Rota Hotel

... themselves before the Marine Corps made it to Guam to attempt to take the island back. We succeeded.. obviously and in less than a month of landing Guam was ours again! The pillboxes were a little difficult to get into but I swam out around climbed a little and squeezed myself in for some pics. I also got a shot from a hill of Asan Beach which is Guam's version of Normandy where the Marines took the first beach of Guam from the Japanese. 
 

... camoflauged  themselves in the coral. Near the end of the dive and unfortunatly my camera was dead for this one.. I saw a huge white fish maybe 50 feet to the right of me just flying through the water. There were two older gentlemen (probably in their 70s) right next to it and definitly got a better view. I tapped my dive partner, Chris, and he immediately started flying towards it. Apparently everyone realized before I did that this 10 foot fish was one of Guam's rare ...

... let the pictures speak for the rest. Next, we drove up to the Taga Stone Quarry. This is one of the only places known to have been a quarry for the latte stones the ancient Chamorros used to support their houses. A number of the stones are in a state of partial excavation. It's really pretty incredible looking at how they carved the stones out of the top of the mountain, especially when you consider their size and the ...

... particularly interesting for this topic. The brown tree snake has thoroughly killed off the birds in Guam and partially in Rota, but has been largely been kept out of Saipan through diligent inspections and community awareness. This provides three different points in the spectrum of the effects of birds on seed dispersal in otherwise similar ecosystems. Julie and Diana, along with their mother Lynn who is visiting for a couple of months, drove us up to the ...

... asked a Chamorro guy who apparently checked with some relatives and got back to us on the sly. That was our first indication that something was amiss. We went to the designated time and place. They were a bit apprehensive. I'm guessing that the only reason we got them was because Suka was asking. Several comments they made indicated a significant distrust of white folk. They were careful to point out that the crabs we got were male, which made sense when we later found out the ...

For the second dive, we dove the Senhanom Cave on the southwest tip of Wedding Cake Point. The boat took us in pretty close to the cliff face. We rolled in and went down to the entrance at about 30-40'. It was a pretty open cave. The entrance was almost wide enough for two ...

The next morning we had breakfast at a place called Nanee's on the way to the dive shop. We had to be at the dive shop by 8:30. We had some Filipino breakfast combinations. We were learning more and more how friendly everyone is in Rota. Every customer who came in greeted us, and some asked us where we were from and how was our stay. The first dive was the Shoun Maru, a Japanese freighter that was waiting to be loaded with phosphate ...

We checked into the hotel (map pin). It's a nice place. We got a pretty good deal. They renovated it just a few years ago and built an annex next door. The main building I think is the tallest building in Rota at four stories. We stayed in the annex. The room was clean. Everything worked. The ocean view was nice. It was a little blocked by trees, but that also guaranteed your privacy, since you were on an active boating bay ...

... Jerry's Reef. It's a nice large mound of coral in an otherwise pretty sandy bay. It was chosen to be a fairly easy dive so that Hayashi-san could get a fix on Suka's skill level given the small number of dives she has done. She had a bit of a rough time adjusting. It was deeper than our dives in Saipan. I deliberately left her completely on her own, although I was close enough in case there was an emergency, so that he could have an accurate ...

We finished packing in the morning for our trip to Rota. It was interesting when we arrived at the airport. There were a couple of dozen Muslim men streaming out of taxis in white robes and caps. Turns out it was a big send off for four of the guys. I chatted with them in Rota while we were waiting for our luggage. They were ...