Whereas its neighbour Palau receives roughly 100.000 guest a year, just 6000 make it to Yap. Together with some other states (thousands of km away) it´s part of the Federated States of Micronesia and has a population or around 11.000. There is not much tourist infrastructure, just a handful of hotels and even less dive bases.
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Colonia is the capital of Yap and basically consists of a few administrative building and hotels, a bank, a supermarket and a couple of houses surrounding a lagoon. My first exploration took 2,5 hours. 0,5 hours walking around and 2 hours having an chat with Henry an retired teacher with a German grandmother and very interested in everything. So we talked about Yap, his family, Merkel, Putin the Greeks,……….
The Yapese are very friendly, warm and relaxed people although it might take a short talk or a first smile sometimes to reveal it. Their culture still plays an important part in daily live. Many women and men wear flower chains on their head or around the neck and I was also astound to see topless older women around town or even in the supermarket. Not an uncommon sight.
Even the dogs are friendly and quiet in Yap.
Like on other pacific islands some WW2 relicts can be seen on a former Japanese airfield. We also drove through some villages, but they are very hard to recognize. Yapese like privacy and therefore each house is surrounded by very dense vegetation. The whole islands is connected via stone paths and it´s fun to walk on them. A branch or leave (or torchlight in the night) is used as sign that a foreigner is coming in peace and it´s still expected to carry around while you are in a village.
One of the most interesting and unique part of the Yapese culture is the stone money. As Yap does not have any limestone and the shiny stone was highly regarded, sailors went all the way to Palau to carve out round shaped pieces of stone. This could take several month or even a year for one piece and they also had to deal with the locals in Palau. The journey between Yap and Palau over the open pacific in a canoe was dangerous and not few lost there lives. Around 3000 stones can be found on the island mostly stored at important places (Stone Money Banks). The value is mainly depending on size and history of the stones, that means who carved it, how long did it take, which tools were used, what happened on the journey back, etc. Each stone has an own name and if the history of a stone is lost, it also loose it´s value. Although for all common things US Dollars are used nowadays, the stone money is still in use , e.g. to settle disputes, buying land or paying craftsmen to build traditional mens houses. Only if the money is small enough it might be carried around, otherwise it always stays at the same place just changing the owner.
Yap is famous for its Mantas. During the mating season, it´s not uncommon to see a manta train (several mantas behind each other). Unfortunately July is not a good time and my two dives at the manta cleaning station were rather disappointing. The first dive I saw 4 mantas but the water was very murky and the second dive we waited for 60 min. but no manta showed up. I started to give names to the few fish around to overcome the waiting time. The sunset dive at the mandarin fish shelf was better. The mandarin fish are only 3 to 6 cm, but the most beautiful fish I´ve ever seen. Very colorful and it´s fun to see them mating.
© 2026 Beyond All Maps - Portraits of our Planet by Thorsten Mehret
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