6:05 am Palau | 2:05 pm LA
Day 3 in Palau

Woke up to see two red markings on my right hand, looks like someone drew them on with a reddish-orange pen, but there's no pen color around this place...I feel like I'm in the movie "Medicine Man" :) I'll take a picture of them when it gets a little lighter outside. Also have a bite on my back (that's almost gone now...wow!) and a welt on my left leg. Guess I'm lucky, from what Rachel told me yesterday, the insects seem to give their guests only a 1 day reprieve...LOL.

Speaking of Rachel, she made a kick-ass dinner last night and I had two helpings. With the big time difference I haven't been eating much since my body is used to sleeping during our "meal times" here. She heated up some of the homemade bread and had a balsamic vinegar dressing for it, but the main course was roasted veggies - potatoes, squash, taro root, tomatoes, onions, garlic and olive oil. Not sure what else was in or on top of it, but as I said...it was gooooo-od!

Shauna has been on a pineapple kick and Fuanes is looking all over town for pineapples for her. After dinner he called to say he had located some for her. We went over to his house and Shauna looked at the pineapples while Rachel and I waited in the car and talked to his wife, Laini (? will have to find out how to spell her name). Faunes had also made me a gift...I small hanging basket to put my pens in. I actually had a choice between 2 - one being round, the other rectangular with a lid on it. I'll take a picture of it later.

I can't believe I watched American Idol last night. Rachel and Shauna started watching it this season and started only to make fun of the beginning episodes, well, they got sucked in. Not sure how some of those 5 contestants are still in the running, or maybe they should have chosen other songs to sing for the "Rat Pack" songs.

I went to bed a little after 8pm and woke up a little after 2 am (almost 6 hours on the dot). I updated my Facebook picture with me stand-up paddling, got to check through most of my e-mails and uploaded the last 2 days of my journal to the OffExploring.com site (where you're at now). Took about 4 hours to do what would have taken me maybe 30 min. to an hour with the high speed connection. I had forgotten how slow dial-up is. Luckily I noticed some of the sites I use for e-mail offer a link for those with slower connections.

4:00 pm Palau | 11:59 pm LA

What a day we had! After making our lunches we drove out to Ngardmau Waterfalls then proceeded to hike to the waterfall. I forgot to see how long it took us to get there, but as I was just looking on the map, they said it takes an hour or two to hike there. With the torrential downpour we had the other
afternoon, the water was coming down fast and hard. We stopped and had lunch first in the picnic area and I took some shots from there. After lunch we made our way down to the bottom of the falls. I got brave and walked through the hip deep water and proceeded to stand under an area of the waterfall. It felt so good after the hike there...I was pretty hot and sweaty and went in with my shirt
and shorts on - I was totally dry by the time we got back to the car.

The hike to the falls starts at a little hut area and you proceed to walk down steps. After a while you hit some mining car tracks that the Germans used when they occupied the area. There's lots of mud you get to walk through - and a few times each one of us got semi-stuck in a good, deep area...about mid-calf - and over tree trunks and through streams. It was definitely a cool adventure.

From there we headed to Melekeok to see one of the last remaining Bai's in that area. That bai was used by the chief's when they got together to discuss things. It was another hike uphill through grass and over what's left of the rock road. I took some pictures of the inside, but none of the outside.

Shauna found a coconut for me and proceeded to hit it against a rock to try and crack through the outer shell to get through to the inner nut. She gave up on that one after not hearing any water inside. She found one that had what sounded like a lot of water in it. She and Rachel took turns hitting it against the rock and Rachel finally was able to break through the fibrous innards. I brought my coconut home and shortly after we arrived their neighbor/landlord, Makoto, brought over a container of young coconuts that just needed the tops lopped off. I drank a full coconut full of water and got to eat the soft meat out of another coconut he cut in half just for eating...he said it's best if you eat the coconut meat at the same time as drinking the coconut water. So now I have 5-7 oconuts in the refrigerator waiting to be opened whenever I want. I thanked him very much for my treasure. I teased Shauna that between all her pineapples and my coconuts, we could make Pina Colada's.

Off to take a shower and cool down/off.