Palau Landscapes

 So I'm doing a photo project on a small island in Palau.  The island is called Angaur and it's where I lived during my Peace Corps tour eight years ago.  Here are some of the landscape photos I've taken during my first month here.  I will begin the actual project, which is portraits of the people, this week.

Sailfish From Shore

One of the two important components to me spending the winter on a small island in Palau is fishing.  (The other is the photography project.)  During my time in Japan I accumulated some good gear for the type of fishing I can do in the tropics (Giant Trevally).  The Japanese lead the market in rods, reels, lures, and line.  They are very passionate about chasing GTs all over the world, so they make the best gear.  I was able to get decent pricing on this stuff ($400 for a rod instead of $800+ abroad, $30-70 for the lures instead of $100+) so I collected it over the last few years in anticipation of coming back to this island.

Now I'm here and I'm stymied by the weather.  For weeks the winds and swells have been coming out of the north so strong as to prevent me from fishing all the best points on the north and east sides of the island.  This limits the spots I can fish to only about one or two points on the west coast.  One of those points is located on top of some cliffs that are 20 feet above the ocean.  I have to walk through the forest then walk along the razor-sharp limestone formations to reach this point.  The key to this point being good is that the underwater 'wall' dips in very close to shore so that if I hook a Giant Trevally here, I'll have a chance of landing him.  Usually GTs will dive deep and swim close to the wall.  If the angle is wrong for me my line will just sheer off on the top of the wall.  But this point offers me a decent chance of surviving a diving GT without shredding my line.

I use big popper lures that are handmade out of wood and have a big cup on the front.  I jerk the lure through water, creating a big splash on the surface.  This doesn't really emulate anything in nature, but for some reason it drives GTs crazy and they will attack it hard (sometimes).  Other fish will hit, too, but the primary quarry are GTs.

So I was fishing this point last week during the last hour of daylight.  I didn't have a flashlight so I wanted to get out in time to make the trek back along the rocks and through the forest, so I counted down my last five casts.  On the fourth I had a hit.  I reeled the lure in and cast it back out in the same spot and got more hits.  The behavior of the fish told me it was a curious GT - he was swirling just under the lure, hitting it out of the water with his nose, etc.  So I kept casting to him until finally, on the fifth cast of him playing around, he finally hit.  But he didn't get hooked very well and was only on for a couple seconds.  I kept casting but he was done; he'd learned his lesson.  I began counting down my last five casts again and again on the fourth cast I got a hit.  But this time it was solid and the fish was hooked.

He ran for a few seconds then jumped.  I was astonished to see a sailfish on the other end.  Sailfish are billfish (like marlin) and generally live miles offshore out in the blue water.  Though technically the spot where I was fishing was blue water (it was a sheer cliff that went 400+ feet straight down).  Hooking a sailfish from shore is a VERY rare occurrence because it's so uncommon to be able to fish blue water from shore.  There's a famous point on the east coast of Australia where it's possible, but there are very few other points in the world where this can be accomplished.  This very well could be the only sailfish caught from shore in the world this year (or this decade?).

I knew my gear was strong enough to handle the fish (80lb. line, 200lb. leader), but now I was presented with two problems: (1) sharks and (2) landing the fish from my 20 foot cliff.  The sharks did turn out to be a problem and that is nearly 100% predictable.  After 5 minutes of the fish jumping and fighting there was a big commotion and lots of fins on the surface, then the fish stopped fighting.  I reeled him over the reef and he came right in under my cliff, minus his tail.  There was no more fight in him as he couldn't swim, but now I had to get him out of the water before the sharks came back for more.  I crawled down to the lowest spot I could reach, which was still six feet above the water, but lifting a 40 pound fish out of the water by a piece of monofilament leader is impossible, at least using my hands.  So I went back up and started leading the fish south, hoping I would come to a break where I could get down to the water.  I did find a spot that I had to jump down (banging myself up pretty badly) and pull him out.  Then I had to crawl back up the rocks with a 40 pound fish, then drag him back across those rocks for ~200 yards, then a couple hundred more yards through the forest, all in the dark.

