Our time in Yap was pleasant right from the start. We arrived at entrance through the reef fairly late in the day, but the channel was very well marked, so we were able to head into the lagoon and get the anchor down well before dark. We weren't able to raise any authorities on the radio, but we were pretty tired after a seven day sail anyway, so it was kind of nice to not have to inflate the dinghy and go ashore to do the entry paperwork. Instead we got the lines straightened away and put the shade canvas up and toasted Yap from the cockpit. The Yap anchorage is very close to the local basketball court (which was a very nice facility with a roof and some bleachers), so we were able to see and hear some of the game that was in progress. Jeff was saying what torture that would be for Hughsie if he was on the boat - that he would probably try to swim and join the game, but we were all content to relax a bit and enjoy knowing we had a full night's sleep in a calm anchorage ahead of us.
The next morning one of the entry officials called us on the radio and we arranged to meet him ashore at 10 AM. He said he would come to the dock and show us the way to his office. He not only did that, but he also called all the other offcials we needed to see, and they all came to his office to sign us in. This was great, and is definitely not always the case. Sometimes Fred has to spend a couple hours walking all over town trying to find the various buildings for all the officials we need to see, and once he finds the right place he is often told that there is one particular person he needs to talk to who is out right then, so he'll need to come back later. So, having everyone meet us in one spot was great.
After doing the necessary paperwork, Fred needed to take the Quarantine officers out to the boat, but Jeff and I were allowed to wander about onshore while he did so. We noticed right away how clean Yap is, and that there were very nice roadside plantings, and lots of smiling faces. We found a fairly large grocery store near the anchorage and got directions to the ATM which we headed off for after meeting up with Fred who was finished with the officials by then. We were stopped on the corner by a slick looking young fellow who was flashing a map and saying something I didn't quite understand. It turned out that this guy was from the Visitors Bureau Information booth across the street and he was telling us about the free maps and brochures they had there. We got the maps along with a lot of genuinely enthusiastic information from this nice young fellow who we saw many times later and who always checked on us to make sure our visit was going well.
Next, on the way to the ATM we were greeted by another guy on the street who welcomed us to Yap and asked us where we were staying. I began to realize that Yap was small enough that the people who worked in town knew at a glance that we were new arrivals. We had a nice chat with Keyonei, during which he told us he worked at Trader's Ridge Dive Shop, which was across the street, and he invited us to stop by and check out the shop any time. Being strangers in a new place it's really nice to be greeted like this, and we definitely wanted to go diving, so we stopped into that dive shop later in the day and arranged to dive with them the next two days. After that we hit the internet cafe to check our shore emails and let everyone know we'd arrived safely. Fred liked the air conditioning in there so much that he got a hotel room for the night so he could enjoy more of it, and Jeff and I headed back to the boat to with a frozen DiGiorno's pizza. This was a big treat for us, since we find island pizza to be a different than we are used to, so this frozen one was the best we'd had in quite some time.
The next day we went diving. Vince and Keyonei brought the dive boat out to God Spede to pick us up. This is nice for us because otherwise we have to load all our dive gear into the dinghy then unload it again at the dock and then load it again into the dive boat. Yap is known for it's local Manta Ray population and quite a few of Yap's visitors are divers who stop here on there way to or from Palau. We had already done a couple Manta dives in Pohnpei, one where we saw no Mantas and one where we had a great experience with various sets of them swimming formations over our heads. They are quite big, and it is pretty cool when they swim above you becuase it looks a bit like they are flying over you, but the problem with Manta dives is that you often go to "cleaning stations" to see them, and if they aren't there, then your dive can be a bit dull. Cleaning stations are usually a clump of coral in the middle of a sandy channel which have cleaning wrasses living on them. Mantas or sometimes sharks or other big fish come to the stations to get cleaned by the wrasses. It's cool when something is there getting cleaned but there's often not much else to see if nobody is home.
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| Manta and Reef |
Our first Yap dive was to a very shallow cleaning station, but we were lucky in that there were lots of Mantas there that day. We hooked into the reef using reef hooks, so I had both hands free to operate the camera and try to get some good shots. We stayed for about 20 minutes watching the mantas swim about. It was really nice.
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| Manta overhead |
Our second Yap dive was to a site called Vertigo, where we were told there were lots of sharks and big snapper. They weren't joking!
