Wow! It's Palau

Pictures do not do it justice... it is beautiful

View from our room at Palau Royal Resort
View from a restaurant
The capitol... look familar?

Looking at the jellyfish
Fruit bat
Blue starfish

Relaxing on Carp Island

Free mud treament on a snorkeling trip

Kayaking in the mangrove... awesome!

Folkloric show at Palau Pacific Hotel

Sunset

Happy Birthday on Carp Island

My husband, John, and I have been to many eco-tourist destinations but no place that surpasses Palau. Fortunately we were able to use our frequent flyer miles to fly round trip from Manila to Palau and it included a stop in Guam.

The tree-covered Palauan islands are in a sea of turquoise and blue filled with brilliant tropical fish. There are only 20,000 people in the Republic of Palau so most of the islands are uninhabited. Palau is a diver’s paradise. While snorkeling I saw things I had never seen before including giant clams – over three feet wide – brilliant blue starfish, and black tipped reef sharks. The all-day trips included lunch on a sandy beach of a deserted island. One day after lunch I saw snorkelers in the shallow water obviously viewing something interesting. So I joined them and snorkeled with 18 black-tipped reef sharks. Another day we stopped at a place where the white muddy sand is so fine that people use it as a curative mud bath. The most amazing day included climbing up then down a rocky trail to a Jellyfish Lake, a secluded saltwater lake. The lake became landlocked over 7,000 years ago trapping jellyfish that had no natural enemies so they lost most of their tentacles making them virtually stingless. Snorkeling with the thousands of jellyfish was like being part of a beautiful underwater ballet. It was surreal.

One of the newest eco tours is Ann Singeo’s "Sense of Wonder." We started with some traditional native tea, which she explained would "…prevent heat stroke and loss of energy from the heat." When a coconut falls on the ground and begins to sprout the white meat inside becomes soft. Spis, one of the guides, split a sprouted coconut and we rubbed the soft coconut meat on our exposed areas to prevent sunburn and keep the mosquitoes away. Then we set out in kayaks to explore the mangroves, which serve as a nursery for sea life. We made one stop and walked a short distance into a "sacred" place where Ann pointed to large upright stones in a dry creek bed and explained the story of the Taro Goddess. It seems the goddess created taro patches on all the islands and brought back one plant from each island, planted them, and they are now the stones. The tour included lunch, which was an amazingly wonderful array of seafood and taro-based recipes.

There are two great museums on the island that detail the island’s history and its connection to the other islands of the Pacific. We have been to Easter Island, home of the giant stone statues, and were impressed with the large stone artifacts we saw in Palau including monoliths, the "taro garden," and a five-foot long stone purse of a goddess. We wondered if there was a connection with Easter Island and other huge stone carvings we had seen elsewhere.

We visited the Capitol which looks a lot like the U.S. Capitol and no wonder. After WW II and until 1994, Palau was an United Nations trusteeship administered by the U.S. From WW II, there are downed Japanese and American planes, mainly in the sea, including one called "George Bush Wreck." In fact, one of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific was fought on the Palauan island of Peleliu. Today the Palau is the most beautiful and peaceful place imaginable.