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Palau - 50 Shades of Blue

Part 5 - Around the World 06/2015 - 02/2016

By Beyond All Maps - Portraits of our Planet by Thorsten Mehret

July 15^th, 2015

As with many places I´ve been so far, a picture somewhere caught my attention first and after some research, the place eventually made its way on my „places to visit“ list. In the case of Palau it was a stunning aerial picture of the Rock Islands more than 10 years ago. Unfortunately Palau as part of Micronesia is quite far away, neither easy nor cheap to reach and therefore mainly a tourist destination for divers as it´s considered as one of the best dive places in the world. Most divers come from Japan, Korea and nowadays China. Only 1000 Germans join in yearly, although Palau was a German colony from 1899-1914 as part of Deutsch Neuguinea. Some dive sites names like German Channel or German Lighthouse are reminders of that time, when the Germans blew up a channel into the reef to get better boat access for their phosphor and phosphate mines on Angaur Island.

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KoRor

Koror is the biggest settlement in Palau and almost all tourist stay here. Nevertheless it´s faceless and not really attractive. There is not much to see although the prison is funny, as there is a gift shop where wood cavings from the prisoners can be bought. But prices are hefty. Feels like a legal robbery.

The Birth Ceremony

This is a traditional ceremony for women that have given birth to a child for the first time and even Palauen women living abroad often come home for this ceremony I was told in the museum. First the woman will be sprinkled with hot water infused with herbs. This is repeated several times within 5 to 10 days and helps to soften the skin. Afterwards there is a steam bath. The woman sits on a chair with a whole. The steam helps to clean the female genitals. Finally the body is rubbed with Kesol, a mixture of palm oil and kukuma, making a yellowish skin. Afterwards there is dancing, singing and live music with guests.

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Faces of Palau

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A Day tour around the island

Palau consists of many Islands but most people live on just one islands and most of them in the town of Koror. I rented a car for a day to make a tour around the Islands. Driving is a little bit confusing in the beginning as driving in on the right site but all cars have their steering wheel also on the right site as they are imported from Japan which is a left driving country. The sights around the main island are not spectacular but all in all still make a nice day tour with some WW2 relicts, examples of typical Bai (Gemeindehäuser), a nice waterfall, ancient stone monoliths and the capitol.

Japanese Pineapple Cannery Factory from 1928

...and suddenly the road is at an end, surprise.

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The Palau Capitol looks like the White House and is way to big for the country. As it´s build on a small hill overlooking the sea, it can be seen already from a distance and I first thought it´s a Fata Morgana. Looking impressive at first, a knock on the walls reveals a Las Vegas style fiberglass architecture. I also read that the windows can´t be open and therefore AC´s were used for cooling, costing more than 20.000$ a month. As the costs where to high the government stopped the AC cooling and soon mould occurred everywhere and the members of the congress refused to work in the building. Well, after the Berlin Airport and the Hamburg Opera we Germans should be very quiet about those things. BTW the solar system was sponsored by the EU.

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The Jelly Fish Lake

This is an oddity of mother nature. A salty lake on one of the rock islands with millions of jelly fish that have lost their dangerous ability to sting, as there are no enemies in the lake. It´s a surreal feeling to swim between them.

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Diving

Palau is famous for its diving and in the peak season dozens of boats can be around a single dive spot like the famous Blue Corner. In the off season like now, we had the most dive spots for our own. The back draw in this period is the unpredictable weather and wind conditions and therefore limited accessibility to the outer and therefore best dive spots. In fact the last weeks before I arrived no boats where going to the outer reef due to hefty winds and big waves. So I was lucky enough that the weather just got better when I arrived and we could go to all of the best dives sites. And „best“ they are, I can say. Wracks, Walls, Caves, many Sharks, Turtles, Rays, big schools of Barracudas and other fish, together with a spectacular visibility under water and a stunning scenery above water. Best place for diving in the world? For me, YES!!!

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Flight over the Rock Islands

Finally I did what I came for, a flight over the Rock Islands. I was first booked in for an 8:30 flight, but after looking at some of the most stunning pictures on the net, it was very obvious that they were taken around noon as there were no long shadows visible. So I rebooked for around 11:30, and was not disappointed. In a world of superlatives it´s sometimes hard to emphasize some really great moments in live. But this flight truly was. It´s a stunning scenery, like no other place in the world I know. The green dots of the Rock Islands surrounded by the blue water coming in all kind of shades are nothing less than magical. It was hard work to make a selection of the best shots for this page out of the several hundreds I did in that 35 minutes. Almost every shot feels like a postcard and worth to show.

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70 Islands Wildlife Reserve - No Humans Allowed

Palau Pacific Resort

As I had to check out at 11:00 and the flight to Yap was at midnight, I decided to spend half a day at the best resort in Palau. It´s a nice place to hang around and very quiet during the day as most guests are divers.

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