Palau Trip Report

[boulderjohn]

I just returned from 3 weeks in Palau, and I thought I would write a report about some of the experiences in the hope that it will be helpful to people who are looking for ideas for their own trips. I will do it in a series of posts rather than one huge report.

This post will be about the diving, which I thought was fantastic. Diving the first 3 weeks of May put us just past high season, and it makes a difference. We paid much less for rooms and services, and we did not have huge crowds, but we also did not have the masses of sharks and mantas that are there in mid winter. We had some decent shark experiences, and we had a couple very fine manta experiences, but I understand those would have been relative disappointments in high season.

I got the sense that because so many people come to see sharks and mantas, they don't pay as much attention to the coral and other marine life. We dived two weeks with one operation (described later), and knowing that they took us to some of the lesser used dive sites the second week while their other boat took the new divers to the usual sites. After one wall dive, the DM said that a lot of customers don't like that wall because there are no big pelagics on it. IMO, if that wall were located in some of the world's top dive sites, it would be a star of the show. It had beautiful, healthy coral everywhere.

It really did seem to me that he dive operators all seem to go to the same sites over and over and over again. We did one of the WWII wrecks that is apparently almost never dived, the Chuyo Maru, and I thought it was comparable to some of the better wrecks in Truk Lagoon.

After two weeks dong the main Palau sites, we went to Peleliu and dived there for a few days It, too, has some very good sites, and the land tour is well worth the time, but I thought that overall the Palau sites were better. The one exception is Orange Beach, one of the best coral gardens you will see anywhere.

 

[boulderjohn]

I did the trip with my wife and another couple with whom we have done several dive trips. They did most of the initial planning, and they pretty much chose the dive operator--Palau Dive Adventures. PDA has two good, comfortable, steady, fast boats with knowledgeable drivers to get you where you need to go. For the most part they did split us up based in part on experience and in part for other reasons. (Let's just say that a couple divers were much better off with their own private guide--they tended to want to go their own way, which can be a problem with they are part of a group on a high current dive.) We did have one day when we ended up with 11 divers and 3 guides, with all of us in one group for some reason that escaped me.

I don't want to make too big a deal about splitting up by ability and experience. Everyone I saw there was a pretty good diver. I offered the opinion that Palau probably draws a more experienced crowd than sites that are more easily accessed, and they agreed.

What I really appreciated about PDA, though, was not just the diving. They took care of all our trip details. They counseled us on our planning from the start. They reserved the 3 different places we stayed for us (although we made the final decisions on which ones we chose). They picked us up at the airport, took us to our first resort, transferred us to the second, took us diving at Peleliu on our last day with them so they could drop us (and our luggage) on the island, and they took us to the airport when we left (at 2:30 AM).

My wife only snorkels, and she mostly did that on the same boats with us. They required that she have a snorkeling guide at a fairly hefty price. She had several such guides, and they were of uneven quality as far that goes. She liked one a whole lot, and another she though was worthless--he didn't seem to know the same of a single fish.

We all got generous Bento boxes for lunch each day.

If I went back, I would not hesitate to use them again.

 

[boulderjohn]

This post will be about the 3 places we stayed.

The Palau Pacific Resort was the priciest, and it was located well outside of town. It is pretty new. It is setup with a series of small buildings, each with a few rooms. They have some newer really pricey options that are beyond my means.) They are all by themselves, and their waterfront is a very nice shallow coral area with lots of fish, making it an ideal snorkeling area for people with mixed groups. They have their own water supply, and you can drink the tap water. (We were told they are then only resort where that is true.) The rooms were very nice, and their Internet quality (WiFi) was excellent. They had a very nice breakfast buffet, but their dinner fare was mediocre in comparison to the restaurant options in town. It took us too many days to discover that!

We next stayed at the Palau Royal Resort, which is more of a typical high rise structure located in a somewhat industrial area with several other resorts next door. Everyone shares the same docks there. During our planning, we talked with a knowledgeable dive travel agent, and she told us that the place has a well-known problem. They have non-smoking rooms, but a certain portion of their most frequent guests pay no attention to those rules, and the resort does not enforce them well. Sure enough, when we arrived, our non-smoking room reeked of smoke, and we had to ask for a deep cleaning (which worked well). The main problem is their Internet--the worst I have experience in any public accommodation in many, many years. They had free WiFi in the restaurant, but it was spotty, and you had to keep logging in over and over again. It frequently did not work. You could pay for WiFi throughout the resort, but others who did it said it was so bad it was a waste of money. Their breakfast buffet was OK, but not as good as Palau Pacific. We ate one dinner there and experienced the worse service any of the four of us had ever seen in our lives.

