Palau

I feel like I should put up some pictures of Palau because it was just so amazingly beautiful. We did get to go on a boat trip the day that the government offices were closed, and it was incredible. I'm no stranger to tropical seas, but the rock islands are beautiful, the snorkelling was awesome, and the jelly fish lake was mind blowing!!!



This is a rock island - there are hundreds of these little islands, where the sea has eroded the base and they look like they're floating. We stopped at a couple of spots to snorkel and I have seldom seen such a variety and number of fish.

This is where we stopped for lunch. There aren't many beaches among the islands so we shared it with a lot of other tour boats - but it didn't feel crowded. I just think good luck to Palau if they can get the tourist dollar ... I see so many places that would be so attractive to tourists if only there was decent access and infrastructure - it's nice to see a place milking it! And protecting their environment at the same time - they know that it's the key attraction and the Palauans seem to be very careful about maintaining what they have.

Picture: David Kirkland/HotSpot

We went to jellyfish lake which is absolutely incredible. A freshwater lake in the middle of a large rock island, that has about 20 million jellyfish (allegedly) which have evolved not to sting, as they have no predators. It's a beautiful setting and, swear to god, it's just like this photo. I didn't take any photos because I only had my iphone, but we were snorkelling away through an absolute soup of jellies. And they are adorable! Big ones sort of sedately go past, and the little ones pump / squish themselves past at twice the rate. You're not meant to touch them but I figured a few gentle pats on the squishy bits wouldn't hurt. It's a national park and the Palaun government charges $100 US per person for a permit to visit ... but it was worth it.



And then we went to one place between two rock islands which has a sea floor of white mud (with alleged beauty benefits, sure ....) So we caked ourselves in mud then jumped overboard and washed it all off. It was magic. The wind got up at the end of the day so we had a rough ride back to Koror where we stayed, but it was a great day. And, thanks to the miracle of USA over the counter medication, (Australia is very narrow minded about what its citizens can buy) I found a motion sickness pill that actually stopped me being sea sick! I bought a big big pack.