Boarding the Aggressor!

We are safely in Palau and will board the Aggressor this afternoon! We posted a few pics of the Man's House and then Village Bank on my classroom website - feel free to check it out at: http://halstravelingclassroom.blogspot.com/

Bon Voyage! :)

Day 6: Our Non-Diving Day in Yap

26 June 2010

Since we fly to Palau tonight, we had to observe the 24-hour no-fly rule as we waited for every last dive induced nitrogen to leave our blood stream. So we entertained ourselves in different ways and learned a lot more about the Yapese. We lazed about in the morning and enjoyed another breakfast in our room as early morning showers rippled through the harbor.

Kayaking started at 9:30 and we boarded a boat that held our kayaks and our guides, Iggy and Richard, who whisked us out to the mangroves. Then, we each clambered into our kayaks and headed into little channels with extensive mangroves rising up on either side of us. We spent an hour or two paddling through the mangrove tunnels as Richard pointed out fruit bats, identified different species of mangrove trees, village footpaths, and how different plants were used in the villages.

After our peaceful exploring, we headed to the “Men’s House” that belongs to one of the villages on the island. We passed the bank (which was a collection of stone money – large, round stones, with circles carved out of the center …like a doughnut) and were invited to sit on the porch of the Men’s House where we enjoyed a fantastic snack of local fruits – including the best passion fruit I have ever tasted – it was incredible! We sat on the porch of the house and peppered Richard with questions. Here are some of the things we learned:

The Men’s House is essentially the town hall for the village, only women are not allowed to enter. Boys are included once they are old enough to behave – usually around the age of ten. The frequency of meetings in the Men’s House depends on the village. It can be daily, weekly, monthly, etc. There are over a 120 villages on the island and their populations range from around 100 to 500 people.

The Men’s House is made out of the strongest mangrove trees and has a thatched roof. They have to re-thatch the roof every five years to maintain the building – and it’s a village wide effort. The women sew the thatching the men lay the roof.
Stone Money. So I asked the obvious question. What’s to stop someone from making more stone money? Every piece of stone money that’s legit is recorded. No more can be made. When stone money is given as a gift or for payment, the giver/payer explains the recipient the entire history of all the transactions that stone has been a part of—and it is the recipient’s duty to learn the stone’s story and share it with the next person they impart the stone to. For marriages there are fancy shells that the male’s family gives to the female’s family to suggest that the male’s family will take care of the daughter.

A few more facts… There are no firearms allowed in Yap. They also check all of the ships and flights for snakes, rats, frogs, insects – anything that could throw off the delicate ecological balance of the island. There are no crocodiles. There are also no snakes or monkeys on the island and they really want to keep it that way. Sometimes the locals kill and eat the fruit bats – it’s illegal but it happens.

We enjoyed the peacefulness of the mangroves and have enjoyed our very casual afternoon since then. We are 90% packed now, have paid our debt with the dive shop, and are enjoying one last afternoon with our friends on the Mnuw. We will soon be heading out for dinner and are then off to the airport for a quick flight to Palau! We board the Aggressor tomorrow evening! Woohoo! Yap has been a fantastic first half of the trip! Amazing :)

Day 5: TWELVE FOOT MANTAS!!! (and lots of other cool stuff)

Meet Stripes. She is the Manta Ray that swam within arms length of us and she has a wingspan of 12 feet! She made our day...and our trip to Yap. She made us go Yappie! :)


Up close and personal


Awesome!




A shark!!!


Grey reef shark with no zoom.


Within arms length...

Today was one of those fantastic days that you hopefully during a vacation that truly make your trip. Today was absolutely awesome and Daniel and I are still all grins.

We had scheduled a full day of diving, to make the most of our time before we reached our 24 hour-before-flying-no-more-diving-for-us point. The plan was to spend the morning in the Valley of the Rays looking for mantas and then to head to Vertigo – the prized wall dive on the west side of the island.

