Yap, Federated States of Micronesia

I've gotten a bit behind on the blog, so let me first say that as many of you already know, we are currently in Palau (which was not affected in any way by the big earthquake in Japan - hooray!) We have been in Palau for about three weeks now. Fred flew back to Idaho a few days after we got here to take care of some business and do some skiing, so Jeff and I have been enjoying Palau on our own. We really like it here, but we also really liked Yap, so I wanted to put up this blog about our experiences there before I start writing about Palau.




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.

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.

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!

Lots of sharks!

I don't think I'd ever seen so many sharks at once unless the dive guides were feeding them. We found out later that they do feed them at this spot some days, but not the day we were there, although they did tell Fred to take some bread that was leftover from lunch with him to feed the snapper. Apparently snapper love banana bread - go figure!

Fred feeding snapper

The snapper were all around us the minute we got in the water. We started in about thirty feet of water near the edge of the reef and then swam to the drop off where there were a lot of sharks circling around. We just floated there and watched them swim around and around.

Black Tip Reef Shark

Some were small reef sharks, but there were lots of grey sharks as well, which are a bit bigger. I'll admit here that I mostly enjoy seeeing sharks while we are diving, they look so powerful and sleek, but it still raises my hackles a bit when there are a lot around at once. I can't help thinking that if just one bit you that the blood would have the rest of them on you in a flash. Jeff always tells me that the dive companies would be out of business quick if their customers were getting eaten by sharks, and I know it's true, but that doesn't prevent the heebie jeebies from setting in, particularly if I look back and find that one has circled around behind us. I would really prefer if they would all stay front and center where I can keep an eye on them. After watching the sharks for a bit we swam along the outside of the reef and saw some great coral and a turtle. It was a great day of diving.

Grey Shark

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.

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.

Truk Lagoon (Chuuk), Federated States of Micronesia

Truk Lagoon islands and dive boat

Truk Lagoon is the first place we've been to that we were warned repeatedly about before arriving, but we are happy to report that we had no unpleasant incidents during our stay there. We were very careful while we were there, especially since we continued to be warned by locals that everything on deck should be locked up, and we purposely anchored in only one location, which was off of the lovely and welcoming Blue Lagoon Resort, and we limited our overall stay and severely limited our time in the main town, and although it's a shame that we felt that all of this was necessary, I am glad to say that we had nothing but pleasant experiences during our stay in Truk.




We arrived to the main town dock pretty late in the afternoon our first day here after motoring twelve miles inside the reef. The lagoon here is huge. It's quite different from Pohnpei, which was basically one large mountainous island with a nearby fringing reef. In Truk their are many medium to small islands which are all surrounded by a reef which is ten to fifteen miles away from the central islands. The town of Weno is where we had to go to check into the country, and is also where we had been told that fights often break out in the streets between local youths.



We reached the main town dock at about 2:30 PM. This dock is really designed for much bigger ships with huge bollards spaced quite a ways apart. We put our bow line around one, but the next one back was quite a ways away, so Jeff volunteered to stand on the dock and hold the stern line. Unfortunately for him our check in process was delayed while we were waiting for one of the agents to show up, so he wound up holding the sailboat onto the dock for about two hours while many of the local skiffs went flying by creating totally unneccessary wakes to push us around. It was a bit annoying, but eventually we got our paperwork in order and still had enough daylight to head south to what we had been told was a much safer anchorage off of the Blue Lagoon Resort. We got the anchor down and got the dinghy inflated in record time and went ashore to arrange our diving for the next day. Then we headed back to the boat to finish our post-passage necessary chores and make ourselves some dinner and hit our bunks for that first blissful night of uninterrupted sleep.



