Wow. We just finished up a morning dive at Blue Corner, which is one of Palau’s most popular dive sites. When we went in the water there were 2 or 3 big dive boats out on the reef. When we came back up 45 minutes later there were 15! Amazingly, we didn’t see any other humans before we surfaced. But we did see hundreds of fish and some turtles and sharks a very alive and healthy coral reef. Tomorrow we’re taking a rest day, but I’m sure we’ll be back out on that reef bright and early Sunday morning. Hopefully Rob will bring his camera this time and get some good pix for the photo gallery.
We’re on anchor out at the south end of the Rock Islands again, enjoying what is likely our last 10 day park permit. This is truly a perfect anchorage, with one little exception. Actually, thousands of little exceptions in the shape of flies. What’s amazing to us is that the wind and rain doesn’t slow them down a bit. We never imagined we would need our bug screen for flies, and never thought we’d have the bug screens up in 10 knots of wind. Hopefully it’ll cool off a bit with this next rain squall and I can go out for an afternoon kayak around the islands, even with the flies.
Rob discovered something interesting the other day. The cat likes to be iced down. Shouldn’t be surprising, since she doesn’t mind the rain and often comes in soaking wet. She’s taken to sleeping on top of the freezer, and must be getting just enough cold seeping up through the crack in the lid to give her some comfort in the heat. So one day Rob was getting ice for a drink and held a piece to the top of her head. She’s not one to put up with something she doesn’t like, but she just stayed put. When I repeated the event this morning she seemed happy, and was completely wet by the time the ice cube was all melted. She’s finished her mid day nap and has moved back to the top of the freezer again for her late afternoon nap.
We’re starting to watch the weather up north for our upcoming transit through Japan. We finally have permission from the authorities to bring Maya into the country, we just have to report to them all the stops we plan on making in advance so they will know where she is. They’re much more generous than either New Zealand, Australia, or Hawaii, and we’re grateful for that. There is one late season storm causing horrible weather in the North Pacific right now, but hopefully it’s the last one. Another yachtie here in Palau is also sailing to Japan and confirms that mid-May is a perfect time to head north. We haven’t heard back from the hiring manager in Kwajalein, but still do have our fingers crossed that something materializes there before we have to head north.
My lesson for this week is to never trust a Filipino cross-dresser to mix hair color according to the swatch she/he showed me. Here’s hoping the sun and saltwater bleach the color out in a hurry.
Teresa
PS: Rob said that is definitely my lesson, not his. He would never have trusted the Filipino cross-dresser with a pair of scissors, much less a bowl of hair color.