Our first dive was in the Valley of the Rays and visibility was much much better than it had been two days earlier. We swam over to the cleaning station and again, waited in baited anticipated. Thirty minutes passed. Nothing. We began to get a little discouraged. We were all trying to breathe as slowly as possible, because no one wanted to run out of air as a manta showed up and the longer you’re down the better chance we have! And then, thirty-eight minutes into the dive a gigantic manta glides directly over our heads and hovers at the cleaning station!

Breathlessly, we watch the little fish go in and out of her gills, swarm all around her, and she’s off. But luckily, she makes several more passes, some of them coming in extremely low over our heads. We watched her in awe as we admired how she glides in, her unbelievably graceful nature, her impressive wingspan (twelve feet across!), and the distinctive markings on her belly (they have a board back on land of all the named mantas and they use the markings to identify each one, so we were looking very carefully as to whether she had strips, dots, blushies, or anything else on her belly).

We all clambered back onto the boat after the dive, giddy, and incredibly excited. The Vaughan family that we have shared all of our charters with (and dove three days before we arrived) said this was by far the most phenomenal of any of the encounters they have had. We were just incredibly excited.

Since we had such great success at the Valley of the Rays, and since the current had become so strong at the end of our dive, we decided to forgo the next dive in the valley and head onto Vertigo. So we headed North and then cut through some of the waterways between the islands to go from the East side to the West side. One the way we passed beautiful “ship island” and also puttered over a crumbled line of rocks which we were told had once been a Japanese foot bridge during WWII.

Vertigo is a beautiful wall dive and is also very famous for the shark sightings. Our driver drove the boat in a circle three times before we hopped in, which is what the boats do before they do shark feedings. Thus, the sound of it draws them in. Sure enough, as we sank down to 45-60 feet sharks emerged from the blue. The blue is the outer ocean, where all the big stuff emerges from. We saw several sizeable grey reef sharks and one smaller, but distinctively marked black tip. One of the grey sharks really took an interest in me and I would often turn my head to discover he had ventured within one to three feet of me. Daniel has a picture of him basically swimming right alongside me…which he did…and then swam right in front of my face staring me in the eye the entire time – it was really cool. The rest of the dive was pretty good as well, the visibility was fantastic and I often found myself swimming deeper to look at something and realizing that wow, I had gone much deeper than it seemed. When we neared the surface we encountered a group of about fifty squid! They were fairly small…but they were really curious critters and if you stayed still they would come so close you could see through their clear bellies and see their organs pumping. They had very inquisitive eyes and their backs would change colors based on what they were thinking/if they thought you got too close – it was really cool!

Next we headed to the middle channel where we ate a delicious packed lunch of teriyaki rice and chicken and then snorkeled along the edge of the wall for a while, spotting a turtle, more squid, and lots of pretty reef fish. We snorkeled for a good 45 or more minutes, enjoying the great visibility and then sat up top waiting for the tide to switch from “out” to “in”. We sat on the surface telling lots of stories, asking questions about different things we had noticed on the island, and learning more about some of the fish we had seen. One the tide changed over and the current for the drift dive would sweep us in towards the island instead out towards open ocean, we hit the Middle Channel which is also known for mantas.

This was a pretty intense drift. The current was strong. If you went to deep, it pulled you deeper, if you went to shallow you hit a hot pocket and started rocketing towards the surface. We were all like puppies running on tile…and it was hysterical. We did spy a few mantas in the distance – but they were glimpses. You would see one off in the blue and then it was gone. I spied a really pretty nudibranc that was black with pink and yellow, we saw more sharks, and those were the main finds, because we were all so concerned about maintaining buoyancy that we had trouble spotting many things. It was pretty funny.

After the dive, we came back through a mangrove laden channel, cleaned up, and met the Vaughan family for dinner and drinks on the giant ship, where we shared our photos with them and spent the evening marveling at what we have seen the past few days and laughing at our drift dive through the Middle Channel. Today…was awesome!

