Palau: above the water?

We are going to Palau soon, staying on a tour at the Palau Pacific
Resort, was wondering if anyone has stayed there. Also, it may sound
dumb to ask, but are mosquitos a problem on the islands?

Myles

"Mick" <huanghou@att.net> wrote in message
news:da53df11.0403251502.39633307@posting.google.c om...
> We are going to Palau soon, staying on a tour at the Palau Pacific
> Resort, was wondering if anyone has stayed there. Also, it may sound
> dumb to ask, but are mosquitos a problem on the islands?
>
> Myles

Well, at the risk of giving you much more than you really want in the way of
info, here's a report I wroye on a trip two years ago:

Palau, the westernmost area of the Caroline Archipelago, comprises some 350
islands along a 400-mile northeast to southwest stretch. The major island
group is the Palau cluster made up of about 200 islands, only eight of which
are inhabited. One of these, Babeldaop, is Micronesia's second largest
island (after Guam). The island's capital of Koror is located just south of
Babeldaop; farther south the rock islands extend some twenty miles. These
spectacular islets, shaped a bit like mushrooms, are topped by lush growth
and surrounded by calm clear aquamarine water and there are hundreds of
isolated sandy beaches. Farther south still are the islands of Peleliu and
Angaur. Peleliu was the site of one of the bloodiest and most futile
battles of WW 2. The rock islands are limestone and the sea is eroding
their bases; my guess is that they won't be around in a million years or so
and you should go see them now while you still can.
Palau Pacific Resort is a swanky resort hotel spread across 64 acres around
a little bay with a white sandy beach. It's about half an hour from the
airport and twenty minutes from the throbbing metropolis of Koror. With 160
rooms and suites it's big enough to have the amenities you want without
being overwhelming. There is a pool, two tennis courts, a spa, a gym, a
fishpond, a dive shop and boat dock and two restaurants. The rooms are on
two floors and I suggest you ask for one upstairs and near the dock. One of
the restaurants serves all day; there is always a buffet as well as a menu.
The other is their signature restaurant, which serves dinner only and is a
bit dressy; as Nick's idea of getting formally dressed is to put on shoes we
didn't go there. The food was okay, but two weeks of it was more than
enough; we did try some of the restaurants in town but didn't find any worth
recommending. In the evening there is a bus, which runs between some of the
hotels and restaurants from about 5pm to 10pm. It's free and you can pick
up a timetable from the concierge. Hard to believe that the local taxis let
that service get started!
If you stay in Koror a lot of the dive sites are an hour or more away. The
dive boats get off the dock between 7am and 8:30, do a first dive in the
morning, pull in to a beach for lunch and do a second and possibly third
dive in the afternoon, returning to the hotel between 4 and 6 and for this
reason we did no sightseeing in Palau. The alternatives are either a
liveaboard or you could stay on Peleliu, which is much closer to most of the
sites. However with a non-diver in tow I was happy to be at PPR.
The on site dive op is Splash which caters mainly to the Japanese who make
up the majority of the guests at PPR. We used Sam's Dive Tours; they picked
us up at the PPR dock each morning and whisked us off to their lair ten
minutes away. There they have docks, boats, a shop, rinse tanks, gear
storage, showers, loos, and the Bottom Time Bar and Grill. As well as
diving they offer kayaking, fishing, land tours and so on. As in Yap, the
quality of your dive guide is crucial to having good safe diving, and I urge
you most strongly to try to find the right one for you. After a couple of
hiccups we got Jonas, who is a star with years of experience on Palau and an
excellent attitude. He really cared that we got good diversity, and he kept
finding rare stuff for us. He was also meticulous about timing the dives to
coincide with the best current conditions; dive Blue Corner when the current
is weak or non-existent and you'll have a so-so dive, go when the current is
strong and you'll see why this site is so famous. Most of the boats were
open flat bottoms with a canopy for shade and a couple of four stroke
outboards. They were fast, but the long rides could be quite bumpy. They
were not crowded, usually around six divers and either one or two guides and
a driver. It's all drift diving and a typical dive starts at around 80
feet, becomes shallower and lasts as long as you like. Almost all of our
dives were an hour or more, which we could not have done in no-deco mode
without using nitrox so unless you're a gas guzzler, in which case it won't
really help, I suggest you use nitrox to avoid missing good stuff.
I find it hard to imagine better diving than this; both the profusion of sea
life and the diversity of sites was extraordinary but in a way even more so
was the interaction between the different species of fish which could be
seen so clearly. An example: The Moorish Idols were schooling at Blue
Corner, something which only happens during a couple of months, so a cloud
of them blew here and there around the shelf; around them in a first ring
were the predators, trevally, grouper, Napoleon wrasse all trying to isolate
prey, then further out the shark cruised, waiting for opportunity, stacked
up like planes waiting to land at O'Hare, and in the distance those with
better hearing than me claimed to hear the porpoises. On another occasion
we saw the same thing with a large school of scad. We saw mantas on two
dives; the first we waited around a cleaning station at Devilfish City and
they came, just as in Yap, swooping around us, huge and ghostly and when
they had gone we, (meaning Jonas), found a couple of crocodile fish on the
bottom; the second the mantas were feeding near the surface and we swam up
to be near them. There is an unidentified wreck known just as Buoy 6, a
100-foot Japanese fishing vessel at 65 to 75 feet which is heavily and
beautifully encrusted and there we saw a semi-circular angel, as well as a
bunch of lion fish. I had my first experience of a down current; at the end
of a dive we drifted off the shelf into blue water with no visual
references, at about 70 feet Nick gave the signal to ascend and I kicked
gently to get going while watching my computer which said 70.75.80.85. I
had some moments of sheer stupidity, my first thought "This can't be
happening", then, and I'm not making this up, "Perhaps I'm upside down and
kicking towards the bottom" and finally my brain woke up and said "Down
current" so I kicked hard up and away from the shelf and at about 90 feet we
came out of it and the computer started squawking about the ascent speed. I
saw my first giant clams, looking as richly upholstered as Victorian sofas,
creaking shut when touched. Julie and Nick spent one day kayaking in the
rock islands and were very happy with that; I was down with a cold and didn'
t go.
I could go on and on, list the sites and the sea life, but it's all been
said so many times before. Every single dive was wonderful.
Finally Air Micronesia, the original fly-by-night organization, loaded us on
for their 2:30am flight out and the journey home was just as long and just
as trouble free as the one going.

