I woke up this morning with that ‘first day of the holiday’ kind of feeling, that sense of anticipation that comes with arriving in a new place with endless possibilities… Palau seems to be having that effect on all the crew! This little island archipelago exudes a feeling of sleepy isolation, as though it is a place dedicated solely to the enjoyment of nature and is unaware of the rat race going on in other parts of the globe.

Maybe it is partly to do with arriving after five days passage through open ocean, but Palau has the air of being a place far away from the rest of the world in its own separate time zone; 300 beautiful emerald green islands and pellucid blue lagoons in an area not much more than 100 miles by 15 miles.

This morning we had a few things to take care of so that we can concentrate fully on exploring this ‘island paradise’ over the next couple of weeks; primarily fuelling up, and getting in some groceries. Enrico and Monika went ashore to sort out the food side of things, DJ and James headed off to see Tavo and Navot about the location of some stone money(!), and Trevor, Lou and I took Starship in to the wharf to take care of the fueling. We only took 1600 litres/ 400 gallons onboard, so it wasn’t a long job… it was a hot job however, being up on deck in the full sun while the fuel tanks filled!

Before we had finished, DJ and James arrived back with the location of the ‘stone money’, 40 minutes away by tender, so while we wrapped up the fuelling Trevor loaded the co-ordinates into the GPS on Startender, and we headed back to our anchorage in the bay in STARSHIP.

This stone money is quite incredible, it is actually huge discs made of a crystalline limestone found in Palau’s Rock Islands, quarried into ‘coins’ with holes then bored through the centre so the stones could be slid onto large logs for carrying. Although the stone money was made in Palau, it was quarried by the inhabitants of Yap; a small group of islands over 250 miles away, and was used by the Yapese as currency. Anything up to 12ft in diameter and 5 tons in weight, these ‘coins’, called rai, were loaded on barges and towed by canoe across to Yap where they were lined up along village pathways much as though they were in a ‘bank’. (I guess it would have been pretty hard to steal anyway… “OK; put your hands up and throw the money in this sack…”).

The value of the individual stones depended more on the number of lives lost in the process of transporting the discs back to Yap than it did on the size of each ‘coin’, and lives were often lost on these expeditions…sometimes whole parties. Sort of makes you realise how silly the whole concept of ‘money’ is; the actual unit of currency is meaningless except as a representation of ‘effort’. On that basis a rai has got to be worth a small fortune!

DJ and Dave attempt to make a withdrawal.
[ photo - James Frankham ]

Anyway, DJ, myself, Lou and James loaded the tender up with snorkeling gear, a couple of video cameras, three still cameras, an underwater housing and a chilly-bin of cold drinks to combat the hot sun, and headed for the quarry site.

It was a great ride there…weaving through convoluted reefs, past verdant green islands, and into ever smaller and shallower channels until we came to an idyllic calm bay overhung with lush vegetation, and with a tiny stone wharf. An easy 5 minute walk up through some beautiful rainforest brought us to the small ‘caves’ where the money was ‘minted’, and there before us lay a huge piece of stone money, looking a bit like a gigantic concrete ‘lifesaver’. I don’t know what ‘denomination’ it was, but you would have needed a huge wallet to hide it away… it must have been 12ft/4M across!

Seriously, looking at it and feeling its rough surface made you wonder about the people who went to such massive amounts of effort to carve it out of the rock probably hundreds of years ago. How they came up with the idea and why, fascinates me, especially as they lived so far away from this place. I know one thing for sure though; they didn’t decide who was going to paddle the canoe by ‘tossing a coin’!

Our next stop was in another small bay just around the corner; to take a look at a wrecked Japanese Jake-Aichi floatplane from the Second World War in water shallow enough to snorkel. After anchoring Startender we slid into the incredibly warm water and flippered across to where we could see a propeller blade projecting above the surface. As you would expect, there wasn’t much left of the plane; just twisted metal and a big engine block/ propeller resting on the shallow reef. We had a good scoot around the bay looking for another plane supposed to be there but with no luck, the visibility was not so good as we were right next to some mangroves. However we did see a turtle, which was pretty cool! (Incidentally, this was the site where the last crocodile to kill a man in Palau was hunted down…something we didn’t know beforehand!).

We surfaced from our snorkel to find raindrops bouncing of the water’s surface and some heavy clouds around; a welcome relief from the heat, but also an incentive to head back to STARSHIP.

Back onboard Monika and Enrico had had a successful shop, and even had a bit of lunch left over for us! After a quick visit to Fish ‘n Fins to pick up some reef hooks and have a chat to Tavo and Navot about dive sites, we pulled up STARSHIP’s anchor and threaded our way South through the beautiful mushroom-shaped islands to another anchorage about an hour away, ready for tomorrow’s ‘dive explorations’!!

Anchored amongst the spectacular Rock Islands.
[ photo - Lou Oliver ]

Tomorrow I will tell you more about this spectacular area we are in; what ‘reef hooks’ are, and some of the concepts Tavo and Navot have came up with to minimize the impacts of their ‘eco-dive’ operation on this special and vulnerable environment.

Adios until tomorrow,

Diver Dave