New Pictures!

There are more pictures up from the trip to Palau.  I was going to put up more, but once again, the connection is so slow that I can not take it anymore.  Tom has been sick most of this week, but he is starting to feel better now, and I have not yet caught the crud he has, hopefully I won't at all. 

It is only two weeks until my Mom and Dad arrive!  We are excited and getting ready for their visit!  We need them to visit also, to eat some of the food I keep making.  I have been in the mood for making things in the kitchen lately.  I just can't stop.  Right now there is more left over food in our refrigerator than two people should ever have.  The refrigerator contents includes some non-leftovers as well.  My new hobby is making granola bars, it seems.  I will not go on about the details, but I have been experimenting with granola bar recipes, altering them as I see fit.  I must say, the outcome has been quite tasty.  Not quite the consistency of commercial chewy granola bars, but also without preservatives or high fructose corn syrup, so all together, a success!

On another note, my super-underwater camera is corroded, so there will be no more underwater pictures until I either get a new one or figure out a way to make the buttons move.  So much for cameras designed to be in the water!

Palau

On our first day in Palau we did a land tour.

A few more pictures of the waterfall:





These are stone monoliths at the very northern edge of Babldaob Island. No one really knows who put them there or for what purpose, but they are similar to the monoliths at Easter Island (only smaller).



This is a traditional bai, or men's house where the village chiefs met to make decisions. Traditional Palauan culture is matrilineal with the land, money and power of the family coming from your Mother's side. Although the men made the important decisions about who to war with, etc, women were still considered more powerful because the elder women decided who the chiefs were.



After the day of land touring and hiking, we dove for one day. Although I do not have any from in the water, here are some photos from the boat ride out there and from our lunch spot. The islands are called the Rock Islands, and they look like they are floating at high tide:






On the way back from the dive trip that day, the boat stopped off at jellyfish lake. Jellyfish lake is the only place in the world where you can swim surrounded by thousands of non-stinging jellyfish. The lake was separated from the ocean at one point, and in the absence of predators, the jellyfish lost their sting. They live in symbiosis with photosynthetic bacteria which provide them with food. Unfortunately, my camera ran out of batteries and I only got this one shot. The jellyfish became much more concentrated after this, but at least it gives you the idea.


OK, that is enough for now. I will add more later to this same blog. Enjoy the pictures!

We went kayaking the day after the first dive. We did a guided kayak tour during the day, then the company dropped us off on a beach on one of the uninhabited Rock Islands to camp for the night. In the morning, we got up and paddled back to the dive shop. It was a really nice, peaceful experience, camping out there on the deserted beach. Probably not for everyone, but we liked it!

Here are some kayaking and snorkeling pictures. The snorkeling was really amazing, the places we went had shade and sun loving corals.
A clam:

Mandarin Fish. Look close and you will see a blue and orange patterned fish, it was a really beautiful fish.

This is bubble coral, it is a soft coral that turns hard if you swish your hand near it.


Some amazingly bright corals:


There were a few more I was going to put up, but the computer has decided to be extremely slow in uploading, so I will post them up in the next few days, along with the pictures from the dolphin encounter we did after we returned from kayaking.  

Pictures from Palau

Well, tonight I was finally going to post more pictures from the trip. However, the refusal of Blogger to actually upload my photos is making the process more painful than it need be. So, here are a few, and more to follow this weekend (really, I mean it). We did a lot in our week there, including a land tour with a waterfall hike, diving, kayaking, snorkeling, free diving with dolphins, and more diving! We really did have a great time, Palau is a beautiful place, as the pictures will show!

Sunset from the balcony of our first hotel:


One picture of the waterfall:

Glasses Update

So, still working on the pictures from Palau, but I thought I would provide an update on the saga of Tommy's sunglasses. When we returned from Palau, there was a small package in our mailbox from Kwajelien. The package contained a note of apology and Tommy's sunglass case containing his sunglasses! We don't know how, but somehow the woman at the shop located and recovered his glasses and mailed them back to Guam. Luckily, we did not yet purchase a replacement pair!

It is good to know there are good people out there.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all our family and friends. Tom and I spent a fantastic Christmas week in Palau. We did some amazing diving. We were lucky to see manta rays, sharks, turtles, and tons of fish, among other things! Honestly, diving in Palau is like a National Geographic special. When we returned home to Guam our wonderful friend Kristen was here to visit from Baltimore. She stopped by Guam on her way home from visiting her brother in Japan. We had a great, but too fast, visit with Kristen, and we are now settling into a more normal routine again (aka work).

I plan on getting through all of our pictures this weekend, and writing a long post about the trip, but for now, I leave you with this lovely shot of sunset at Carp Island. That is me next to the tree.



Jealous yet?