Day 4: Our 4th Wedding Anniversary!

Enjoying our anniversary from the top deck of the Mnuw in Yap Harbor


Watching the pod of dolphins play



A beautiful variety of healthy coral


Schools of Jack, Barracuda, and something else

24 June 2010

After our dives yesterday we relaxed in our hotel for a bit and then went exploring at the shopping center and indigenous art shop. Then we enjoyed happy hour at the Manta Ray Bay hotel – the restaurant and bar are a beautiful old-fashioned wooden ship that’s permanently docked in the bay. We ran into the British family we have gone diving with earlier that day and spent a few hours chatting with them. We enjoyed a nice dinner and crashed very early – we were in bed at 7:30, but we slept through the night! We were up at six, but I would say jet-lag acclimation is now about 90%! Success!

We started our anniversary sitting out on the balcony as the sun rose – I was reading more Korea books and Daniel was playing his DS (some things never change). : ) At 7:45 the front desk called and told us our breakfast was ready and Daniel came back with a beautiful tray of delicious food and fresh flowers. We ate breakfast on the balcony overlooking the harbor. Simply beautiful!

And then we were off to dive again! Today was excellent diving. Infinitely better than yesterday (the big storm that happened the night we flew in really did mess yesterday up). Today we went down to the Southern tip of the island and dove Yap Caverns – it was awesome! We swam between all these nooks and crannies while the rocks jutted up for meters and meters all around us. It was a tight fit, so it was a little challenging, but it was a lot of fun trying to maneuver single file through the caverns. When we reached a small swim-through cave we found a six foot nurse shark taking a nap in the corner! After swimming through the cavern we spent the rest of the dive swimming along a wall. I spotted an octopus!!! When it saw me it shrank back into its little cubby hole in a rock and was blinking his eyes as if winking at me and saying “you can’t see me anymore, right?” We spotted another octopus only a few minutes later and then saw several intricate leaf fish. It was a great dive – lots of interesting finds. I was so excited about what we had seen I sucked through my air about five minutes sooner than Daniel, and while I was on the line doing my safety stop, Daniel saw a very pretty black lionfish. We went down as far as 90 feet and had excellent visibility too.

After our dive we sat around chatting, enjoying the sweet bread, and hearing stories about the family of orcas that had frequented the island waters for two weeks just a few months ago. And then we geared up again and headed down to visit the “Magic Kingdom.” The variety of coral on this dive was amazing – so many different kinds – it was like gigantic flower patch with different formations jutting up like spires on a castle. We again had some great spotting including a large octopus that made a dive for his ledge (Daniel saw him swimming, but I only saw him under the ledge – which I had to view by turning upside down and then dropping down low enough to spy on him – he was huge!), we saw more clown fish, schools of fish including schools of barracuda and jacks, and a Napoleon wrasse.

And! On the drive back to shore, we were greeted by a very friendly pod of dolphin who were speed racing at the bow. It was really fun to watch them zoom around each other as they hopped the waves. Very cool.

So today was fantastic diving – it was comparable to the top dives we had in Australia. We are going to head over to the beautiful wooden ship soon for a late lunch and happy hour and then we are going to a dinner at the restaurant owned by our hotel. Valerie, one of our dive masters says they have the best cook on the island, so we’re going to check it out! And, since tomorrow is our last day of diving, we’ve arranged a full day so we can look for mantas in the morning, enjoy lunch on the boat, and then head to Vertigo – which is supposed to be one of the most amazing dive sites and one where you can see lots of sharks. Very excited!

Cheers!
Beth and Daniel

Day 3: Yippee we’re in Yap!

