Etape 10 - Manta Paradise of Yap

My lodging hole..
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Here I am, in Yap. Some moron in this travelblog website thinks that Yap and Palau are still a part of USA which is definitely not the case. Also It seems that there is no map availabl for Yap. Nevertheless it is situated 1 hour flight northeast from Palau and belonging to the Federated States of Micronesia.

I ame here last night and wsa greeted at the airport by Dave from Beyond the Reef dive shop (www.diveyap.com) and driver from my hotel. Although I was pretty dead and suffering from the earproblem I could not resist going snorkeling this morning at Goofnuw Channel. Within 3 minutes entering the water I saw a big manta down in the cleaning station some 10 meters below me. I thought it was pretty big one but I was wrong. A few moments later another even larger manta arrived to be cleaned. After that a third much smaller manta came over. There were some 5-8 divers taking photos right next to the cleaning station while I had to watch all the action from the surface.I was rather impressed albeit the visibility was not excellent as current was going out and carrying loads of sand.

Yello my friends - check the background! :)
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In the afternoon I have been just walking around, finding a laundromat, grocery store and this internet cafe. Colonia, the only real town (big village) of Yap, can be explored by foot. Apparently there are quite a few visitors here since Continental Micronesia reduced their weekly flights due to some kerosene unavailabilities.. anyway this has been a worthwhile effort to get here and I can recommend this place for any real manta maniacs. I will try to fix my camera dive casing to be able to post you some photos later this week. I am hoping to have my ear in better shape by Tuesday morning so that I could do at least one dive with mantas. On Tuesday evening I will go to a cultural tour to a local Yapese village... by the way, they have an interesting dress code here. Just google to find out what it is.. :-)

Little friends helping the big buddy..
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Tuesday 31 Oct 2006:

Ok, my dear friends. Today was another beautiful and exciting day. I was very happy to wake up this morning with realisation that my ear was no longer hurting like in the past days. Obviously the antibiotics had begun healing the mess and inflamation in ear channel was calming down.

So, Dave from Beyond the Reef came to pick me up at 8:30 am and by 9 am we were already on our way to Goofnuw Channel or better known as the Valley of Rays. Sea was rougher than 2 days ago but the boys managed to slalom the boat past rocks in lagoon side of the reef from Colonia to Goofnuw. Took about 40 minutes but was great fun. The fact that I was their only guest today gave me a great priviledge to choose the dive sites and times as well as our return route.

Flying with wingman is always more fun..
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Like 2 days before when snorkeling we jumped into the Channel and within 3 minutes a manta appeared! Just so cooool! :) We went next to a manta cleaning station and took a comfortable position on the bottom. After waiting 5 mins two huge mantas appeared hovering over the cleaning station. They became curious about my air bubbles, as well as those of Morgan the dive master, and slowly descended two arm's lengths away from me. They hovered a moment over me and then slowly continued sliding graciously through the water towards the inner part of the channel. About 10-15 meters away they turned around, circled back to the cleaning station and repeated the previous behaviour. It was just incredible! Visibility was getting progressively worse so we decided to ascend back to the boat.

Who wants to steal my money?
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Our second dive was a bit more towards to the inner side of the channel as current was out-going and we could then easily drift back to the cleaning station. The second dive was also not a disappointment. Again 3 mantas, two of them together and one alone. I was checking the belly side marks of mantas from both dives and in fact to my surprise the marks were different! This means that there were probably 8-10 mantas in the channel today. I shot a nice 2-minute long video of the mantas but unfortunately that won't be available in this blog due to upload file size limitations.

Village meeting venue and the chief!
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Altogether there are 40 manta rays known to be 'living' here in Yapese waters and each of those mantas have a name! :) I found those names at Manta Ray Bay Hotel's wall with particular descriptions of their belly-side 'identification marks'. So cool. (PS. Air temperature was today +33C and water was 'only' +29C.)

So dreams made real, again!!!! :-) Then in the afternoon I had signed to that Yapese Cultural Tour. I went with a group of 14 people to a local village where young people in traditional dresses performed bamboo stick dance, demonstrated how to make baskets etc from palm tree leaves, offerred us to try beetlenut with lime and pepper leaves (gives a mild high..) and a chance to visit their traditional meeting venues. It was a very nice trip and attached some pictures of it.

A version of the bamboo dance.. everyone likes the skirts? :)
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I thought about buying those skirts as gifts for my friends but then I thought global warming would need to hit harder northern hemisphere in order for you to be able to wear them.. ..but the idea is not bad! ;-)

So that's all about Yap. Tomorrow morning I will take a plane back to Palau from there to Manila on Friday evening. I still need to figure out what am I going to do and where am I going to sleep in Palau tomorrow and Thursday. This island life is a bit of enjoyment a day by day.. Cheers and have good time and enjoy life wherever you are reading these small thoughts of mine! :)

Yo!