Guam:  Gateway to the Pacific

    Well, I don't have any web-ready pictures of Guam yet, so you'll have to wait to see the island.  But it isn't as bad as some might have you believe.  I have a friend that's stationed there with the Air Force who calls the island "Guano."  I think, after her three months she just spent in Saudi Arabia, she may have a different opinion of it now.  Isn't that right, Mabel?

     I spent about four days there before hopping on down to Palau, returned and spent another couple days before traipsing off to Hawaii, then California.  During this time, I met some fun people.  The first night there I had dinner at TGI Friday's in Timon, where I met some lovely young waitresses.  One of them was in the Air Force and invited me to join her and her friends once her shift ended.  We had a good time, and I met her friend Mabel.  She is from American Samoa and enlisted in the Air Force for a change of scenery.  Some change!  She's now stationed on the tropical island of Guam, which is much like her home, and hoping that she never has to go live in a sun-forsaken corner of the world.  I suspected that her quiet attitude was just a thin veneer, barely containing the raging party animal within.  Acting on my suspicion, I grilled her throughout the night on her native heritage, her military experiences and her favorite alcoholic beverages.  All them were very fascinating, except the drink she likes:  tequila!  That was a bit much for me.

     Over the next couple days I went on four boat dives.  We dove Guam's Blue Hole, a coral reef, and three wrecks.  At the Blue Hole, I dove with a Taiwanese tourist and our divemaster. The hole is just that:  a huge hole through the reef.  It lets out just below 100 feet, although the floor of the ocean falls away well beyond 200.  It was pretty cool to drop down through the hole into the dim interior--I turned over on my back so I could look up at the dappled surface as I fell.  When I swam underneath the archway to come out the side of the reef, I could also look up to see my air bubbles puddle against the reef before gliding in a silvery stream upwards.  I think the buzz I was feeling from nitrogen narcosis probably made it seem a bit more fascinating than it really was... like Makabu's T-shirt reads:  DEEP=HIGH (IF YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, DON'T ASK).  As we ascended, the other guy accompanying our little group took off on his own.  I guess he was enjoying the narc too much to head back up.  It was almost comical watching the divemaster try to pry him away from the group of brightly colored tourists he was trying to follow.  Of course, his desire to stay that deep was also potentially hazardous, especially since he was a novice diver.  Fortunately, she eventually got him to rejoin us and head up to a safer depth.

     After a lunch break and surface interval, we dove a tanker wreck.  The tanker had been intended to be part of the man-made breakwater that protects the bay, but when it had been placed atop the foundation, a huge wave crashed over it and rolled it back into the bay.  The builders decided it was too expensive and dangerous to try to recover it, so it rests there sprouting corals to this day.  This was a fun dive because it was my first real wreck that I'd seen (I don't count the 15 foot fishing boat I saw while diving in Okinawa).  On top of that, a submarine tour cruised by while we were down there.  It was pretty spooky to hear the whine of the engine seemingly surround us before we could finally see the ghostly dim shadow of the sub gliding by in the distance.

     The next day, the coral reef dive wasn't as interesting, because it didn't come close to comparing to Okinawa or Palau in it's color or fish population.  But it was a pretty good dive.  I mean, no warm-water, 50+ foot visibility dive could ever be bad! Then we dove two wrecks together, the Tokai Maru and the...  This is he only place you can see a wreck from WWI alongside and touching a WWII wreck.  I was mad though, because they were deeper than the boat captain had told us.  If we had known, we would have done the wrecks first so we could descend to greater depths and get to see more of the wrecks.  I thought about going down to where I could touch both wrecks at once, but remembered my scuba training and decided not to risk it.


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Go home!