July 18 - 30 2011 / Guam: A Snorkeling Trip
Seeing Fishes, Corals, and a Far-Distant Island
Part 3 - Around the Island, Land and Sea
A driving day today, all around the southern part of the island, where it is red volcanic soil, green furry mountains, your usual shabby or busted-down houses and dead businesses, and some not so. The water. The reefs just offshore, and waves of white showing where they are.
Guam is a territory of the United States—an odd thing these days. The residents are citizens though they cannot vote. It was first populated by the Chamorros, about four thousand years ago, and Chamorros still comprise about 35% of the people here.
Ferdinand Magellan arrived here in 1520, and we drove round to see the obelisk monument commemorating that. The Spanish took possession of the island in 1565, but following the Spanish-American War it went to the U. S.
We went back to the lab, passing several of the resident feral cats, to see our babies, now swimming nicely, tiny dots, and soon they will settle and become sessile and begin their coral polyp lives. Lovely conversation with very attractive man there, we had noticed each other the first night, when I nicely showed my true colors and he looked surprised and interested and pleased. Love it how these things go—the glance held a few beats long, the tension that excites. Feeling frisky on my own!
David's fiancee “keeps my ego in check.” Like to takes pictures of him in ridiculous poses and then laugh at them, “takes pictures of the puppy and me and spends more time playing with those than with the puppy or me,” not at all a good thing. Your partner must be your biggest booster and cheerleader. He is a sensitive man, “a delicate man”, and this is going to be challenging for him and her, even if they have spent six years together. He has an alert and imaginative mind, and he's very nice to look at. Pity!
No snorking today. And I'm glad, 'cause I am tired. Weather in Yap not promising. An earthquake here last night, early morning, and I never felt it. A little nervous...
I slept for many hours last night, in my very comfortable bed. Driving around yesterday in the heat, in the back seat so I could not have a proper conversation, was a little wearing. I realized when I got home that tonight is the last night we will see David, for dinner, and so I have to find some stationery and an envelope and think what I want to write to him. I am giving him a huge tip because he has been such a lovely presence for me, although only with us for part of the time.
This morning at 6:30 I joined Lee for a snork in front of the hotel, the same place where we did the night snork. What a difference! I saw a nice shrimp and his attendant shrimp-gobi, the shrimp industriously digging out and refining his burrow. The vast numbers of fish that had been seen among, amidst, and within, the coral forests were nowhere to be found. The sun was not out, and it was a little chill, but I am glad to have done that.
At breakfast I have been observing the Asian people who come here, the Japanese women in their elaborate clothing, the children decked out (similar to little Russian children). Large numbers of kids. The food is laid out in a highly unsanitary manner and it is hard for me to find something I feel comfortable eating.
After breakfast we went back yet again to Gun Beach, where the original plan called for observation of the coral spawning in that water. Finally the surf was low enough so that Lee thought we could go out beyond it. There is a kind of channel where a pipe is laid, and we went out that, me struggling but managed, and got beyond the surf line. The water was deeper than we have been in up to now, but still great profusion of coral, and fishes. Coral is blue, lavender, tan, green, pink, mustard yellow, brown.
Fish are wildly patterned and colored. Each kind behaves differently; some stand in the water and look at you, others dart away, some school, others are solitary, some high in the water column, others near or at the bottom. I think what I would like to do is to find a really good video or movie or some sort about the reef life here, that would identify the fish and coral for me, and show it all from my perspective.
For a few minutes it rained hard, and the drops danced and sparkled below the water, and gently pounded my back.
Coming back in, through the surf line with its powerful surge, even though the water was so shallow, I tried and tried and kept being turned back: SWOOSH IN! paddlepaddlepaddle SWOOOOSH OUT damn! try again. After a few rounds of this Lee appeared at my side and helped me. I really can’t imagine trying to do this in the dark to see the spawning.
So the storm near Yap is a 50/50 proposition to develop into something larger. We are not supposed to fly until midnight tomorrow, about 36 hours from now. We will see. I am not very happy about this. Also, of course, even if we get there okay, a storm will have stirred up the water. I now have doubts that I will see one of the giant manta rays that I was hoping to see.