The next day was the first of four days of fantastic wreck diving. We'd heard that Truk is in a class by itself when it comes to wreck diving and I think we are all now believers. We went ashore a few minutes before what we thought was 9 AM, the time we were meant to meet our guide on the dock. We waited and waited and made a few jokes about island time and waited some more, and Jeff finally walked up to the dive shop to make sure they knew we were there. In the meantime a nice fellow came over and began chatting with Fred and I. He asked if we were going diving and mentioned how early we were. Once again we had crossed into a new time zone during the passage without realizing it and we were an hour early. Sheesh!



A few minutes later, Estos and Mack brought the boat around and we loaded up our gear (after apologizing for rushing them!) and met a father and son from Australia who dove with us for two days, and headed out over some very calm water between some very beautiful islands to our first Truk wreck.



The Fujikawa Maru was a 433 ft Japanese aircraft carrier. We swam along the outside for a bit and admired the amazing hard and soft corals which almost completely cover the outside of the boat. It makes the boat itself like a reef and makes swimming around all the masts and the towers that stick up from the deck really interesting. Just the outside would have been an amazing dive, but Estos led us inside to a room with lots of pipes and some electrical circuits still showing. We swam around this for a bit then went swimming through to the holds. There were six holds on this boat all with something cool to see, but my favorites were the ones with containing the Japenese Zeros. It was unbelievably cool to be swimming around inside a ship under the water and see these planes inside. One of the holds had about six of them and they were scattered around and kind of lying on top of each other. It was amazing how tiny these planes were. I could not imagine getting in something that size and going to shoot at other planes and ships. Incredible. The holds also contained many fuel drums, lots of saki bottles, some gas masks and some shoes.

A few of the MANY saki bottles we saw while diving

Our second wreck the first day was the Heian Maru, a 510 ft submarine tender with more amazing coral outside and a really cool very long horizontal swim through with periscope repair pieces laying in the hallway.



I was completely sold on Truk wreck diving after these two dives. We all agreed that we could easily do mulitple additional dives on these two wrecks before their charms would begin to pale.



The second day we went first to the Shinokoku Maru, a 500 ft naval tanker, whose superstructure was covered with gorgeous coral. Even the bow gun was covered, so much so that it took me a moment to understand what I was seeing. We also swam inside and saw an operating table and a side room with a tiled tub.

Jeff amongst Shinokuku superstructure

This was also the first dive that we took our amazing new underwater camera on. This camera was a Christmas/Birthday/Easter/Valentines/St Patricks Day/Thanksgiving present from Judy and Merv, and we were super excited to try it out! We are also super excited to be able to share our underwater experiences on the blog thanks to the photos from the new camera. Jeff and Fred were a bit amused at the fact that I read every word of the instructions beforehand and at my initial nervousness about damaging the camera, since Jeff graciously allowed me to have the first go with it. It took a bit of getting used to at first (I am definitely NOT a "gear girl" and there is already a lot going on when you're wreck diving) but then I was very pleasantly surprised at how much fun it was to take some outside snaps. We didn't attempt any inside photos at this point, because it's pretty dark inside the wrecks and some of the spaces are pretty small and there are sometimes sharp pieces of metal about, so you need to pay attention to where you are, but we made up for it once we were outside the wrecks back in the better light. We took a gazillion photos and you can be assured that from now on we'll be posting pics of all our dives.

Coral on the Kensho

Our second dive this day was the Yamigiri Maru. It had a big torpedo hole in side which we swam into, and more amazing coral on the outside, and also a human skull which appeared to be fused into the wall of the engine room. This was the only sign of human remains that we saw while diving although many of the wrecks have them. Our dive guide told us before the dive that it was there and gave us the option of seeing it or not. We voted to see it, and to me it seemed a good reminder that we were actually diving on ships that were sunk full of men during a war. It's easy to lose track of that while gawking at the amazing underwater sights.

coral on the Yamagiri

The next day our first dive was on the Nippo Maru, a 351 ft cargo ship which had a one man tank sitting on one of it's decks. Again, I was surprised at how small the tank was - tiny! I can't imagine getting into something like that by yourself and driving around these islands with people shooting at you. Crazy! There were also som artillery guns on wheels deck on the deck. For some reason (maybe because of the wheels?) these looked to me more like something from the Civil War than from WWII. There were also a lot of big, square water tanks in one of the holds and tons of saki bottles.



