This time 3 years ago, I was in Palau visiting Jason for almost a month while he was there for the Peace Corps. Basically, Palau is paradise (like really- pristine beaches, no natural disasters happen there, not really a lot of poisonous or dangerous animals...) and it's definitely one of my favorite places I've ever been. We eventually want to go back some day.
I dug through my archives on my old blog to find this post I did on my trip there. This was written 3 years ago, but I thought it was a pretty well-detailed account of my trip to Palau. Hope you enjoy & that it makes you want to visit there, too!
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Palau: The Details
(from Sept. 5, 2010)
Palau /pəˈlaʊ/, officially the Republic of Palau (Palauan: Beluu er a Belau), is an island nation in the Pacific Ocean, some 500 miles (800 km) east of the Philippines and 2,000 miles (3,200 km) south of Tokyo.
This time last year, I never thought I would get to travel to the South Pacific, let alone a place called Palau. I mean, what's Palau? Jason became a volunteer in the Peace Corps around this time last year. When he told me where he was going, I had to look it up. When I saw the pictures, I was amazed by how beautiful it looked. And I thought to myself "Wow, it'd be so awesome to go there." But not one ounce of me really thought about it further than that. I was just happy for Jason and knew he'd have an awesome time.
We kept in touch through letters, e-mail and the rare phone call. The more he told me about Palau, the more I wanted to go. But still, I never took those desires seriously. Mostly because I had already checked out airplane tickets (just out of curiosity!) and they were WAY out of my price range at the time.
Finally, some time in April when I was trying to figure out my travel plans for the summer, Jason and I discussed that it would be a good idea to go to Palau (after some discussions, arguments, etc.). And so I booked my flight.
My flight was to leave Tuesday July 20th around 6pm from LAX. And I was to get to Palau on Thursday July 22nd around 10 pm. In total, it would be about a 35.5 hour flight (with layovers). I was not stoked about that part, to say the least.
When I boarded the plane in LAX, it hadn't hit me that I was actually doing this. I was just mostly anxious to get the whole process over with & be in Palau already and see Jason. When I land in Honolulu, I have a 9 hour layover there. Yes, 9 hours. I didn't want to pay for a hotel room for just a couple of hours, so I decide to just sleep in the airport. I must say, it was the most uncomfortable sleep I ever had. And the airport is open, so it's hot & humid. And there were some mosquitoes around, so I have to cover myself, which made me even hotter & more uncomfortable. ( I couldn't sleep inside because they kicked me out). But on a more positive note, my flight was at 7am. I had never wanted 7am to come sooner ever in my life.
From Honolulu we flew to Guam. But on the way there, we had 5 stopovers. We stopped at 5 different little islands. And when I mean little, I mean little. Some were Marshall Islands, some were other Micronesian Islands. Here is a video of us landing on one of the islands:
It looked like we were going to land on the water & the landing strip looked really short (on every one of the islands). But the aerial views were just breathtaking:
