PART THREE - PALAU DIVING & EXCURSIONS
THE DIVING
The premier diving operation on Palau is called Sam's Tours. They have an excellent reputation for safety and great service, and for the most part they lived up to their reputation on my trip. The diving day begins at 7:30 with a pickup by boat at the Pan Pacific dock and a 5-minute scenic ride along the coast to Sam's docks. Not a bad way to start a day, I might add. Sam's has a modest dive shop, a nice, reasonably priced little cafe featuring the local brew on tap, a fill station and rental counter, and a large lockable container for gear storage. After the usual paperwork on the first morning, you are issued a water bottle and asked to choose lunch, always either a bento box (Japanese meal including sushi, meat, and rice) or a sandwich, fruit, and a brownie. There was always a cooler of soft drinks and fruit juice on board, and plenty of drinking water.
The boat leaves promptly at 8:00 each morning, depending on your definition of the word "promptly". Nitrox is the usual $10 a tank and you analyze both tanks before departing. Dependable 31 and 32%, and solid 3000 psi fills, although with the deeper profiles and reliable Palau current I sorely missed the extra gas I got used to with the neutral AL80's in Guam. The boats are covered, twin 200 hp fast, and relatively comfortable, and we experienced no overcrowding on our boat although I did notice a couple other Sam's craft that looked a little tight with divers. There are no camera storage tanks on board, so I used a wet towel, and the DM kindly provided a two gallon bottle of fresh water under my bench each morning so I could give my rig (and myself) a good dousing after each dive. Sam's does not provide towels, so bring your own.
And then, we're off.
Almost all of the most famous dive sites on Palau are 45 minutes or more from Sam's dock, and much of that travel time is spent weaving in and out of the gloriously beautiful Rock Islands. Normally I get antsy and bored on long boat rides, but never on Palau. I just sit mouth agape and marvel at the scenery. There is very little open ocean travel, and for us the seas were nearly calm the whole week so we could speed along full throttle. The boats typically had a crew of three, two DMs and a boat captain, and two of our crew remained the same through the week.
GERMAN CHANNEL
"Where are we going?" we asked every morning. "Diving" was the answer, every morning. And while the crew did recognize our requests, there was never any commitment because the tide, current, vis, and boat traffic largely dictated the choice of sites each day. Our first day we ended up at the mouth of German Channel, so named because it is a man made channel made during the German administration of Palau to allow shipping between Peleliu and the island capitol of Koror, now used by dive operators to get to and from the best dive sites. There is a cleaning station at about 60 feet, known to be frequented by Manta Rays and sharks, and even though the briefing alerted us to the possibility of sighting I took it with the usual grain of salt.
The first leap into Palau waters was a little worrying, because the vis was a paltry 30 feet, but the Palau magic was working and to my amazement, within 5 minutes we were watching two majestic Mantas circling around us, spookily slipping just in and out of visible range. Whoa Nelly! You mean that we were actually going to SEE things mentioned on the dive briefings? Not necessarily true, many times we would see much more, such as the cuttlefish hovering over a coral outcropping later in the dive and, oh yes, the sharks.
We did 11 dives, and saw sharks on 10 of them. And the 11th dive was a 10-foot deep Mandarinfish dive under the dock, so that doesn't count. Sharks, sharks, sharks. :-)
Cuttlefish
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Lunch and surface interval location varied each day, sometime we ate while moored, sometimes we beached or docked on some deserted island or an endless strip of white sand exposed temporarily by the tide. Lunch is taken at a leisurely pace, often exceeding 2 hours, and I have to say it was for me just a bit too much of a good thing. Between lollygagging at the dock and the extended lunch breaks, and the generous 60 minute dives, it was often approaching 4 PM when I arrived back at the resort, and frankly if I'm spending that much time on the water I want three dives. Three-dive trips are offered, but the third dive is always a local dive near the shop and the day ends after 5:00 PM. Nobody asked me, but if they did I would have voted for a little more strict schedule and getting back at 2:00 with enough time to get in some afternoon drinking. I mean touring. But when in Rome, slow down and enjoy the pizza, eh?
During our transit to the next dive site, a small mystery was solved. It seems like every native resident of Palau has one thing in common, poor dental hygiene habits. Terribly discolored and damaged teeth almost universally mar the warm smiles offered by the friendly locals. It turns out this is caused by a local habit of chewing Betelnuts for it's mild narcotic properties. While sitting with the boat captain, I watched him carefully prepare his treat. First, he would cut a Betelnut in half, and to add an extra "kick" to the recipe would break off a 1/2 inch piece of cigarette and put it in between the halves. Then he would produce a small plastic bottle of powdered lime and sprinkle on a generous amount. Finally this whole contraption was wrapped in a pepper leaf, and placed in the mouth, where it was chewed for about 2-3 hours, then replaced with a fresh batch. The red juice from the Betelnut permanently stains and damages the teeth and gums of the user. I was offered a chance to sample the concoction, but even if I didn't hate visiting dentists as much as I do, I'd still pass for fear of instant addiction to a product that is darned hard to find in Virginia.
The name of the second site was New Drop Off, one of the many sheer, beautiful wall dives of Palau. The briefing was always adequate and clear, always ending with the mantra of the trip, "Wall on the right, Sharks on the left". Or vice versa. In the Caribbean a diver will snicker at such folly during the briefing, in Palau though, it means Wall on the right, Sharks on the left or right or down or up. Or, you guessed it, vice versa.
NEW DROP OFF
On New Drop Off, the sharks started off being down, but I'm getting ahead of myself. The wall was superb, steep and beautiful, with stunning 150 foot vis and every exposed inch packed with life. Soft and hard corals, schooling fish, odd fellows, it had it all. But a few minutes into the dive on a sandy shelf at about 120 feet we could clearly see six or eight White Tips cruising and laying about and looking all sharky. I began to drift deeper to get a better shot, but I needn't have bothered because a few more were now swimming past me along the wall, distracting me from all the wonderful macro shots I was missing as the modest current pushed us along effortlessly. It was wonderful, just wonderful. And it was only my second dive.
90 minutes later we are back to the docks, and shortly thereafter the gear was rinsed and stowed and my hand was full of a fine draft Red Rooster Pale Ale which kept me company while the van ride back to the resort was sorted out. Because of the tides, you boat to the shop in the morning and van back in the afternoon. Or, well, you know, vice versa. Back home at the Palau Pacific I found a happy and content family who had spent the day swimming and exploring. We had a fine meal, watched the reliably stunning Palau sunset, and drifted to sleep with the sounds of night birds, a light lapping surf, and loud snoring. I can't personally testify that there was any snoring because I was always asleep when it allegedly took place.
BLUE CORNER
The next day it was time. Time for Blue Corner.
At the docks I canvassed the boat to see if everybody wanted to visit this world-renowned dive site because with the fickle currents I wanted to take zero chance of missing Blue Corner in my fleeting 5 days of diving. It was unanimous. And before long we were adrift over the wall and preparing to dive, and I wondered if this site could possibly live up to it's reputation. Soon we were at 70 feet and working our way down yet another superlative Palau wallscape, when the trickling current became a noticeable push from behind. Almost in unison we stopped finning and began riding the steadily increasing current. At about 10 minutes into the dive, the DM indicated that it was time to deploy our reef hooks, which had been issued to each diver during the briefing. The reef hook is a piece of nylon rope with a very large, dulled fishhook on one end and a wooden handle on the other. For the photographers in the group, the crew helped us remove the handle and showed us how to attach the rope directly to our BCs. As we rode the current we brought out the reef hooks and then, as we reached the famed Blue Corner, we all reversed directions and swam mightily into the current and down onto the bare and rocky reef. The technique is to attach the hook to a lifeless rock and carefully let the rope slide through your hand while keeping it taught to keep the hook in place, then inflating your BC to rise up off the reef where you can dangle in the stiff current like a tethered dirigible and watch the "show".
Blue Corner is, in fact, an actual underwater corner where two deep, sheer walls meet. It's geography and exposure to reliable tidal activity ensures stiff currents, and the constant upwelling of microscopic creatures and nutrients from the depths of the nearby ocean trenches provide a food chain extravaganza. From the tiniest to the largest of ocean fish, Blue Corner is the place to be at dinnertime. And it is this mixture of nearly unique conditions that make this site so extraordinary.
Sparing us needless anticipation, the sharks came immediately. As we floated above the reef we observed a parade of hungry White Tip sharks prowling among the vast numbers of schooling smaller fish, and the schools themselves following the smaller fish, and so on down the line. We were positioned nearly perfectly to observe the goings-on, and soon my only concern was trying to pick a lens, and a direction, and camera setting for the endless variety of animals posing for me, while at the same time compensating for the relentless current which tried to turn me about, and dislodge my mask, and re-adjust my strobe arms.
Off the wall we watched the White Tip, Black Tip, and Gray sharks cruise back and forth, waiting for an easy meal. Further out, the unmistakable profile of a stout Bluefin Tuna briefly appeared. Three-foot long Napoleon Wrasse bravely approached us. And directly below us was a macro wonderland, so vibrant that I briefly changed my camera settings to macro, which I recommend against. Holding a camera macro-steady on Blue Corner is like trying to fly a kite in a tornado. And when the DM signaled us to disconnect and finish the dive, we guessed the fun was over, but there was a lot of dive left. We headed down a wide-open sand channel, which turned out to be the Lazy Boy recliners for the sharks who had eaten their fill. More than 10 were lying about in the sand, and some allowed a pretty close approach before rising and swimming slowly, and thankfully, away.
Before we began our safety stop we marveled over two lovely schools of fish as they grazed the outside edges of Blue Corner. There were Barracudas and Snappers in the hundreds. It was at this point that I made up my mind: I like Blue Corner better than homemade mashed potatoes, and that's saying something.
Schooling Jacks at the end of the Blue Hole dive
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BIG DROP OFF
The next dive was Big Drop Off, and I must confess that I was so wound up by the Blue Hole dive that my memory of Big Drop Off is not as distinct as the other dives, but I do remember the wall being steep to the point of overhangs, and a concentration of soft coral that was noticeably more vibrant and lush than most of the other sites we visited. I don't even know if it's worth mentioning during every dive description that we saw sharks, so from now on you can assume we did and be correct 100% of the time.
More about Palau Diving...
© Mike Southard 2007
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