jake11
Contributor
- Messages
- 1,039
- Reaction score
- 145
- # of dives
- 1000 - 2499
We just returned from a great trip to Palau! We ended up going land based and used Sam's Tours as the dive operation. We stayed the first week at Palau Pacific Resort. All of us LOVED this resort! It was EXCELLENT from A to Z. The grounds are beautiful, the beach is fantastic and the people were marvelous! They have a great hot tub, pool and awesome covered loungers on the beach. The snorkeling is fantastic as well. We saw a juv. bat fish, sweet lips, white tip shark, and tons of giant clams in every color. It is well worth it to snorkel there. A good tip is to eat at the pool bar every night instead of the restaurant. The food was fabulous and a lot cheaper than the restaurant. Try the Asian chicken salad, the pizzas or anything on the menu. It was all good! We spent the second week at Sea Passions. On the positive side, it was nice to be so close to Sams and to have breakfast included but it was definitely a huge step down from PPR. They were very nice but there is just no comparison to PPR. We checked out Palau Royal Resort while we were there and decided that is the place to stay next time. We saw the deluxe rooms and they are very nice. This is a great alternative to PPR and a lot cheaper. We ate at the Drop Off almost every night while staying at Sea Passions. The food was all good and we were in agreemnet that they had the best burgers that we have ever tasted. HUGE! As for the diving.... some of our favorite dives were Siaez corner where we saw about 85-100 grey sharks on the second day. Great fun hanging there and watching them swirl around us! We also loved Ulong Channel when it is running! The best dive there had a lot of sharks at the mouth of the channel and then a screaming ride to the end. There is some Massive lettuce leaf coral that is worth the ride to see with thousands of fish living in it! Of course we loved Blue Corner. We did this dive around 3x and it was fun every time. We had RIPPING current on 2 of the dives and they were the most fun. On the last dive there we could have reached out and touched a lot of the sharks because they were that close. There was also a huge school of barracuda hanging out in front of us and the resident Napolean wrasse swimming by! New drop off was a good dive as well. On the last day we went to Peleliu and had an amazing dive on Peleliu Cut. There were a lot of sharks , barracudas and a GIANT school of bumpheads that just kept on coming! We did the land tour at the end of the day and enjoyed that too. It is very sad. The surface intervals are at various beautiful beaches, one more gorgeous than the last! Very nice. When we first got to Sams it kind of seemed hectic and chaotic . If you are used to anyone taking care of your gear and changing out your tanks in between dives then don't go there. You have to haul your gear down to the boat each day and then haul it back after you are finished. We got used to this after a couple of days. They take care of you and listen to your suggestions and requests. We asked for the same dive guide for the whole time and got him. His name was Marc C. and he is a very smart guy! He knows a lot about marine life and tides etc. We appreciated his attention to safety and his keen eye. We also liked Shirley, Ali, Steve and Jodi. Steve and Jodi were interns for getting their dive master certs. They were wonderful. I also suggest you jump in after your boat dives and dive Sam's wall. We saw a ton of stuff! Lots of mandarin fish, juv. spotted sweet lips, sea snake, nudis, crabs, eels, catfish, giant clams, pajama cardinal fish, etc etc. The last day Sam's arranged a car for us and we went around the whole Island. We went to the waterfall on our own and I would suggest you do that because they were charging $150pp to take the tour there and we rented the car for $50 for 4 of us(total). We went to Palau because of the smoking deal on airfare ($747 Roundtrip) on Korean airlines. Korean Airlines was awesome. Great service and a fairly easy trip. I also have to mention that we saw the elusive ornate eagle ray. Our dive guide had never seen one before so we felt very fortunate. We saw it at the end of a German Channel dive on our safety stop at 15' , 57 minutes into the dive! Very cool! Have a great time if you go !
![ornate_eagle_ray[1].jpg](https://scubaboard.com/community/data/attachments/69/69417-eb40d3f99d2dc1f7c1d70e2a8011d5f6.jpg "ornate_eagle_ray[1].jpg")