A glimpse of the lone phantom Manta Ray


Our morning view from the balcony


23 June 2010

Our last flight was uneventful. We landed around 9 and the only disconcerting this was that it was very dark. I can’t really remember a single trip I’ve taken in which I flew into a foreign country at night – it’s much more disorienting and you don’t really get a sense of your surroundings as you are driven to your hotel.
To disembark from the plane we climbed down stairs and found ourselves on FSM soil. We walked twenty feet to immigration and submitted our passports and paperwork and were admitted to the Federated States of Micronesia – Yap! As cleared immigration two people dressed in traditional Yapese attire gave us beautiful hand-woven leis that smelled fantastic – we had made it! We stood in the open air airport waiting for them to unload our luggage off of the plane (this was the moment of truth…did our stuff make it?) and suddenly it started thundering and pouring. Really hard. By the time we got our luggage our bags were pretty damp. We cleared customs, declared our granola bars and peanut butter crackers, and met our driver George who took us to the O’Keefe’s Waterfront Inn.

It was still raining when we arrived, so we were pretty damp ourselves. We checked into the adorable little inn and were greeted with cold cloths and ice water and led to our room where there was a personalized message on our bed. Our room is nice – very homey, all old fashioned wood and furniture, and! my favorite – there’s a balcony that hangs out of the water of the harbor – it’s beautiful! We lined up our dives for the next day, pre-ordered breakfast and finally crashed. There were a few casualties to the contents of our bags, the rain had dripped into some of our stuff and we had to spend some time hanging some of our clothes up to dry. Showered, dressed in clean clothes, exhausted, we crashed and got real sleep for the first time in about 30 hours.

We woke up this morning to enjoy the beautiful view from our little balcony. The sleep had really helped. We’d gotten about 7 hours. We enjoyed a nice breakfast – in which I humiliated myself. I asked for tea and was brought unsweet ice tea. I was expecting different, but no biggie. On the condiments tray on our table there was a little dish with a spoon and what I thought was sugar. I just wanted a teeny bit of sweetness in the tea – the waitress walked up as I dropped the white granules into my drink and she gasped and said “no!!” …it was at that moment I realized it was salt. Not sugar. They look the same, okay? …I could hear them laughing at me from the kitchen. Great.

After breakfast we rounded up our dive gear and headed next door to Yap Divers. We were assigned a locker, signed the waiver, rented equipment, and before we knew it we were on a little boat with a family of four blazing a trail through the water for the Valley of the Rays!

Today’s diving wasn’t fantastic, but we have very high hopes for the next few days. The current in the channel was pretty strong this morning and the visibility was poor because of the storm last night, so not the best conditions. We sat and waited at a manta cleaning station for the better part of an hour with no sightings. Then, just as Daniel and I were running out of air one beautiful, majestic manta ray appeared and coasted by. It was pretty cool. And we are proud to say we made it back to the boat without running out of air – and managed to make our first dive last 70 minutes while sitting between 30-45 feet for most of the dive. I was proud of our breathing – usually the first dive or two you huff through air a lot more. We did good! And my newly purchased wetsuit = perfect. And the fins from Justin = much much better than my other ones (thanks Justin!)

After surfacing we enjoyed hot tea and a sweet bread on the boat and then were taken to a shallow spot to snorkel during our hour of surface time. There were beautiful strings or elk coral and a really pretty vibrant blue coral that especially caught my eye. We enjoyed chatting with the family of four who are from the UK. And we spent time trying to explain to one of our dive guides why America hasn’t fixed the oil leak yet (face palm).

Our second dive was a lot better. We were more comfortable, visibility was better, and we were by a much prettier stretch of coral that had some beautiful fish. No mantas, but a shark spotting, and a much better dive all around.

Tomorrow we are diving a big reef and then the next we will be trying the Valley of the Rays again and are hoping to have a bit more success. Should be fun!

Cheers!
Beth and Daniel

Day 1 and 2: Flying half way around the world and over twenty-four hours of sunshine…

We made it! :)

It is currently 6:10 pm Guam time, Tuesday June 22nd, and 4:10 am Melbourne time, early Tues. June 21st. That means that twenty four hours and ten minutes ago I was receiving a wakeup call from my warm bed at the Hyatt.

