Palau Gallery

I went to Palau from Guam during Christmas break. My room mate in Guam, Aaron, and I picked out the most exotic place we could afford and got far more than our money's worth. We were there two weeks, including New Years, and both of us wanted to forget about our lives and responsibilities and never come home.

Scuba diving is main attraction in the area and Aaron and I went on four all day trips with a guide service. We would swerve through a maze of small islands and channels watching bright reef, giant holes, manta rays, even sharks, blur past on our way to a world famous dive sight. Pretty much the entire time I was there I was thinking, 'I can't believe I'm seeing all this.' Really, it seemed like a dream. And scuba diving...my God, nothing on land can compare. We dove caves and giant lava holes, wrecked ships, giant underwater cliffs dropping hundreds of feet, and, the finale, the world famous Blue Corner. We also got a chance to swim in a lake like nothing in the world. Jellyfish Lake was formed when the tides and sea level changed and trapped a large area away from the sea. The Jellyfish in the lake slowly lost their sting because there were no natural predators trapped with them. Now, thousands of years later humans can swim among thousands of otherwise poisonous jellyfish. Truly, it seemed another planet.

On New Years Eve, Aaron and I were sitting at a big resort with a completely outdoor lobby, bar and pool area. The entire bottom floor was an open air view of the jungle and the edge of the ocean. The locals were very friendly to us and one woman I sat next to for some time ended up giving me a free, all day pass to the place she worked. That pass got Aaron and I into Dolphins Pacific and we had another amazing experience training and kayaking and snorkeling with dolphins all day. Sort of a dream come true for me. We could hold our breath and dive to the bottom and the dolphins would swim up to us and let us grab their backs and coast through the water.