Blogs from Micronesia, Oceania

Welcome to the capital of Micronesia. Little geography lesson to start with. Micronesia is made of 4 main islands. I visited the island of Chuuk to dive the multiple wrecks back in 2018. If you are a diver, do dive Chuuk before it's too late...corrosion is happening after so many years! Pohnpei is the capital, there is also Yap if you want to dive with mantas, and finally the island of Kosrea. Micronesia has a total population of 113,000 people, with 36,000 of them living on Pohnpei. You can get here with the weekly air shuttle doing Brisbane-Nauru-Tarawa-Majuro-Pohnpei, or with the other air shuttle, offered by United doing Guam-Chuuk-Pohnpei-Kosrea-Kwajalein-Majuro. That shuttle is something like 2 or 3 times per week. It doesn't always stop at Kosrea neither Kwajalein. The later is in the Marshall Island and ... read more

Where do I begin? Wow!!! I like to think of myself as well travelled-ish but Truk Lagoon, or Chuuk Lagoon as it is now known, blew me away. For those of you that don’t already know, Truk Lagoon was the site of Japan’s naval fleet in the pacific during WWII. In February 1944, as part of Operation Hailstone, Japan’s fleet were pretty much wiped out in a series of attacks which resulted in the world’s most amazing WWII wreck diving site. This is a scuba divers dream destination but don’t worry, I won’t bore you listing what I did/saw on each dive. I will however list my dive sites at the end of this blog for those interested. When we landed in Micronesia the passport control and baggage reclaim was unlike anywhere else I had been ... read more

The Lost Stone City – NANMADOL Last May 2010, I travelled to Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia to conduct a risk assessment training course (Image 1). That was one of the most enjoyable training courses I ever had. The Micronesians were so quick to learn and apply the knowledge gained. After all, risk analysis is one of those subjects that you learn by doing. No matter how many reference materials you read, if you don’t do it – it will be guess work!! And as an outcome, we are now in the process of releasing an introductory training course manual on risk analysis, maybe in a couple more weeks. It takes about an hour or so by boat (Image 2) and another half an hour beach walk. Before reaching this archaeological site, you can have a ... read more

Saturday 26.2 – Kosrae Japanese tunnels from WWII and island views and jungle hike. Today I was picked up by Hamilton, the owner of Ohma peak. His windshield was broken – he was cursing the government for not making landowner trim their coconut trees – one had fallen lately direct on his car. We went to Malem, a village on the east coast and started out from his house. The trek was regular jungle rain forest with green in green. It didn’t rain but I was sweating buckets. Hamilton first with his machete cutting new growth on the path. After one hour we reached a clearing where I saw the first Japanese tunnel. There were a couple of artifacts like a broken sake bottle with ‘nippon’ written on it. Not much animal life – surprised that ... read more

Tuesday 22.2 – Majuro – Kosrae, Micronesia Leaving Majuro, Marshall Islands. 45 minutes flight to Kwajalain atoll – also in the Marshall Islands. It is an American military base, and most people got off here. Nobody else were allowed off the plane. After 45 minutes the Island hopper continued and an hour later we were in the easternmost island in Micronesia – Kosrae. A lush and green island with high ‘mountains’ in the middle of the island. Similar to places like Bora Bora. We were the only tourists getting off the plane today together with 12 local. Mark from our hotel, Pacific Treelodge was waiting for us. He was hot happy with the tourist business – you were the only tourists on the plane? And Continental just cut back from 6 flights a week to 4 ... read more