Well, we will see, all right.
The Yap storm had intensified yesterday evening, and this morning I am not sure; I managed to get on Weather Underground to look, but since I can't read the map (Yap is a tiny speck, and which one?), I am not sure what's going on. I want to go, of course, and actually I had a “check in now for your flight” email this morning, but I am scared of the flight, and scared of getting stuck there, with all these flights out of there to deal with.
Another snork yesterday afternoon. Lee and the other traveler tried going out through surf, but I stayed nicely in turbid milky water and just did my own thing, which I loved doing. A few fish, not much, just observing how all the little tiny ones deal with each other and with the surge. They no sooner get settled on some business then the surge comes and carries them off to somewhere else. They must be very strong! and patient!
So I wrote a caring note to David to put with his large tip last night; I told him what a fine pleasure his company has been, so unexpected, and how he was intelligent, compassionate, sensitive, imaginative, and satisfyingly articulate. I wished him joy, contentment, strength in his marriage, and that he and his bride be each other's most profound cheerleaders. That he should have all he desires to do, to learn, and to make, and that all he has to do is to set that path ahead of him and he will be and do all that he would like, inasmuch as he seems to be a very powerful person.
So today no snorking, in case we do have to pack up and therefore don't want any wet stuff. I will go along with whatever they decide—the “they” I guess being just Lee. I asked him if he had called the office but he appeared to be a bit miffed and said, no, they trust him.
I'm holding it all together here, not too badly, I guess, but I feel a great disconnect and am, actually, ready to go home.
Later today, it has now been decided that we will not try to go to Yap—not only is the storm heading for it, but even if we got there okay, the things we want to do will not work with the churned-up water, wind, etc. Of course I am massively disappointed, so disappointed. The Yap part was the part I was looking forward to the most. But there is nothing to be done. We went and canceled our tickets, but I get no refund. This trip is by far the most expensive I've ever taken...and although the snorkeling is fabulous, and I do love David, those things are somewhat slender reeds upon which to rest a very large expenditure.
After a short stop at a cemetery, which I'd asked for, we went snorking where we went the first day. Wonderful stuff. I am getting better at organizing the getting ready, getting out, etc. Anemone fish, quite “tame,” wriggling around their host anemones. I could have touched them. A long narrow fellow, cornetfish, swam haughtily by me, and clacked his long jaw twice at me. I saw and identified a rockmover, moving rocks with his head, sort of like the birds do, with their beaks, hop back and scratch, hop and scratch. Purple sea cucumbers with pink bellies.
There are some small whitecaps now, and the wind has been picking up all day. I am terribly lonely for my people and my place.
At least this morning I finally discovered that there is cooked, hot broccoli at the breakfast buffet! So I can have at least that. [nope, it only appeared that one morning, alas]. The boring fatty kiddie food at all these similar restaurants to which we are taken is not sitting well in my stomach. I try just to have salads but even those don't seem very good. I am not getting my pleasant little happy hour.
Well, girl, travel is broadening.
So this morning instead of brocco they had some kind of fried mess, just had my two yogurts and a bunch of coffee.
We went off to a new beach, and did a long walk in the sand at the edge of the beach, skirting around karst mushrooms, some very large. The rain came, and we took shelter in a karst deposit. I had no camera, stupidly, so no pix of lovely shoreline, dramatic karst, absurdly picturesque palm trees. The problem is that there seems no good place to keep the camera when not using it, when we are out, on account of the heat and humidity.
Yesterday the other traveler flooded her underwater camera and so we went looking for a replacement. Tick Tock had one (only place on island for Canon products). But today she is fretting over it as it is quite different from her old camera. She takes a lot of underwater pictures, and I wish I did, all right! Lee is going to give us each a bunch of his own pictures, but it will not be the same.