There were actually tons and tons of saki bottles in every wreck we saw. So many that Jeff now has a theory that Saki consumption may be a major factor in why the Japanese lost the war! It may sound silly reading this at home, but if you come take a look at these wrecks I guarantee you'll think he's on to something!



Our second dive that day was the Kensho Maru, a 381 ft cargo ship. In this ship Estos took us through some really amazing swim throughs. We went up and down some very skinny staircases, and since this boat is sitting right side up it felt like you were walking around in it. We went to the engine room where there were plenty of levers still intact. There was also some really nice coral on the bow gun outside.

Kensho coral encrusted bow gun

Our first dive on our fourth and last day of diving was on the San Francisco Maru. This was our deepest dive in Truk with a max depth of 165 feet. We dropped down near the bow of the boat which is the shallowest part of this wreck, but still deeper than the deepest parts of the other dives we had done. There was very little coral here, compared to the other dives we had done (I think because it is so much deeper, but didn't get that confirmed by Estos), so we got a really good look at the bow gun and the track that it spins on. Next we swam over to see the two one-man tanks that are on the starboard deck. One tank was partly on top of the other - it sort of looked like they had collided and one tank went up over the other, I imagine this happened either when the ship was being bombed or when it hit the bottom. There were some china cups and plates from the wreck displayed near the tanks also. There was another tank that we saw on the port side of the boat. Between these there were some deeper, open holds where we could see the skeletons of trucks including the chassis, steering wheel, and seat frames. All of this was in front of the bridge and when we reached that we turned around and began ascending gradually back towards the bow and the mooring line to the dive boat. This had all taken only about 15 minutes, but we needed to head back up while we still had plenty of air for the decompression stops diving at this depth would require. There wasn't much to look at on the way up, and we had to spend a good bit of time there, which is the problem with deep dives. I'm glad that most of our dives weren't this deep, but I really enjoyed this one all the same. Seeing the tanks sitting there on the decks was really neat, and seeing this one boat with so much less coral growth than the others was interesting also.

Betty Bomber engine

After a fairly long surface interval, which we spent back at the resort itself, we went back out for our final Truk dive at the "Betty Bomber", a Japanese plane which came down just a little short of a runway that had been built by the Japanese on one of the flatter islands. This plane is in fairly shallow water. It's engine of the plane is about a hundred feet away and we swam over to check that out first, then back to the body of the plane itself.





Fred coming out of the Betty Bomber



The nose was sheared off of the the body, so you could look right inside from the front. There were a gazillion little fish inside, and when I swam in they just moved over a bit to let me through. It felt a little like swimming inside an aquarium. I enjoyed it so much I went through a couple times going each way. Scattered about on the ground outside the plane were some radio parts, oxygen bottles, the ever prolific saki bottles, and a gun that looked more like a hunk of rusty metal than anything else.



Fred with the gun from the Betty Bomber



We had originally planned on four days of diving while in Truk, but we were having so much fun that we would have added a few more days, especially since the weather did not allow us to leave right away anyway, but unfortunately Fred and Jeff both had their ear infections recur, and I managed to really smash my foot on a piece of deck hardware, so we sat around a played hospital boat for the next day or two before checking out on Monday. The guys did make one short provisioning run into town, and said that it was every bit as bad as it was reported to be. I can't tell you how many people in Pohnpei described it as "a shithole". Multiple people used that exact phrase, and not all were the sort of people you'd expect that kind of language from. The boys agreed, however we also all agree that the Blue Lagoon Resort is quite nice. They have lots of security and very friendly staff in general, so if you want to dive in Truk, our recommendation is do it, but definitely stay at the Blue Lagoon.



We had to go back to the town dock again to check out of the country, then we headed north and got through the pass out of the reef a few hours later to begin our 800 mile sail to Yap.