On Peleliu, we stayed in far more rustic accommodations--the Dolphin Bay Resort. It has 7 cabins total, with no television and only a small room air conditioner. We were the only ones there, both for lodging and diving. The owner of the resort, Godwin, is also the boat captain and the land tour operator. When you live on an island (and a state) that has a total population of 400, you wear many hats. Godwin's hat covers his rasta hair style--he very much favors Bob Marley, and he sounds Jamaican when he talks, although he is a Peleliu native. The staff was very friendly, and as the only customers, we got to identify the meal times. They asked us if we had any dietary restrictions, and that was our only opportunity to influence the menu. After that, we just showed up and enjoyed whatever Joy made for us.

 

[Kevrumbo]

My first trip to Palau was twenty years ago, and I went nearly every year up to 2015 -unfortunately the infrastructure stress due to the increased hotel construction, tourism traffic and general population was getting to the point where Koror's sewage treatment plant was overwhelmed at times and directly discharging into the water. When you start seeing trash flotsam at the water's edge in Malakal Harbor beyond the hotels, then you know this once former marine paradise is being irrevocably lost to overdevelopment. . . (There was even a proposal for putting in a large resort complex in part over the Peleliu WWII Battlefield landing beaches, but that would be sacrilegious to US Marine Corps hallowed ground and no way would be allowed under the current Compact of Free Association with the US).

It's nice to read that the pelagic action is still there to be seen -but you should have witnessed it twenty years ago (and of course the long time veteran dive guides at the time said you should've experienced it all twenty years earlier in the 80's). The diver environmental pressure has increased over the years that lip & wall at the hook-in point at famous iconic Blue Corner is now totally denuded of the abundant colorful coral, sea fans and other sessile invertebrate life that I so vividly remember.

 

[drrich2]

Nice, practical review! Loved this bit (since I like easy):

What I really appreciated about PDA, though, was not just the diving. They took care of all our trip details.

I got the sense that because so many people come to see sharks and mantas, they don't pay as much attention to the coral and other marine life. We dived two weeks with one operation (described later), and knowing that they took us to some of the lesser used dive sites the second week while their other boat took the new divers to the usual sites. After one wall dive, the DM said that a lot of customers don't like that wall because there are no big pelagics on it.

Good to know; sounds like the 'typical' Palau dive tourist might have a different dive experience. I hope to make one lifetime 'scuba pilgrimage' to the other side of the world someday; currently hoping to make it Komodo, but keeping an open mind... A few questions:

1.) How long to travel there, & how long back? What was the longest continuous flight? Fear of going nuts confined in a plane for an extended time is one of my biggest issues (not claustrophobia; antsy boredom).

2.) A quick Wikipedia article check shows "The official languages of Palau are Palauan and English, except for two states (Sonsorol and Hatohobei) where the local language, Sonsorolese and Tobian, respectively, along with Palauan, is official." Were you guys comfortable going out & about if only speaking English?

3.) When you ventured out, did the areas you stayed 'feel safe?' Assuming a modicum of common sense required anywhere, and most any place can have a bad neighborhood, just wondering how it compares to, oh, Cozumel, Bonaire, Jamica or Belize City in terms of maybe your wife heading out to shop (daylight, not a bar) alone, etc...

Richard.

 

[boulderjohn]

1.) How long to travel there, & how long back? What was the longest continuous flight? Fear of going nuts confined in a plane for an extended time is one of my biggest issues (not claustrophobia; antsy boredom).

2.) A quick Wikipedia article check shows "The official languages of Palau are Palauan and English, except for two states (Sonsorol and Hatohobei) where the local language, Sonsorolese and Tobian, respectively, along with Palauan, is official." Were you guys comfortable going out & about if only speaking English?

3.) When you ventured out, did the areas you stayed 'feel safe?' Assuming a modicum of common sense required anywhere, and most any place can have a bad neighborhood, just wondering how it compares to, oh, Cozumel, Bonaire, Jamica or Belize City in terms of maybe your wife heading out to shop (daylight, not a bar) alone, etc...