Random comments:

If I were planning the trip again I'd give Yap a miss; the mantas in Palau
were just as good and the rest of the Palau diving was so much better. Sure
the life style in Yap was interesting to see, but still. If you wanted to
combine Palau with another destination, perhaps think of Truk if you're a
wreck diver or maybe the GBR.

The currents in Palau can be very strong and can be unpredictable. While we
were there another dive op mislaid a couple of their dive guides and
everyone's boats went to search; they were found, but only after spending 18
hours in the water. If, like me, you are unsure of your ability to cope
with these conditions I suggest going with people who know what they are
doing. Sam's provides safety sausages and reef hooks; you should take a
mirror and a noisemaker and, I suggest, a collapsible snorkel to stick in
the pocket of your BC.

We got sick. I had a tummy bug in Yap; I had Imodium and Cipro with me,
which got rid of it quickly, but I still lost a day's diving. All of us got
colds in Palau; Julie and I each lost two days because we couldn't clear;
Nick toughed it out. Other people there had the same experience, no idea
why.

Make this trip: mortgage your house, sell your firstborn, do whatever it
takes but go. You'll remember it forever.

"Mick" <huanghou@att.net> wrote in message
news:da53df11.0403251502.39633307@posting.google.c om...
> We are going to Palau soon, staying on a tour at the Palau Pacific
> Resort, was wondering if anyone has stayed there. Also, it may sound
> dumb to ask, but are mosquitos a problem on the islands?

The PPR is a beautiful place, but don't bother with a shore dive on their
"house reef". It's dead. And don't bother with their onsite dive shop
unless you're Japanese or you want to rent a tank to dive the dead house
reef. I did, but even a couple pre-dive Red Roosters couldn't bring it back
to life. Fortunately the shop had closed by the time I returned and they
never charged me for the tank.

Food is great there, some of the best on the island, but breakfast is
pricy - $14 for eggs, toast, and coffee. You might as well partake of their
complete, but even pricier breakfast buffet. Dinner has a different theme
buffet each night at the main restaurant, with a la carte available. I
dined on the buffet with the president of Palau, so if it's good enough for
him . . . The signature restaurant is incredible. The best tuna sashimi
I've ever eaten. The indoor bar is fine when you want your beer to stay
cold - they serve Red Rooster on tap, but get some at a store in town where
you'll find a range of bottlings including an awesome Mango Wheat - the
hotel actually encourages using the minibar fridge for your own brews so go
ahead. The bar out by the pool is fun even with the grumpy bartender. Ask
him for the local bar muchie instead of peanuts: fried chicken skin in a
sweet hot sauce. Your beer will get warm in 5 minutes, so drink up fast,
order another, and enjoy the music of a pair of Filipino guitarists who take
requests but prefer to mangle the Beatles with their bad accents.

