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