1.) How long to travel there, & how long back? What was the longest continuous flight? Fear of going nuts confined in a plane for an extended time is one of my biggest issues (not claustrophobia; antsy boredom).
This is from memory: Leaving Boulder, CO, we flew first to San Francisco (2 hours), then to Honolulu (4+ hours), then to Guam (8 hours), then to Palau (2 hours). Returning, we flew to Guam (2 hours), Honolulu (8 hours), and directly to Colorado (7 hours). The first route was based on meeting the other couple in Honolulu. The return trip was the ordeal, because it started with leaving the resort at midnight to head for the airport after having to check out of it officially at noon. I could not sleep on the flights, and we barely had time to to get to the gates at each stop, so no rest there. When I typed the above report, I had not slept for over 50 hours, and I was still too amped to sleep. I watched a couple of movies in flight, which helped. (United's new feature that allows you to stream movies on your own device during flight for free is nice.)

2.) A quick Wikipedia article check shows "The official languages of Palau are Palauan and English, except for two states (Sonsorol and Hatohobei) where the local language, Sonsorolese and Tobian, respectively, along with Palauan, is official." Were you guys comfortable going out & about if only speaking English?
Palau was very much under American control for decades after WWII. Everyone speaks English. The tourism is mostly Asian, so you will see a lot of that in restaurant menus, etc., but pretty much everything else is American English. The American dollar is the currency.

3.) When you ventured out, did the areas you stayed 'feel safe?' Assuming a modicum of common sense required anywhere, and most any place can have a bad neighborhood, just wondering how it compares to, oh, Cozumel, Bonaire, Jamica or Belize City in terms of maybe your wife heading out to shop (daylight, not a bar) alone, etc...
I felt perfectly safe going anywhere I wanted for any reason. There are taxis at good prices, but many of the potential destinations (like restaurants) will send a free shuttle to pick you up and take you back.

 

[Damselfish]

I've come to sort of enjoy long flights - at least if they're in Business or a premium economy sort of thing where you're not too cramped, which is my main issue. I'm the opposite. I don't do well cooped up, but not being able to do anything but read/sleep/movie etc. is nice because at home I rarely seem to do that. I listen to lots of audiobooks and podcasts.

Yes, everyone you are likely to talk to in Palau speaks English. And I felt safe everywhere, for the few times I was out and around. Granted we've spent most of our shore time there vegging at PPR. (Which BTW has good snorkeling and even a passable shore dive. Lots of giant clams.)


Interesting comments about lesser dove sites of Palau. After 2 (primarily liveaboard) trips I've had enough of Palau, or at least of the commonly dove stuff there - it's so focused on pelagics and the drifts in the channels, when you can't really get a good look at much of what's there. Yap sort of has the same issue to me - the Mantas are so heavily promoted and focused on, while there's other (IMO more interesting) diving there, it might be hard to get someone to take you to it. At this point I've seen the regular stuff and probably wouldn't return to either unless I had a specific plan/assurance of seeing the rest of the place. But with so many places to go that are better for that, doing it is nowhere on my list at this point. I'd sooner try to check out some of the lesser visited islands in Micronesia, just because.

 

[drbill]

Glad you enjoyed diving with Palau Dive Adventures. I dove with them several years ago and planned on returning every year until cancer struck. Great operation with fun staff and valet service.

 

[Shasta_man]

Thanks for the trip report. We did Palau on a liveaboard quite a number of years ago, staying at the PPR before and after. It was pretty empty there while we were there and we didn't venture around the island as the flights were geared to the boat and exiting.

Being a WWII history buff, it was something to get to stand on the beaches and the battlefields on Peleliu. The boat took us over to the island for the tour which was well worth it. The blockhouse with multiple hits in the reinforced concrete was something to see as well as all the Japanese military memorabilia which is unusual to see in the West.

Your comment about tiny air conditioner at the hotel there is something because I remember how hot it was there during the tour.

We haven't considered returning because the airfare from the USA became very high within a few years of our trip and has stayed that way.

 

[boulderjohn]

Glad you enjoyed diving with Palau Dive Adventures. I dove with them several years ago and planned on returning every year until cancer struck. Great operation with fun staff and valet service.

Your recommendation to my friends was the reason we went with them.