring at the sea horse for awhile, we went to look at a large lion fish that was hanging out under a large coral thing, although the sea horse and lion fish were very cool, I was most impressed by the large puffer that was lurking on the other side of the lion fish's coral. He was sooooo cute. Something between ET and a puppy.

Back to camp we went to load up our kayaks and headed off to kayak and snorkel the day away again.

While crossing to the light house we went by channel marker (leaning tower of palau).

Once we arrived at the old dock we had lunch and then hiked up the old Japanese made road to the ruins of their headquarters and baths, then continued up the trail to summit Palau. At the highest point in Palau, at 500', we climbed up to the top of the old lighthouse and caught an incredible view of the rocks islands.

Our final stop that day was "Margie's Beach", were I tried sleeping in a hammock, perfectly tied to two coconut trees right on the waters edge. It was the best sleep I had up until then! No back ache, no stuffy tent, the ocean breeze and sound of the waves was perfect. At that point I sincerely considered trading in my Select Comfort for a hammock!

First thing in the morning, we jumped in our unburdened kayaks and headed off to check out a Japanese Zero, which had crashed in the shallows of the reef.

After breakfast we took down camp and loaded up again. We kayaked out to "The Milky Way", then paddled over to "Einstein's", for a great snorkel with amazing brain corals. Then we headed off to the mangrove channel which led to an incredible marine lake("Long Lake", I think?) We snorkeled there and saw incredible giant clams! The timing to pass in and out of the mangrove channel apparently has to be well planned with the tides, or you will get stuck inside and have to schlep yourself and your kayak across a long sandy channel. From here we went to "Fantasy Island" for our camping. This was our first (but not last) experience with the Palauian fur-less squirrel (aka rats). No one seemed to really know how they got on the islands, but apparently many of the small rock islands are teaming with rats.

I decided a hammock was the way to go again.

Today was the most eventful, in may aspects....so the story is longer :-)

After breakfast we packed up and paddled out....at a nice island pace :-)

We passed "Honeymoon Beach 1" which was absolutely gorgeous. I got a pretty good picture of it, but it includes a terrible sun spot -bummer- I included it anyway.
When we arrived at "Honeymoon Beach 2" we did a long snorkel around a couple rock island across a reef. I saw TWO turtles (finally!).....well one departing turtle butt, and one really good turtle sighting. I was really close before he took off.

We then headed off to "Giant Clam Beach", which was home for that night, so we unloaded then snorkeled the giant clam beach cove area - amazing giant clams.

We then headed over to the famous JellyFish Lake. The idea, I think, was to go later in the afternoon in hopes of having the lake to ourselves, without other groups. This is exactly what happened. The paddle there and the scenery was so serene and still. We saw another turtle from the kayak: he was just resting on the surface, until he finally heard or saw us, then promptly took off. I've come to the conclusion that turtles are very shy.

Once we arrived at JellyFish Lake dock, we hiked up and over the trail, jumped in flipper-less (as to not decapitate the delicate jellyfish) and swam over to where the jelly fish were slowly migrating with the passing of the sun. Once on the perimeter, I gently floated into the mass of jelly fish. It almost took my breath away, or maybe I was so overwhelmed that I was forgetting to breath ...hundred or thousands of jellyfish, ranging in size of the tip of a pencil to maybe 7" diameter. Although my vision was limited by my mask, I could feel them all over, gently bumping into me and either sliding across me or slowing rerouting. I was afraid to move at all, since I didn't want to hurt any of them in the slightest, so I would slowing and gently move just my hands to direct my floating. I took the last four pictures of my underwater camera. We were warned that they are not 100% stringerless and if you started kissing the jellyfish you may end up getting a bit of a sting....sure enough this little baby jellyfish snuck up on my and kissed me on the lip. It felt like a pin prick - nothing more.

When I realized we were getting called to leave, I slowly (and sadly) floated out of the mass. Once free of the jellyfish I took off swimming to catch up with the rest of the group on shore. 45 minutes had gone by in what seemed like 10.

This was our longest paddle day so as we paddled back to Giant Clam beach for dinner and camp, we watched the sunset.

Not having good hammock trees, I decided to sleep on an old table that was on the edge of the beach. It was strongly recommended that we set up our tents even if we slept outdoors, just in case a tropical storm came in. Sounded good to me, a bit of a pain to set up a tent you didn't use, but good reason. So I setup my tent and put my stuff in there to air out (stuff gets pretty nasty in the tropics, constantly damp, squished up in a dry bag in the sun all day). Anyway, after less than a couple hours asleep the air temp dropped and the wind picked up, and my wonderful star view was gone...I figure rain was definitely on the way, when I felt a couple drops I .

=centipede story=

This morning we got to leave all our camping gear that was provided. Since this was our last day on the water, we no longer needed it and thankfully it was finding it's own way back to it's home base. So today we were slightly less burdened on our kayaks, carrying only our personal gear.

We kayaked and snorkeled and made a long cross over to <???>, where a boat picked us up to take us to snorkel at the "Big Drop Off" and "Turtle Cove" where among many things, I saw a huge manta ray

I thought it would be cool to have a rest day...make the tour a couple days longer with a rest day at a hotel in the middle. Particularly if it was back at the ordinal hotel so you could swap out some of your stuff, leave behind the stuff you realized you didn't need and pick up a couple clean items. But I think the logistics of this idea are not possible.

Unless you are a real WWII buff, or have plenty of time to spare, I would recommend skipping the stay and tour on Palieu. It was interesting and the bungalows are cool, but with just that one day to spare, I would have preferred to go back to Koror and explored the much talked about museum.

Once you are out, you are out....no buying more film, batteries or underwater camera when you need them. Bring it all.

Paddle Gloves
mask slim (thanks Anne for being so generous!)