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| Lots of sharks! |
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| Fred feeding snapper |
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| Black Tip Reef Shark |
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| Grey Shark |
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| Turtle |
Our second day of diving in Yap was also nice, but not quite as good as the first. We went outside the reef to the southern point and dove Yap caverns first. There was some really nice coral here and a lot of bumphead parrotfish, but the visibility was not so great so it was hard to appreciate the big picture. Our guide, Barnaby, made up for that by pointing out lots of "macro critters" to us along the way. ("Macro critters" is cool diver slang for the little bitty creatures that it's very easy to overlook.) We saw two leaf fish (the first I've ever seen), some micro crabs, a lionfish and a moray eel. When we got back to the surface a big black cloud was headed our way and Vince decided that we needed to get back inside the lagoon before it arrived, so we went around the west side and headed for another Manta dive spot. We were not so lucky with the Mantas that day, but we did see a couple eagle rays and Vince showed us some underwater stone money and took our picture with it.
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| Underwater with Stone Money |
The stone money, as far as I know, is unique to Yap. It's not in use anywhere else in Micronesia. It really is stone, and it really is money, and it's still in use today. Basically it is big pieces of some kind of rock that is not found on Yap. All the stone money in Yap was brought over from Palau. Most of the stone money we saw looked just like a stone wheel in a caveman cartoon. It's round with a hole in the middle that you can put a big stick through so about eight men can carry the money around. I think there are also some bigger pieces, but we never saw any of those. Traditionally, it wasn't moved very much once it was brought over from Palau. Bigger doesn't necessarily mean it's worth more. What gives a stone it's value is the story of it's history including the tale of the journey over from Palau. Apparently, the rougher the journey, and the more people who died on it, the more the stone is worth. Stones that were gathered later, using tools and bigger ships, are not worth as much as the ones from earlier times that were carved by hand.
Most of the stone money that we saw was near the "Men's houses", which are big, rectangular roofed spaces where the men gather for important meetings or ceremonies. The more important men get the better, higher seats, and then there are lower levels for the less important guys, and a seperate space entirely for the ladies. I assume that the money originally got put in front of the house of the village that owned it, but we were told that it doesn't often get moved, even when it's traded to another village it stays put and everyone knows who owns each piece of money.
I have to admit, that my first thought on seeing this stone money was "Hello - that's not money, that's just a piece of rock!" Then later the same day I was buying some stuff in the grocery store and I looked at the fancy paper I was paying with, and I thought, hmmm, I suppose some alien could say, "Hey lady, that's not money, that's just a piece of paper". Then I remembered that our paper currency is backed up by gold, and I felt better until I realized that "hello - gold is just a piece of yellow metal!" Then I started wondering how "money" really works, and then I decided that that wasn't what I wanted to think about just then, so I decided to forget about it and just stop poo-poohing the stone money. It did also occur to me that security-wise the stone money concept is superior - it's quite difficult to move, and the stone itself isn't worth anything without it's story (although it's not clear to me why a thief couldn't just make one up).
I learned most of what I know about stone money the day we did a land tour with Vince. We drove around most of the island with him and he answered lots of our questions about Yap and it's customs. He also showed us his wife's village (he married a mainland Yapese woman) and the plot of land where one day they hope to rebuild the house her family once had there that was completely destroyed by a typhoon. Only the foundation and the betel nut trees remained. As a bonus on our tour we got to see Vince cut some of the betel nuts by tying his knife onto the end of a long branch using a leaf he cut into strips, and then raising the knife up on the branch and chopping off a clump of betel nuts from the top of the tall skinny palms they grow on. Cool.
The next day we went out fishing and spearfishing with Keyonei and Barnaby. We took our spear gun out too and Fred got some pointers from Keyonei who is an amazing spearfisherman. Apparently spearfishing is easy if you are able to free dive to about 40 feet and stay down there for a good long time. This is apparently not a problem for Keyonei, who comes from one of Yap's outer atolls where fishing and spearfishing are the daily activities for the boys and men. The ladies take care of the farming and cooking. We were told that almost all the dive guides on Yap proper were originally from the outer islands, where free diving is a way of life. Keyonei was able to fill a cooler full of fish pretty easily, and although we didn't have any luck spearfishing, we did catch a mahi mahi while trolling along the outer reef on our way to the spearfishing spot. We were pretty excited since this is the first mahi mahi we have caught on this entire trip, but unfortunately I managed to lose the picture of it and all the other Yap onland pictures we took while we were there. Bummer. We did, however, enjoy a magnificent fish dinner that night!