So far so good. We woke up at 4 am, showered and packed quickly enough to check-out from our hotel and catch the 5 am shuttle. Being only three miles from the airport was perfect and we soon found ourselves at the Continental counter being handed four boarding passes a piece as the woman behind the counter cocked her head and said “where exactly are you going?”

We checked our plethora of bags (packing for Korea means we have many more bags than we would otherwise), sailed through security, grabbed a surprisingly yummy breakfast, and soon found ourselves sitting in chairs with the down-to-business Monday morning travel crowd who impatiently tapped their feet while on their cell phones waiting to board.

The flight to Houston was uneventful, but the time changes had begun. We were now in central time. We boarded the plane for Honolulu and were relieved to discover the seats were a little bit roomier than the local Orlando-Houston flight and had a good bit more leg room. My complaints? I am pretty underwhelmed with Continental. I had low expectations to start. But for all of our hours of flight time the movies and other channels are not on demand...and the food…was…terrible. From Houston to Honolulu we were given lunch and an additional light meal. Both were the worst airplane food I’ve ever had. Ever. Our lunch was mystery meat that we believe was supposed to be a cheeseburger that was probably three inches in diameter and tasted…crappy. The burger was accompanied by iceberg lettuce…much of mine had rotted. It was really bad. The next meal was a turkey sandwich…but that too was teeny tiny and was one slice of turkey and a piece of lettuce that was no bigger than two quarters. We were also given a 1.3 ounce bag of mini-baby-carrots. Bleh.

We survived the 8.5 hour flight to Honolulu and were pleased to learn that even though we would be using the same plane to go onto Guam, we could leave the plane for the hour they turned it over. Hooray! I have officially been to Hawaii and we sought refuge in a restaurant that served delicious quesadillas and enchiladas. We felt infinitely better after eating real food, walking around a bit, and stretching our legs. Much better. We decided the break was really helpful. Oh! And as we landed we flew right past Pearl Harbor – it was really cool!!!

And then we braced ourselves and forced ourselves onto yet another flight – although this one was “only” 7.5 hours. We figured out that we were now technically on Continental Micronesia. Same plane…but different division…and were pleasantly surprised to discover the food was actually better! This was definitely the hardest flight, but we managed. We spent the first portion of the flight watching “How to Tame a Dragon” – which I loved! I’m a sucker for cute, big puppy-eyed critters. I definitely want my own little Toothless now. And we spent the rest entertaining ourselves. I’ve significantly a book on Korean history, society, and culture – it reads kinda like a textbook or travel book – very very dense. It’s slow going, but I have learned a tremendous amount and am hoping the other books will be a little bit more historical/story oriented and quicker to read. Daniel has made use of his DS fleet and his “New Super Mario Bros” game he bought the day we left. He’s beaten it already (*sigh*)…but now he’s perfecting it. We both managed to snag an hour or two of a nap as well (seeing as how it is now 4 am our time again).

Well…we are now sitting in the Guam airport…ready to get on with our last flight and get there already. This one should take right around 2 hours. We have also had over 24 hours of sunshine today – when we landed in Houston it was 8ish, Honolulu it was noonish, and now in Guam it is 6 pm ish…so the sun has been shining since it rose with us in Orlando. …That definitely helps with the adjustment too. The planes are really a twilight zone, it honestly doesn’t feel like I’ve been flying for twenty-four hours now…and I actually still recognized myself the last time I used the restroom and looked in the mirror!

PS. For those of you not aware of seat reclining etiquette, there’s a few basics. First, before throwing your seat back please actually look and see if doing so will injure the person behind you because they are currently picking something up off the floor and now need to go to the chiropractor and feel like they may be slightly concussed. Second, if you have a small child, don’t recline the seat for them. They are tiny. They will be fine. If they are sleeping in the seat like a kitten...they don’t exactly need the seat reclined. Third, when it’s meal time – the respectful, courteous, polite-human-being thing to do is to put your seat upright and not lean it back again until trash collection. Fourth, unless it is an overnight flight, you don’t really have to feel compelled to leave your seat back for an ENTIRE eight plus hour flight. Especially when you are awake 80% of the time. I understand it’s a nice break, it varies things up, but the entire time? Most importantly? If one more person reclines their seat into me without looking and hits me again...

