The Palauan islands are described by their nationals as “the end of the rainbow” and they
are not very far from the truth, although pretty far for almost everyone else
on the globe. Luckily, for us it was a mere four and half hour flight.
Palau is
not so much a beach destination as it is a divers’ paradise. Most hotels and
resorts are gathered on and around the island of Koror, which is itself and
like most of the Palauan islands: rocky! The islands in the Southern Lagoon on the other hand, have
nice white sand stretches, but imply a boat ride of at least 45 minutes from Koror.
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| One of the beaches in the Southern Lagoon |
Our trip to
Palau lasted 9 days and it started off rather badly. Not only we had to rush
out of the house to get the airport after waking up simply too late (damn you
jet lag!), but we were also stood up by our guesthouse staff, who forgot to pick
us up at the airport in Koror. The interesting thing about Koror is that there
is a curfew and at 4 am in the airport (or anywhere else on the island) there is
absolutely no taxi that could take us to the guesthouse. Fortunately a Palauan
couple who had come to drop off some relatives offered to help and take us to
town – we must have looked hopeless. Palauan friendliness: check!
The
guesthouse had mixed up the dates and our room was not even ready. We finally
hit the sack at 5:30 am and slept a few hours until breakfast. We spent the rest
of the day scouting Koror, sipping the national beer Red Rooster (to put it
politely, not the best one we have had) and tasting the local food, which
revolves around taro, fish and crab. Though the best discovery was kangkung (water
spinach) sautéed with garlic (I asked them to skip the bacon).
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| Red Roster Amber |
Japanese
food is widely available and with high quality too. The American influence is
also quite visible, be it on the supermarket shelves or even more obviously, in
the contents of your wallet – the national currency is the USD.
Palau is
making huge efforts to preserve its marine life and it appears among the top
dive sites in the world. Most of the dive shops have Japanese staff, since
Japanese represent the majority of tourists coming to the islands. The other
nationality integrating the labour force, especially in the tourism sector is
the Philippines. This makes it hard to meet Palauans – but anyway, they are only
20,000 in total and many are studying or working abroad, mainly in the US, we
were told, so they should be in some endangered species list.
We started diving
the next day, with some pretty awesome sights. We swam with sharks for the
first time – white-tip and grey reef sharks, and saw some “fishy” garden eels
pretending they were plants, as well as snappers, trevallies, gobies and
barracudas.
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| Diving sites |
The next
day we went on a “super rock island tour”, which gave us an overview of the
southern islands, and scrapped some stuff off the bucket list, like swimming in
a lake full of jellyfish! Scuba diving is not allowed since the bubbles can
harm the jellyfish. To snorkel in the lake a permit of $100 is required, which
is valid for 10 days. This is currently the only marine lake open to the public.
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| Milky Way |
The Milky
Way was also included in the itinerary. The white clay at the bottom of this
cove gives the water a flashy turquoise blue and visitors scrub their bodies with
it. However we saw once a documentary where it was said that it was not really
clay one can find at the bottom… so enjoy the spa at your own risk.
From Koror
we traveled onward to Carp Island, where we could for the first time lie on
the beach, and it was gorgeous! The dives kept on coming and bringing amazing
experiences: seeing the mantas in the German Channel made our day and the
variety of fish in the Blue Corner, rated by some expert magazines as the best diving spot in the
world, was simply unbelievable. The currents are strong and change rapidly, so they
are not for the faint of heart.
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| Carp Island at low tide |
Back in
Koror, we said goodbye to the water spinach and almost went nuts with the
Internet connection. It’s slow all over Palau (well, not really all over, but
in a small fraction of Palau!) and it feels like going back to the 56k modem
times.
We took the
red-eye back to Seoul and put on the winter coats again, which were tragically
waiting for us at the airport. Show’s over!
