March 26: Palau Day 5

Today we ended up just having clinic for half the day. We finished clinic at noon and packed up and headed out to go for a boat ride to Jellyfish Lake. Once we got to the island there was a really short hike uphill and then back down to get to the lake.

We spent about 45 minutes swimming around in the lake and going through all the jellyfish. It was a pretty surreal experience just floating through all the jellyfish and not getting stung at all, although, when Josh and I sucked some of the small ones up they did make our mouths tingle a little bit.

It was really fun just to dive down and float up through the jellyfish back to the surface and to gently grab them by their bell and feel how soft they were.

After Jellyfish Lake we snorkeled around the dock for the island where the lake was located for a few minutes and saw a few giant clams.

Then we headed out for another snorkel spot called Rainbow Reef. We jumped out quickly because we only had about 20 minutes to snorkel around and so Josh Kim, Josh Masillamoni, Jeremy, Jin and I swam over to a nearby island. Once we got there the rest of the boat yelled at us to come back, or so we thought. Apparently there is a $250 fine for going onto an island without a permit.

Anyway, while snorkeling at Rainbow Reef I saw a medium sized rock that was housing about 20 juvenile giant clams, with several of them having really vibrant lips.

It was also a really amazing place because the whole floor of the ocean was blanketed in a thick layer of elkhorn coral with small, brightly colored fish swimming in and out of it.

After Rainbow Reef we headed to a place called the Milky Way. The boat ride in was really cool, because it looked like we were going right at a rock island and then we shot through a 15 foot wide gap and wound around some hairpin turns and finally stopped in a little opening where the water was a bright turquoise green color and it was surrounded by steep rock cliffs covered in jungle foliage. 

We got out and swam around for about 15 minutes and people were diving down and grabbing some of the sulfur sand at the bottom and rubbing on their faces like a facial.

After the Milky Way we headed to another spot that I think was called Soft Corral Channel. It was a little arch in a really small rock island that was only about 20 feet deep and about 25-30 feet long, but it was covered in soft corral. There were all different colors of soft corral and quite a few fish swimming around them.

After the Soft Corral Channel we went back to the dock and unloaded the people who weren’t going to try and night dive and then met up with Billy, our dive guide. Our plan was to do a dive that was close to the dock called Crystal Cave so that it wouldn’t take us long to get there. We kind of got a late start because we had a large group and by the time we got in the water it was already past sundown. We had several beginner divers with us and when we tried to go into the cave a couple of them kicked up a lot of sand and silt from the bottom, which basically made visibility impossible. Luckily Billy decided to get us out of the cave and took us back to the surface since it was too dangerous to try the dive with the low visibility and no light shining through the entrance. After we got out of the water and back to the dock we arranged to meet him early tomorrow morning for the same dive. Then we went to the church and had dinner and then came back to the hotel and went to bed.