Palau – awesome dinner and trying to get home

We left off on the way back from the field. After an exhausting day in the field, we went out to dinner with one of our local contacts. He took us to a more locals nice restaurant. He ordered everything for us beforehand. I was starving but managed to take some photos to remember the amazing meal by. First off we had sashimi.

You know it is fresh when it is looking at you! I don’t remember what type of fish this was, but it was damn good!

This dish was rice and egg. The rice was cooked with some sort of spice and was amazing!

More fish! This time cooked!

Giant Clam on this plate!

Palauan water melon and bananas to wrap up an amazing meal. There were a few other dishes I didn’t manage to get photos of. Mostly veggies.

Back over by the hotel. Friday was a sort of free day. I worked on the report and ran some errands before packing to head back. Our flight was scheduled for 2:30am, so I had some time in the evening to get ready. You can see in the distance of this photo a ship wreck.

Here is my example of a mini rock island!

That night my boss went on a paddle board adventure! He wrote something about that adventure and says he will put it online soon. I will be sure to link to it when it is up. Last night dinner was at The Taj! It is an amazing Indian food place! Photo10 This is a photo of me with the owner of the Taj My long trip home began after dinner on Friday. I came back to the hotel, checked the room one last time and went with my book to the lobby to wait for transport to the airport. I did end up falling sleep around 11pm in the lobby. Around midnight we all met up and loaded onto a bus to go to the airport. Once we got there and checked in we still had 2 hrs to wait. I was sitting by myself, and as the waiting room filled up I found myself in the midst of a group of very friendly Canadian divers. We talked shop and they shared photos and stories while we waited for the flight. Around 2:30am (departure time….) the plane was showed up. I think we ended up getting on the plane around 3am. Once we were all settled (I ended up sitting by some of the Canadians) the captain came on over the announcement system and said something to the effect of "uuuuhhhhh we had a light come on when we landed that we need to get checked out folks so uuuhhhhhh if we can't get that cleared its a no go so uuuuhhhhhh just relax and we'll try to get this fixed." I think I slept a little bit. At this point remember it is between 3 and 4am. I have trouble staying awake past 1:30am in a normal situation. I remember that around 4am we were told that it might not get fixed. Around 5am we were taken off the plane, and as we exited we could HEAR the beeping in the cockpit. We were lined up, refunded our exit tax, given our bags, and told that we would be contacted about our flight. While in Palau we purchased a local cell phone so we were able to call the hotel and get our rooms back. They took down our names (by hand) and hotel and we called a cab. Now, this cab was unmarked and was someone’s car. We squished into the cab and piled our stuff on top of his stuff in the back. Back at the hotel at 6am I tried to sleep. However, we were not even given an ETA for our flight so I was worried. Around 8am I was back up, and downstairs trying to get info. I couldn’t access my flight info online and they said they would call at 9am so I ate some food and tried to do something. Lets get this straight, I DO NOT function without sleep. I think I swam a bit. I went for a walk and eventually around lunch we had news of our flights. Originally I was rebooked to a 1am flight that went through Yap. I took one look at the connection time in Guam and said HELL NO put me on the rescheduled flight at 6pm! So around 4 we headed back to the airport. This flight was also late. By this time I had been hanging out with the Canadians all day. We looked through more photos and talked the whole flight. In Guam we were taken to a hotel. This was the same hotel I stayed at for a few hours on the way TO Palau. They were not ready for a plane full of people. Having worked in a hotel for years with a large guest flow, I could point out several ways that the process could have been expedited. However, while waiting in line one of the bell boys came hopping along and took one look at me and said “What are YOU doing here again!?” we chatted with him and got him to tell the restaurant to stay open later for us. Next morning, at like 4am we were picked up and taken back to the airport for an uneventful trip the rest of the way home.