Palau above water, sublimely beautiful!

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As I said before, the place is absolutely pristine. On our diving days we would stop at beautiful beaches for lunch. We've never seen so much gorgeous water in our lives.

We rented a car with another couple from California and drove around Babeldoab to see some of the land based sites. The pics speak for themselves.

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Photos

Magnificent view & ancient stone monoliths
This jaw dropping view would inspire anyone to build super human works. Once I managed to close my mouth, I was ready to get naked and dance around in the sun with joy.

Carved "scary face"
Hm, you gotta look real hard and it looks a bit more like a goofy monkey face to me than a scary face.

Happiest person on the planet
Really, that is exactly what I was thinking at the moment.

Three stripes of colored water
You would just die if I had a Polaroid filter when I snapped these shots.

Giant swimming pool
Is this an inviting place for a dip or what?!

You don't have to get into the water
to see sharks. These black tip reef sharks were swimming in the shallows of this rock island beach. If you wanted you could jump in and snorkel with them.

Shark beach
Toby's keeping the black tips company.

Capitol building
This place seemed mostly empty at the moment. I believe it was largely funded by the US, your tax dollars at work. ;-) Better Palau though than bailing out a bunch of reckless financial companies who devastated our economy!

Lucky bird
The capitol building architecture is Greco-Roman but the design motifs on the outside are pure Palau. We made friends with another Cali couple and Billy commented that he could use a bird that crapped money like this one. :) Couldn't we all!

Bai - Men's meeting house
This one is over 100 years old.

Cuchi bai
We laughed at this woman with her legs spread on the side of this Bai. And she must have had one heck of a weird boob job to get them to point in two directions. ;-) We later learned that women would visit nearby villages and sell themselves for bead money. The deed was done in the men's meeting house, the bai, hence the depiction on the side. No wonder the men met there! The missionaries put an end to this cottage industry. What a bunch of kill joys. ;-)

Comments

[paul Zikmanis]

Mens house
The mens house is really cool. As for the missionaries ending old practices, I wonder how many other aspects of life they totally altered? Sad. I hope you got more close ups of all the painting. It looks like it could be interpreted as stories of how they lived. The little church looks so sad next to the old mens house. Have fun with the sharks; you ain't getten me in there!

[Victor]

wow, looks pretty
Looks fascinating, but I'm sure the pictures don't do it justice. Bring me a capful of sand! Then I'll have to return it someday to keep the natives happy.

[Stacey]

Gadzooks!
Gadzooks that place is amazing! I don't think I have ever wished I was somewhere else as bad as I did when I saw these pictures. Thanks so much for implanting the images in my brain. I gots to get there somehow. :-)

[Pablo (yo)]

Hi!
Great blog!! If you like, come back and visit mine: http://albumdeestampillas.blogspot.com Thanks, Pablo from Argentina