And We're Off!!! :)

Well, the moment has finally arrived! :) I am currently sitting in our hotel in Orlando (absolutely freezing because Daniel discovered the AC could be set in the 50s), extremely excited and trying to force myself to feel tired enough to fall asleep.

We are getting up at 4 tomorrow to take quick showers and then catch our shuttle to the airport. We are flying to Houston (2-3 hours), to Guam (17.5 hours), to Yap (2-3 hours). So about 24 hours from tomorrow morning we will be reaching our destination with just enough time to go to bed. Oh well. I supposed that's better than trying to force being awake until it's a respectable bed time.

The time difference in Yap is fifteen hours. Yikes. But, we're going to try to tackle the jet lag by diving the first day, which will keep us active through the morning and then give us the afternoon to crash. Besides...the goal of the trip is to dive, dive, dive, right? Might as well dive right in! Ha. ... I know.

Special thanks to Justin and Chris for giving us a ride to the airport and helping us kick off our vacation with a nice dinner at Longhorn!

I'm off to bed - it's a very early rise tomorrow.

To the parents for emergency contact info -- Yap: O'Keefe's Waterfront Inn; Palau: contact the Aggressor Fleet (they have a US office).

We're off to dive, enjoy the beautiful blue waters of the Pacific, and hopefully encounter massive mantas and lots of other spectacular fishies!

Cheers! :)

Holy Cow, We're Diving in Yap and Palau!!!! :)

It's that time again! We are gearing up for another adventure! This time the Hals are headed to Yap, one of the Federated States of Micronesia, and then onto Palau. The focus of the trip? Enjoying the beautiful islands and diving! We are hoping to spend our time in Yap diving and kayaking and are then spending a week on a liveaboard boat with the Aggressor fleet in Palau.

We're really psyched! Yap is supposed to be home to the manta rays! Both are supposed to have some of the best diving in the world. :) Did I mention we're really excited?

After our trip Daniel is flying home and I am once again staying behind to participate in a teacher's program. I have been selected as a 2010 Korea Society Summer Fellow and will spend two and a half weeks in Korea (yes, the Southern half), attending lectures at Yonsei University, visiting historical sites in Seoul, and traveling the peninsula on a "field trip"! When I return, I will be constructing a model lesson plan and applying to present at a professional conference. I am also getting to visit my student and her family while I am in Seoul! An awesome opportunity all around!!!

That said...getting ready for this trip has been nuts. The dive trip has been pretty easy, we've checked our gear, arranged rentals for what we don't have, ordered a wet suit for me, since I don't "dive naked" like Daniel and really really hated the wetsuit I had to use in Australia because it fit me so horrendously, and we've arranged hotels and local transport. Pretty simple.

The Korea Fellowship Program has had me running in circles - I need gifts for the directors of the program, presents for fifty Korean students that I will be working with one of the days, monsoon gear, professional attire, semi-professional attire, a semi-formal dress, lots of capris, extra socks, and to top it off I have restrictions on what luggage I can bring. I'm also supposed to be reading six books, lesson planning, and thoroughly researching my trip. Yikes.

I'm exhausted and ready for a vacation! :)

We are probably going to be out of touch during the majority of our Yap and Palau trip - but never fear, I plan to back-blog our adventure... get it? :) And while in Korea I will do my best to keep everyone posted. I am actually keeping a slightly more formal blog for my students on a different website and may be sending you guys there/double posting.

Okay, back to work for me. Please wish us crystal clear waters, calm seas, and lots and lots of amazing fishies!!! :)