We also had a bit of excitement after the spearfishing when Keyonei told us that he didn't want to go all the way back to the pass to get back into the lagoon, so instead we would go over a low part in the reef, which would only work if we rode in over the reef on the right size wave. Apparently there is no pass into the lagoon around the island where Keyonei is from, so they take small boats over their reef frequently and it's just a matter of counting the waves correctly - which all sounded nice and reassuring until we got real close to the reef and he put his in shoes on "just in case". Then he told us to look around the boat and make sure everything was secure because there was a small chance we could capsize. Well, I'm not sure what Keyonei's definition of "secure" is, but as far as I could tell nothing in the boat was secure. We had fins and masks and snorkels and spearguns laying everywhere. The fish was all in the cooler, but the cooler itself was in no way secure. In fact, I'm not sure how we could have made anything secure, it was a small, open boat without compartments to put things in. I suppose we could have at least put our snorkel gear back in it's bag (the bag with the broken zipper) but although Keyonei said to make things secure, I couldn't see how, and he and Barnaby didn't seem to be securing anything, so I just grabbed the new camera and put it's strap around my wrist and decided to hope for the best. We made a couple big circles in silence - I was afraid to say anything since I didn't want to interupt Keyonei's concentration. Barnaby was in the bow and I kept my eye on him. He didn't look nervous, but he did look intent. Then, we finally caught a wave and zoomed over the reef with no mishaps and everyone relaxed and started joking again, so I assumed we were safe.
We thought we would be leaving the next day, but the weather simply did not cooperate, so we stayed a few more days and got to go to Yap Days, which is a yearly celebration of traditional Yap culture that includes dancing, and stone money carrying contests among other things. Most people there were in traditional garb which includes colorful skirts for the ladies and loin cloths for the men. Some of the loin cloths were topped with some unique straw looking decorations that are made from hibiscus bark. It was all very interesting to see, although unfortunately they ran out of programs before we got there, so we didn't really understand what any of the songs were about.
One of the my favorite things about Yap, were the very interesting people we met there. For instance, We met Chief Munno one day as we were returning to the boat after Yap Days. He was walking down the street wearing only a blue loincloth and carrying the tradtional men's woven straw bag. He hailed us from across the street, and when we crossed he introduced himself and asked where we were from, and if we had been enjoying our stay in Yap. (It seemed like the majority of people we talked to really wanted to know if were having a nice visit.) I assumed, based on his attire, that he had been to Yap days, but as we chatted we learned he was the chief of one of the outer islands who was on the main island to attend a Chief's conference. The goverment of Yap has four main branches, the same three we have in the US plus a group consisting of the chiefs which includes the chiefs of the outer islands along with those from Yap proper. Anyway, Chief Munno was very interested to learn that we were from Idaho. Seems he had gone to college in Eastern Oregon and had fond memories of a road trip to Boise (to buy some Coors beer!) Chief Munno went on to tell us that he is only a few credits away from a Masters degree, but he missed home to much, so he came back before finishing. He was a fascinating fellow, and we exchanged email addresses with him, but he also requested our postal address because when he is back home on his island he does not have access to "those machines". Given that the Yap government is clearly very vested in the country's infrastructure, I assume this is by design. I assume that they could have internet on the outer islands but that they sometimes choose not to, because I know that one of Yap's stated goals is to try to keep traditional living alive, while also attempting to make themselves economically viable by developing their tourist industry. It seems like a very tough line to walk, but I hope they can do it, because Yap is definitely a very unique place.
Another day, in the laundromat I met two other interesting characters. The first was a very nice 75 year old lady who very kindly offered to share her lunch with me. She has six grown children, and many of them went to college in the US, and a few of them still live there. She's been to visit so many times that she is bored with their hometowns and on her last visit she asked them to take her to Las Vegas where she won either $900 playing the slot machines. The other character was a gentleman who was dressed in a loincloth and carrying a woven straw bag full of betel nuts. He was waiting in the laundromat for a ride back to his village, where he owned a small store. He asked me about the book I was reading, and wheter we read a lot on the sailboat, and told me he had just finished reading the Bill Clinton's autobiography. Somehow this was just not what I expected him to say, but it was great chatting with him.
People here in Palau keep asking us what there is to do in Yap, and my advice is to just wander around town and chat with the very friendly people there. It really is a unique, and very lovely experience.
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