Palau

A big tanker crossing across our bow, reminding us
of the law of mass tonnage.

Believe it or not, we finally left Yap.  I have a few pictures and stories I’ve yet to tell, but for the most part, we’ve moved on.  We had a really rough passage to Palau where I got a jump start on my new diet…it’s called “purge and fast...then purge again.”  We had 25 knot winds (which is actually good, made for a fast ride) and 10-12 foot seas.  It’s those 10-12 foot seas that seem to get me every time.  For some reason I still can’t explain, I chose this passage to go all natural on everyone.  My normal sea sick medicine gives me an enormous headache, so I decided to drink the ginger tea, chew on the husk of a baby coconut (yet another use for the mighty coconut), stare at the horizon, keep busy, etc.  It didn’t work.  Just ask Andy.  He had to do all the cooking, dishes, and taking care of everything else…again.

But that’s all behind us now…we are in beautiful Palau and having a great time.  There are endless places to explore both on land and in the water.  Our first stop was the grocery store, which overwhelmed us.  It’s almost like being home.  You can’t find everything you want, but there’s so much more than what we’ve had that it seems like we’re walking into a Harris Teeter.  Everything seems fresher and brighter and tastier.  We actually had certified Angus beef the other night for the first time in who knows how long with fresh brussel sprouts and garlic bread.  It was wonderful.

Not the gourmet counter, but it sure beats what we're used to!

We’ve seen some Japanese guns from WWII, explored a few caves, snorkeled some neat little coves…  but we have plenty of time.  It looks like we’re going to be here for at least 6 months, maybe a year while we figure out where we’re going next.  That’s right….a long time.  So all of those friends we have that told us they were going to fly out to visit us in exotic places and have yet to leave their home state…here’s your chance!  It’s only 36 hours and $2,000 away!  

In all seriousness, we do need to sit down and figure out where we’re going from here.  Since this was never on our list of places to go, we’ve kind of gotten ourselves in a little pickle.  We could go west to the Philippines.  We could go south to Indonesia.  We could backtrack a bit and then head south to the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, then Australia.  Each has their own pros and cons and we just need to make up our mind.  Little Jake is going to be seriously disappointed if we don’t go to Australia (as will some of our family I think).  Andy will be disappointed if we don’t go to Rajat Impat (sp?) for some diving.  And I am trying to figure out how to get us to the Caribbean in this decade.  So we have some work to do.    We’ve given ourselves a year so we can have time to get distracted by the sheer beauty of this place and the friendliness of it’s people; locals, ex-pats, and cruisers.  No matter what we decide, I think it’s going to be a good year....

Some of Andy's pictures from his cave dive this morning....