Weekend of Wonders

This weekend was amazing. Definitely one of the best weekends of my life. It was just filled with so much beauty. So this will be a very long and picture heavy post, because what I saw and experienced this weekend was absolutely indescribable. And even though the pictures hardly do it justice, hopefully they’ll help convey the beauty of Palau.

Saturday morning a group of us went to the beach. Palau doesn’t have many beaches, but there’s a private beach next to a restaurant named Riptide that’s about a 45 minute walk.  So a group of us spent all day Saturday there. The snorkeling was amazing. The coral and fish were beautiful and we saw so much wildlife- I can’t wait to dive. So we spent the entire day at the beach, swimming, snorkeling, and just hanging out. It was the perfect day. 

Riptide and the beach

Snorkeling at the beach

Sunday was absolutely one of the best days of my life. There just aren’t enough adjectives to describe it.

The view. All day Sunday.

Palau's Rock Islands

We spent the day touring the Rock Islands of Palau and various sites in them. The first place we stopped was a stone money quarry. Like I mentioned, the people of Yap came to Palau to make stone money, and some of the pieces of it were absolutely massive. There’s one along the path that we saw that broke when they were trying to transport it, so they just left it lying there. 

Stone money, called Rai

The next place we stopped was called Milky Way. The water was the most stunning shade of blue I’ve ever seen. We all got out and swam there. The soil under the water was clay, which we all smeared over ourselves to exfoliate. It made for a good time. 

Swimming at Milky Way

Then we went to Jellyfish Lake! Jellyfish Lake is in the middle of a rock island, and has been for tens of thousands of years. The jellyfish have no predators in the lake, so they’ve lost the ability to sting. And there are tons of them. Thousands, easily. So we hiked up and then down to the lake got to swim with the jellies. It was surreal. They just surrounded us- everywhere we moved there were jellyfish. The pictures really can’t convey it. They were so awesome to watch. We spent a long time snorkeling and swimming around them. It was incredible. 

The hike to Jellyfish Lake

Jellyfish!

Jellyfish everywhere!

We stopped for lunch at a gorgeous beach. So we sat and ate, and then swam and snorkeled. Even in just a few feet of water the reef and fish were amazing. I’m so glad I have an underwater camera and I had a lot of fun taking pictures of the fish. 

Snorkeling

Purple starfish!

Beach babes

It rained for a while. We got absolutely pelted with rain on the boat- it felt like Deadliest Catch. But our next stop was snorkeling, and underwater it didn’t make a different. The place was Cemetery Reef, where people on our boat fed fish while we snorkeled. So huge groups of fish swam around us, which was just amazing. 

So many fish!

We stopped a few more places to snorkel, including a ship wreck! 

Ship Wreck!

We also took the boat by a few notable sites to see in the Rock Islands. They were gorgeous. The water was stunning colors everywhere we looked- turquoise, teal, cerulean, Panthers blue, sky blue. Just amazing. One site had cave paintings from thousands of years ago. They were amazing. 

The red paint is cave drawings

More rock islands

Another site was over a sunken Japanese WWII plane. We also stopped by an alcove that’s just filled with burned barrels from where the Japanese burned barrels of oil during the war. 

The alcove was filled with burned oil drums

This week we’re only digging three days. Monday and Friday are national holidays here. Monday, which is Memorial Day, is actually one of the guys in our group’s birthday. And Friday, which is President’s Day here, is my birthday! So hopefully my sunburn from this weekend can heal this week!