Palau/Yap by Fred

Well just got back from 10 days in Palau and 4 days in Yap. Koror was changed, a bit more traffic and a new Outrigger Hotel a Hilton is being built as well. The good news is that the Taiwanese Fishing Fleet is gone and the diving is as good as it was 2 years ago. the Blue Corner dives were incredible as always the only problem was where do you look with so much going on at once. The kind of bad news is that there was a lot of coral bleaching due to El Nino and though it made for spectacular viewing of pastel yellow, blue and pink corals, and flouresent pink, white, yellow and blue aenemies the long range picture isn't as pretty,anywhere for 20-70% of the affected coral may die off. On the average vis was 60-100 ft and water temp was in the mid 80's. We went with Sam's Dive Tours again and were warmly welcomed upon our return, they're still running a first class opertion. Sam has added kayaking tours we did Nikko Bay tour and saw juvenile blacktip sharks among many othe things, do a trip if you have the time. We stayed at the Outrigger but I wouldn't do it again the rooms were nice enough but lots of other thing were not working worst of all one of the pools water was green the entire time we were there.

On to Yap we stayed at the Ocean View Hotel a basic and clean hotel centrally located in Colonia. We dove with Nature's Way they were great and we were the only 2 people on the boat. Our first dive we went to see the Mantas that made Yap famous we were the only divers there and our dive guide Sue had down on the bottom at a Manta cleaning station, we saw at least 5 Mantas at one time and it made for a great experience. For our other dives we chose to do reef dives on the outside of the reef, they were all drift dives with vis of 80-100ft. pretty and relaxing like all of Yap. If you get a chance go on one of the village tours and see the native dances. Well that's about it , if anyone has any questions e-mail me.