As for skeeters, I don't recall any and bugs usually love me wherever I go.
The trades will still be blowing good in April, so you should be fine. If
not, they sell bug spray in the stores and there's no malaria on the
islands.

Greg Mossman wrote:

> The PPR is a beautiful place, but don't bother with a shore dive on their
> "house reef". It's dead. And don't bother with their onsite dive shop
> unless you're Japanese or you want to rent a tank to dive the dead house
> reef. I did, but even a couple pre-dive Red Roosters couldn't bring it back
> to life. Fortunately the shop had closed by the time I returned and they
> never charged me for the tank.

I disagree. As luck (or bad planning) had it, the night my wife felt ambitious enough
for a night dive was the night that low tide was 3 minutes after we got in the water.
Since there's a lot of very shallow stuff, we were only about 30 minutes into the
dive when we wandered back towards shore and found ourselves right on top of the
coral. Normally I think a dive with an average depth of 5 to 8 feet is much better
than snorkeling, but when the tops of the coral heads are only 2 feet down even I
think the tank is unnecessary. The viz that night wasn't very good either.

OTOH, I went out snorkeling about 3 nights and enjoyed it enough that I stayed out
for over 2 hours each time, and spent much of that time wishing I was neutral instead
of several pounds buoyant, so that I could stay at depth (even if the depth I wanted
to stay at wasn't more than 3 to 8 feet. We were told tanks were $8, but when we
settled up at the end of our stay we were charged $5 each, so cost isn't much of an
issue. The reef may be dead, but there are still plenty of inhabitants, and whether
you just go snorkeling or make it a dive, it would be foolish to stay there and not
spend some time checking it out. With a maximum depth of 10 feet (plenty deeper if
you want to head further out) you'll probably get cold, tired, or bored before you
run out of air.

Right off the beach it will be hard to get deeper than perhaps 5 feet until you're
about 100 yards out, but there's good stuff 25 feet out in 1 to 3 feet (depending on
the tide). Besides damsel fish nipping you when your back is turned, there are lots
of picasso triggerfish, loads of shrimp gobies, plenty of the common small reef fish,
and at least one mantis shrimp that must have been 10 inches long. One night I found
a free swimming Moray (species uncertain) that was about 8 inches long, and there are
several dozen pipefish of about the same size. A bit further out the coral heads get
numerous and you'll find more and bigger fish, as well as giant clams (some of which
are only about 3 or 4" across, but some that are close to 3 feet). Just off the end
of the rock jetty there was an octopus that is probably the biggest we've seen. I
consistently found it in the same coral head all three nights, but it never came out
to play (despite a brief moment when I was sure that either it was coming out or my
friend was going in, depending on who was stronger).

Left of the jetty is the better place if you want to make it a dive, as you'll find
deeper water closer to shore, without as much shallow coral. There are two more
octopi that hang out between the jetty and the dock, and a lionfish that hunts next
to the big concrete pier of the dock, starting at about 8 or 9 in the evening.
There's also a large blue tailed shrimp that hangs out on the concrete pier; you can
find him by the 6" antennae sticking out of whatever spot he's in. Other things that
are there include crocodile fish, dog face puffers, at least a couple of 3 foot
morays, sleeping Parrot fish, another big mantis shrimp and about 50,000 smaller shrimp.

> Food is great there, some of the best on the island, but breakfast is
> pricy -

Most of their offerings are pricy. The chicken ceasar salad is a good deal at $8, but
the $14 lasagna is the same as what my local Italian place offers for $7.95. The ribs
were excellent, but also more than at home. The hamburgers were less than
outstanding, and $10. If I was in Grand Cayman where everything is expensive the
prices would have been typical, but plenty of other places have similar offerings for
much less. The free bus that runs into Koror every hour from 5 to 10 makes it easy to
eat elsewhere. The last stop is at the Etpison Museum, which has a restaurant called
The Reef. The selection isn't extensive, but the food is good and reasonably priced.

> The best tuna sashimi I've ever eaten.

That's what the professional chef who was traveling with us said about his appetizer
at The Reef. The Indian restaurant (The Taj?) across the road and 100 yards north of
Neco Plaza (the shuttle bus' first stop) is also very good. For inexpensive offerings
we went to the Rock Island Cafe (10 minute walk back toward the resort from Neco
Plaza). We paid under $20 for two mexican entrees that were very good and left us too
full to consider desert.



