Palau

Hopefully this will be my final enty for the Palau Blog...

The day after our last dive in Palau we spent the day at the Palau Pacific Resort just snorkeling on the private reef there, which was fantastic, I spotted a moray eel, and searched again for the octopus we had spotted a couple of days previously.

Grae had developed a very sore ear infection which wasent helped by the doctor stabbing him in the ear with the instrument meant to inspect the infection. It bled quite alot and Grae was in alot of pain so he absolutley couldn't get his ear wet, which was lucky that we had finished our diving but a shame that he couldn't snorkel anymore. So while I was snorkeling Grae hired a Kayak for a hour or so and pulled me behing it over the reef, which was quite fun but you dont see alot, it is best to just float and watch.

The next day we had hired a 2 man sea kayak for the day and took it out from Fish N Fins dock, we paddled for about two hours to get far enough out to sea to be among the rock islands (Small uninhabitable islands covered in green vegitation) we found one in particular that had a cave we could paddle through which was pretty spooky, and our own private beach where we stopped for snacks. After a few hours we bumped into a guide from Fish n Fins on a tour with two other ladies so he let us tag along for free. He took us to the cave we had already paddled through then another one where we got off the Kayaks altogether and went inside. We saw Moths, Giant Crickets (I had to crawl into a pitch black hole to get the photo!) and the guide reckons a few bones that were 2 million years old !!! He said he found a skelleton and reported it to the authorities, then an archeological dig cam and took away the bones and later said they were 2 million years old !, then he found another few bones but hid them this time rather then telling anyone, as he knew they would take them away. Well I'm reserving judgement on that one !
But the cave was really cool it was called Tarzan cave by the locals. After about an hour more paddling we snorkeled (While I did, Grae couldn't) it was ok but nothing special. Then we came across a small wreck that we paddled over from WW2, and finally we snorkeled again and came across the sought after Mandarin fish 0- which I spotted. All in all it was an excellent day, that I really enjoyed, even though I was exhausted.

We spent another day just snorkeling at PPR, had a drive around the Islands to explore a little and genrally ate and drank, it was a very nice relaxing day.

Our last full day on Palau was special as we had booked to go visit a Dolphin sanctuary, where 6 dolphins were kept and looked after. We first of all watched them be trained and then we got to shake "hands" with the Dolphin or kiss the Dolphin, and finally swim with the Dolphins and were pulled along holding onto their dorsel fin while they swam - how cool was that ! Except I didn't have an epiphany or anything it was cool, and nice but they really are just another mamal that shows inteligence, they were not very loving and I didn't get the feeling they would save me from a ship wreck if need be.
All in all it was a nice experience, I will however say that these Dolphins were captured near Japan and Flown over to Palau as Palau doesn't have indigenous Dolphins. Two of the original Dolphins died on the trip over due to stress and the ones that are there now still have a habit of eating leaves that drop into their enclosures, because when they were first moved to the Santuary they didn't trust the trainers and didn't feed by hand as they do now, so the trainers had to throw the fish into their enclosures, the Dolphins soon learned that anything that goes into their enclosure was food, hense now they eat the leaves that fall into their enclosures. The problem is Dolphins can't digest leaves and they get ulsers and dehydrate, so they have to basically have their bellys emptied by hand every so often. All this we found out while we were there. We felt bad for supporting what they had done (The Dolphins weren't in any danger in Japan, so why move them ?) but then we realised that if people stopped going and paying to see the dolphins then how could they afford to look after the Dolphins. So the experience was a little tainted by this.

So that was Palau, we had a truly fantastic time, I just hope that Continental airlines loose their monopoly and the price of flights their comes down substantially as we would love to go back in the future.

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