Travis traveling in Guam

G'day!

We landed safely in Guam yesterday morning. The island belongs to the USA and that's why you need such strange documents to be able to enter the country. ESTA or something like that. At least my older ones need them. And somehow there was a problem with the spelling of their names and so we had to spend quite a while at the border police office - US Customs and Border Protection - at the airport. After a flight leaving at two or so in the morning, that was pretty tiring and annoying for my two older ones. Because you don't actually have to protect the American border from them. You don't want to do anything bad or illegal. But CBP probably didn't know that.

Luckily the way to the accommodation wasn't far and they were able to get some rest.

Then they orientated themselves a bit on the island and took care of organizing a dive tomorrow. In the evening we went to a night market briefly. There are so-called food trucks there. These aren't really trucks, but more like food trucks. And imagine, we actually met a couple we had met in Palau: Max and Jennifer. Max is stationed here in Guam. He is the second man on board a submarine, a kind of deputy captain. Just imagine. He sometimes travels underwater in his submarine for several weeks. Phew, would that be something for me?

After a night of rest, we drove around the southern half of the island all day today.

Among other things, we were at a place where you can see a waterfall and a cave where a Japanese soldier hid until almost 30 years after the end of the war. He didn't know that the war was over long ago. He was then found by a Chamorro hunter (these are the indigenous people here) who told him.

Wooaaahhh!

To get to the waterfalls and the cave we went through a kind of amusement park, but somehow everything seemed to have been out of order for a while. Maybe because of a really big typhoon - that's a really strong storm here in the region - in May this year. It was a bit scary - everything was empty and orphaned.

But I preferred not to go into the scary house. I don't like being scared. So just a photo of me in front of the entrance. Together with my heroic older man, who of course dared to go in.

We took a small cable car down to the waterfalls and the cave. That was pretty cool, a cable car in the jungle.

The path to the cave was quite slippery and when I looked at my older one later, I was very happy that I didn't have any blood in me and that's why the mosquitoes didn't like me.

Well, I think I would have been pretty desperate if I had been Mr. Yokoi. I have no idea how he managed that. And excitingly, he wasn't the only Japanese soldier here in the Pacific who wasn't found until many, many years after the war. One even had to send his former superior to tell him that the war was actually over.

And in Palau there was someone who was the only one to survive the sinking of his ship and spent many years alone on a deserted island. In the 1990s he learned to dive and, when he was old, dived down to the wreck of his ship to say goodbye. I had a bit of goosebumps when I heard the story.

In any case, we continued from this place and in between we stopped at a restaurant that belongs to a German:

"Mc Kraut's German Restaurant".

There was German currywurst for my oldest and potato pancakes with applesauce for my oldest. And we sat on real beer garden chairs. It's exciting that food and home are somehow so closely connected.

There were some nice viewpoints on the way. Among other things, at a former Spanish fort. From there, cannons were used to protect a bay where ships stopped on their way from Acapulco to Manila.

And also we stopped at a place where there were relics of the Chamorro culture.

The Chamorro people still make up a portion of the population here on Guam today.

There were also “natural pools” by the sea. That was really nice for swimming.

I thought for a moment about whether I should go into the water. But then I haven't done it (yet). Wait and see, I'll get there at some point.

Before we drove back to our accommodation, we had a delicious iced coffee right by the sea. An island like that has something going for it. You are almost always somehow close to the water.

Tomorrow my two older ones are going diving here. Things seem to be a bit more relaxed here and a lot of people just rent bottles and then drive somewhere where you can go from the beach into the water and start diving. My older ones are going out on a boat tomorrow. And it reassures me that they also hired a dive guide. I'm curious to see whether they'll rent something like that with a bottle and do diving on their own.

I will keep you updated on this.

Until then, love from Travis the Buddy Bear.