So we went in, very very shallow at first, kind of fun to have your nose right on the stuff, then a bit deeper and some holes. I watched two pipefish for a while, with their cute little muzzles like seahorses. And Lee went in past the surf line and I did not want to do that, so I had some time to myself, and I loved that.
In the late afternoon we went to the lab to see the babies, and we will go again tomorrow. They are so wonderfully tiny! The Japanese guy there speaks very poor English but he is excited to try to explain and answer my questions. I love being forward enough to ask questions. It’s how we learn.
Finally to a hotel for, at last, a happy hour of sorts, and supper, a grilled cheese (the best of a poor selection, and not even any potato salad. But Lee loosened up a small bit, and I of course (TWO glasses of wine!), and we spent a long time, and it was relaxing and pleasant.
But I am desperate for news from home—the horrible budget stuff. I ask at the desk, do you folks have a USA Today newspaper? No? well do you have an idea where I might get one? Desk person as female deer in headlights, hand to mouth, she says slowly, “I think...” OK, thank you very much.
ARGH I am anxious to get home to people who will give you a straight answer!
This morning it is very heavily gray, windy, and rainy. No snorking today, a day off as it were.
At breakfast I told my traveling companion that I had enjoyed traveling with her, such a relief to be able to say that truly. Still no proper veggies, this morning it was broiled tomatoes—topped with a thick layer of cheese, too bad.
At breakfast there are often military personnel (30% of the island is military-owned, and a large amount of the population is U. S. service people). I am always so happy to see them! they are Americans, and I miss them (shameful, you world traveler). I find I am especially happy to see the black guys, part of my world at home, and a welcome sight, in their spiff unies.
Today was a drive-around day, to satisfy me mostly, my desire to see something of the history of the island. First though we went back to Continental Airlines to see if we could get any money back. My companion is actually being charged MORE to fly LESS. I, at least, am still paying the same [exorbitant] amount to fly less that I was being charged for the full itinerary. Maybe I will get something back on account of the [very expensive] insurance I bought for the trip.
So anyhow, we went there, and I introduced the two of them to the decorated carabao (the local water buffalo species) that are around, just like the painted cows that visited Boston last year. Then to a bookstore for me, and I got two new books, so now I am back up to five for the next days and the interminable trip home.
A few hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, the Japanese invaded Guam, and they were its masters until 1944, when U. S. forces liberated the island and its people, in a bloody battle. There is a National Historic Park here, the War in the Pacific park, and we went to look at it—all quiet now of course, but. We also paid a visit to a small museum of objects and images of that war. My heart shrank within me to see a part of a shot-down Japanese warplane, with its rising sun logo, an emblem I learned to hate and dread as a small child, and which still has power over me, all these many years since.
Next we drove north, looked at the high surf at one of the places we had been to before, rain and wind around us. We visited a touristic but just lovely Chamorro “village,” in the rain, a nice talk with an older Chamorro woman with Lee asking her questions about how they lived before the Spanish. She really did not know much, but the most interesting thing was that she spoke only somewhat sketchy English. She was friendly and tried to answer the questions. She told us how a certain leaf, that she has at her house, if you boil it to make a tea was good for flu-type (her word) problems. Would I love to smell that leaf! I should have asked her how it smells, dumb me.
In the little place were small hutments, each home to some kind of craft, but because it was raining, she said, we didn't want to have the full tour (my guess is that whoever might give it, and/or the demonstrators, hadn't come in to work today). So we wandered about, looking. Baskets and cups woven of palm leaves. A wonderfully clever wooden rope walk. Best of all, THAT SMELL of fire (powerful from years ago in Kathmandu), and here in a hut was a fire, sure enough, with a large shallow metal bowl of water boiling over it: salt-making.
A camp or day-care group was there, kids about maybe nine or ten years old. They were playing “one of our island games.” A hermit crab race! You put a bunch of hermit crabs (tiny crabs that live in abandoned shells) in a coffee can. You sit in a circle around the can, and then the crabs are let go. They’re off! If you are the first person to be reached by a crab, you win! Go crabs! The kids were cheering and I loved it.chever kid is sitting where the first crab crosses the outside circle, wins.
