March 27: Palau Day 6

Today we woke up early and met Billy at the dock to do an early morning dive at Crystal Cave. Luckily, most of the people who said they were going to go decided to sleep in and there ended up being only four of us plus Billy. This time we only had one beginner and none of us stirred up the sand/silt so the visibility was good. The Crystal Cave consisted of four chambers and in all of the chambers you could go to the top and hang out in a fairly large air pocket. The fourth chamber was the smallest and Billy said most tours don’t go to the fourth chamber because their groups are usually too large. Once you surface in all of the chambers you see quite a few mineral deposits and small crystals clinging to the ceiling and a few stalactites hanging as well.  It was a pretty cool dive and when we headed out all we had to do was follow the light back through each chamber and then out to daylight.

Crystal Cave

After the dive we quickly unloaded the equipment at the dive shop and then headed back to the hotel to pick everyone up and headed over to the convention center where we were having the clinic. We worked till about 12:30 and then we broke for lunch at Taj Indian Restaurant where the former Vice President of Palau and her husband hosted the whole group for an Indian buffet. The lunch was really good food. We had butter chicken, mixed tandoori grill, aloo gobi, chana masala, saag paneer, baingan bharta and of course naan and rice.

After lunch we headed back to clinic and worked till about 5:30 or 6 and then went to the church where the Aunties had made us dinner again. Then we came back to the hotel and I went to bed early, because we had set up another early morning dive for tomorrow and I was beat from the long day we had just had.

The grounds where our clinic was set up.