> the hotel actually encourages using the minibar fridge for
> your own brews so go ahead.

I don't know about "encourages", but we removed the $2.75 cans of Pepsi and stocked
our own 6-pack (about $3 at Surangel's, a grocery store in Koror) and milk for our
cereal (who wants to get up early enough to have breakfast at the restaurant before
catching the 8:30 diveboat?). The complimentary coffee, BTW, is instant, so the rooms
are supplied with a hot pot rather than a coffee maker. It's very convenient if you
want boiling water for any reason.


> As for skeeters, I don't recall any and bugs usually love me wherever I go.
> The trades will still be blowing good in April, so you should be fine. If
> not, they sell bug spray in the stores and there's no malaria on the
> islands.

We weren't bothered by any kind of annoying insects. In fact, other than seeing
(literally seeing; none of us got bitten by anything at all) a few at some of the
beaches during our surface intervals, I could have come home believing Palau doesn't
have insects.

Here's a tip for any dive trip, but especially for the PPR. Bring some parachute cord
for making a clothesline to hang your suits. The upstairs rooms have railings on the
balcony (as well as downstairs neighbors who might not like dripping water), and the
ground floor rooms have 3 (that's *three*) small hooks in the trim along the bottom
of the upstair balcony. All 3 of our hooks were along the outer edge, where stuff
could get rained on, so I relocated two to the sides and then ran the parachute cord
between them, making a triangular clotheline that was mostly sheltered from the rain.
That gave us plenty of room for hanging a couple of suits, a vest and two hoods.
The tub has a spring-loaded line that's good for bathing suits or other lightweight
items.


--
Steve

The above can be construed as personal opinion in the absence of a reasonable
belief that it was intended as a statement of fact.

If you want a reply to reach me, remove the SPAMTRAP from the address.

Mick wrote:

> We are going to Palau soon, staying on a tour at the Palau Pacific
> Resort, was wondering if anyone has stayed there. Also, it may sound
> dumb to ask, but are mosquitos a problem on the islands?

No, but the salt water crocks might think of you as an hors d'oeuvre if
you wade into the mangroves for a nice little swim before/after diving.

Just kidding -- of course, mostly they run away.

"Matthew Endo" <matt@gol.com> wrote in message
news:1gbam84.chif48mnsyjyN@yahoobb219000172009.bbt ec.net...

> Greg, I'll be waiting for you here in Tokyo. We can go down to the fish
> market at 5 am and eat real sashimi.

Is it a crime to eat it at a decent hour? That's too early for me to start
drinking sake.

> I don't think that Steve Kramer ate any fish while he was living in
> Japan, he just looked at them.

> Did you grate it yourself in a clockwise rotation on a shark skin
> grater?

They must have been out of sharkskin that day. It was still a treat for a
"westerner". In L.A. there's a few places where you can get the real stuff
(also probably sans sharkskin) but I don't get out enough.

> Oh yeah, while in Japan we can go for a dive, too. Do you like horse
> mackerel (aji)?

I love Spanish mackerel (aji) but detest plain old mackerel that tastes like
a horse, one that's been sitting dead in the sun a few days. Forget Tokyo.
Out here in the lovely Channel Islands they school at arm's reach. One can
simply pluck them out of the water and swallow them whole. I just choose
not to.

Greg Mossman <mossman@qnet.com> wrote:

> > Greg, I'll be waiting for you here in Tokyo. We can go down to the fish
> > market at 5 am and eat real sashimi.
>
> Is it a crime to eat it at a decent hour? That's too early for me to start
> drinking sake.

When it's cold, that's the perfect time to get a warm cup of sake...

> I love Spanish mackerel (aji) but detest plain old mackerel that tastes like
> a horse, one that's been sitting dead in the sun a few days. Forget Tokyo.
> Out here in the lovely Channel Islands they school at arm's reach. One can
> simply pluck them out of the water and swallow them whole. I just choose
> not to.

OK, I guess you haven't eaten horse sashimi yet, then?

Where in the Channel Islands? I remember the last trip I took there,
two divers were collecting sea urchin (uni)...

--
Matt
matt@gol.com

Matthew Endo wrote:
>
> Steve Kramer <steve@seatraveler.com> wrote:
>
> > Do you have any specific reason for a statement like this?
> > Why did you even bring my name into this thread?
>
> Whoops, sorry, wrong Steve. After rechecking the post, I realized that
> it was a different Steve!
>
> I figured you would have eaten a lot of sushi in Japan!


Enough to grow gills. I save a lot on tank refills now. :o)


Steve Kramer
Chiang Mai, Thailand
http://www.photoenvisions.com
Five years, seven months, six days, 9 hours, 43 minutes and 48 seconds.
61362 cigarettes not smoked, saving $15,340.54. Time used for a better
purpose: 30 weeks, 3 days, 1 hour, 30 minutes.

--
"The real voyage of discovery is not in seeking new lands,
but in seeing with new eyes!" Marcel Proust

"Steve" <SPAMTRAPglawackus@hvc.rr.com> wrote in message
news:t379c.7834$DV6.3886@twister.nyc.rr.com...
>
>
> chilly wrote:
>
>
> > I love most sushi and sashimi but uni tastes like licking the bottom of
an
> > acquarium to me.
> >
> > I gather it is an acquired taste.
>
> What is it that posesses some people to go to the trouble of acquiring a
taste for
> something they don't like the first time or two?

No idea.

Greg Mossman wrote:

> On that trip I drank twice as much every night.

You've got your priorities screwed up. When you have a couple of hundred nights to
drink at home and ten nights to dive in Palau, it seems clear that the drinking
should be weighted heavily towards the nights that you're at home. On the upside, at
least the drinks at PPR weren't overly expensive.


> Bill Munn certainly wasn't at the Reef when I was there. His presence would
> explain the improvement in the food. As for the burgers, I thought I ate a
> pretty decent one in Yap except that they substituted cabbage for lettuce as
> it doesn't wilt as fast.

Wasn't he at Manta Ray Bay until fairly recently? I thoink we probably mentioned that
we had just come from Yap, but I don't recall any mention of how long he'd been in
Palau. Our burgers in Yap at least had a hamburger-like consistency, whereas the one
at PPR was more like meatloaf on a bun. Out of three hamburgers during the whole
trip, though, I wasn't asked once how I wanted it cooked, and even at home a burger
cooked that thoroughly is going to be a bit durable.

>> As for claims that it is a first class resort,
>
> I'd have to
>
>>say some people are delusional. The grounds are very nice, but I've had
>
> better rooms
>
>>and better bath towels for $60 a night at Super 8's.
>
>
> That's a real shame. Our rooms were quite decent, about the equivalent of a
> $250-350 a night room in Hawaii. I can't say I remember the towels (two
> years ago) but I don't remember complaining. And I'm fond of complaining.

Perhaps you had one of the suites? We had a mere garden view room, but for $200/night
(of course I'm basing this on a guess from their website since we had a package and
never got a specific breakdown from Trip 'n Tour) I expected more, but it was just
aconvenient place to stay and we didn't spend a lot of time trying to enjoy the room
instead of enjoying what wasnt in the room. Other than the value for the money, that
the room was far smaller than the (very nice) room at Manta Ray Bay wasn't much of a
concern. OTOH, there were numerous cracked tiles, and one fo the chairs on the patio
had a 6" tear, and that's inexcuable in a resort that bills itself as a "luxury
resort". When Super 8 buys inexpensive towels, I expect it, since they work on a
small margin. Bathrobes, slippers and chocolates on the pillow are fine, but don't do
squat to add real value. They're spending a few bucks on the wrong things and
scrimping where it matters.

That said, on a future trip to Palau it's likely we'd be back at PPR due to the
location, though I'd make it clear ahead of time that I expected our room to be in
good shape. OTOH, while your companions wanted to drink, mine wanted to relax and go
to sleep early, and getting them to go snorkeling or diving in the evening was like
pulling teeth. For the amount of time we actually took advantage of the property it
woulds probably have been a better financial decision to stay at the Palasia or even
one of the West Plaza hotels and be close to the restaurant options.


> Palauan service is remarkably quick compared to Truk Lagoon, so it could be
> worse. We had a large group so our meals took forever. Some people would
> be served dessert before others even got their appetizers. So we made a
> game of it. Everyone throws a couple bucks into the pot and the last one to
> be served wins.

Good game. We figured out early on that feeding everyone at the same time isn't much
of a piority in that part of the world. As for Truk, we've known for years that's a
destination where a liveaboard is the way to go. Of course I'm only assuming that the
service would be better on a liveaboard. If it isn't, that 10% tip they recommend is
at least optional, unlike the one added to meals at PPR.


--
Steve

The above can be construed as personal opinion in the absence of a reasonable
belief that it was intended as a statement of fact.

If you want a reply to reach me, remove the SPAMTRAP from the address.