A short cemetery stop for me (Jonathan, December 23 1985-December 23 1985), and then to the other “Chamorro Village” for a little shopping (a few things for the grandchildren), and lunch. Lee ate fish, caught right here. I almost couldn't stand it. They sell cooked parrot fish...among the most beautiful fishes to see on the reef. I told Lee that I couldn't eat anything I had seen in a sort of recreational mode. Of course, I ate both zebra and wildebeest in Africa. But I do not think I would do that now. Interesting.
Then to where the very ancient Chamorro latte stones are displayed, carved out of rock to support your house off the ground. But to me they look more phallic! I can't imagine anyone going to the trouble of carving these eight-ten foot high things out of rock for any reason except religious. It turns out they don't actually know what they were for, but here and a few other local islands is where they have been found.
So now a bit of a rest, and then drinks, and then dinner.
Later, not much tonight. We went to a truly horrible Chinese restaurant. There was long animated discussion about religion, politics, biology, etc. and that was good, but my travel mate had little to say and that made me uncomfortable, and the place and the food were so horrible I was just tired and wanted to get home.
Our last snorkels today, and it is a pouring-down rain day (leftovers from the storm that kept us from going to Yap). First to the place where I did not go down and up the boulders. It was good but I felt a little nervous on account of the swell, and it was chilly. I have to say I do not now remember even what I saw that was especially special. The coral is amazing, the prolific growth and form and color, wonderful. I hung (briefly since I always have to keep up with Lee) over a head of soft coral on which the polyps were fluttering strongly with each surge. I do wish I had gotten an underwater camera, because although I have taken some pictures they do not of course show the most important things I have seen.
Then to a strange place nearby, the outlet of some tunnels of some kind, and there we went over rubble mostly, and I found a pink urchin, and a few other things, but Lee found us a lionfish and some cleaner shrimp (outrageously red and white striped with extremely long filaments) tucked inside a rocky hole. There was also a thing that Lee insisted was a feather-duster worm turned inside out, but to me it was a dead ringer for the lionfish in the book.
In the afternoon we went for a last look at the growing coral babies. There was a fine cat with large ears. These cats have been the saving of me! And from there to the place where Lee worked for six months, the agriculture and environment office or whatever it is. Where we got to see a fruit bat (climbing on the guy's back), a fine animal, and the infamous brown tree snake, which I did get to hold the tail of.
At dinner time, I was more or less at the end of my rope and not wanting to go to any more fast-food places, so after convincing them that I wanted to stay at the hotel, that's what I did, and I had a lovely time, nursing my glass of wine at the pleasant outdoor bar, having an interesting conversation with a guy who is here for three weeks to train mechanics on the 777 aircraft. At one point he got up to go look at the noisy “show” and I, being about done, paid for my drink and for his too, while he was away. That was fun. He was a nice person and interesting to talk to.
Lee and I went on a hike this morning, a real hike though short, and my hiking stuff is filthy with mud and sweat! Short but good, up a karsty trail to a big, sheer overlook, passing (and mildly exploring) several caves on the way, a couple of them with drapery and fluting as well as -mites and -tites. Lee was perfect on the hike, not waiting for me, offering a suggestion here and there about footing (good suggestions). I was pleased and I loved dripping with sweat and being filthy with red mud. A very good end to the trip.
So in an hour or so, when I am done packing, we are to meet in the bar and Lee will put a bunch of images into my camera. Not the same as ones I might take myself, but good to show at home, and remember.
Tomorrow morning we leave at 4 am, and my first flight is at 6:30. I get home at 3:30 pm. Such is the modern world.
And so we went to dinner, at a Jamaican place, which had the best food--clean, imaginative--that we’ve had on this trip of endless “family” restaurants. David brought his fiancee, Shiye (I think that’s more or less right). Time is short and there is so much to discover and share with a well-furnished mind.
After dinner to Yogurtland for a last indulgence, all of us sitting outside in the dark heat.
When I get home I might have some more reflections on all this, but for now I am packing up this machine.