I left the fish next to the road and rode the bike back to my host family's house, where I told them that we needed a truck.  They called some friends who gave us a ride, then we hauled the fish and weighed him - 40 pounds!  So he was probably 50-55 pounds before the shark attack.  Needless to say, my family was pretty excited about the fish I was providing.

[my hands after handling the bill and then using the mouth/gills to drag the fish a half-mile]

The next night I went back to the same spot and hooked another, smaller fish.  I only had him on for 6-7 seconds before the sharks attacked and ate through my line. I lost both the fish and my lure.  The next night I hooked a fish and had immediate shark problems again so I've decided to give this spot a rest as it seems I've taught the sharks that big splashes on the surface will lead to a troubled fish.

I was able to get out to a good northern point briefly last weekend and I had a hit from something big and black (probably a GT), but did catch a small bigeye trevally.  I've been stuck in Koror for five days, but I'll be heading back tomorrow.  Hoping to have some good new fishing stories soon!

Return to Angaur, Palau

My farewell from Japan didn't go very well in my eyes and I didn't want to do a bunch of sad blogging, so I opted just not to post.  I've been away hunting all fall and I mostly think my blog readers aren't interested in my killing stories, so I again held back.  But now I'm abroad again and freshly excited about my daily life so I'm going to do my best to share what I wish I would've been more easily able to during my Peace Corps experience 8-10 years ago.

My winter Plan A fell through so now I'm executing Plan B, which has me residing in Palau until late February.  When I left Japan in August I hedged my winter plans by buying a roundtrip ticket for nearly the same price as a one-way.  I took that flight back to Japan on December 5th, then bought a one-way ticket to Okinawa to kill a week with friends before flying on to Palau.  I've since taken a boat down to Angaur, which is the island where I lived during the second half of my Peace Corps tour.  There's less than 150 residents on Angaur and about four times as many [invasive] monkeys.  The school still has 27 students, just as it did when I was here.  There are only 5 residents over 70-years-old, partially because anybody 75+ moves to Koror to be closer to medical care, but also because Palauans just don't live to be very old.  A case in point is the reason I came yesterday, which was for the funeral of a 45-year-old teacher who died of a heart attack.

There's a Peace Corps Volunteer, JICA (Japanese version of PC) volunteer, and an Australian couple building a restaurant for surfers.  I've met the Aussies, who are really interesting people (they worked on the set of Survivor for ten years), but not the volunteers yet.  I've mostly been wandering the streets recognizing people and trying to remember their names while they recount their memories of me (fishing, picking papayas, making pizza, collecting snakes).  Also, Super Typhoon Bopha hit the island two weeks ago and caused quite a bit of damage.  Electricity and water were out for over a week.  Two excavators, two loaders, and a few dump trucks came in on a barge today to begin clearing the perimeter road, which is almost impenetrable even on foot.

The internet is terrible so I'm not sure how this blogging thing will work, especially if I try to upload pictures.  But in case this works, here are a few pictures of the last project I did while on Angaur in 2004. I had received a donation of a bunch of books and sports equipment from my hometown Kiwanis Club so I used those as incentive prizes for an aluminum can recycling project, which collected something like 60,000+ cans.  We then turned those in to Koror and received $160 back.  I had a bunch of paint donated then used some of the can money to buy the colors we still needed.  I was in charge of summer school at the time so I commissioned the kids to come to the port for a few days and paint this mural, which was a lot of fun.  Glad it's still holding up.  ('Buik Belau' is my Palauan name from Angaur.  It means "Boy of Palau".)

What's Next

One of the wiser things I've done in my life was time my five years in Japan with my hunting draws in the U.S.  When I came to Japan I had 3-8 bonus/preference points in most states for most species that had application processes to hunt.  Those points give me extra chances in the 'hat' every year.  I apply for hunts in specific units with specific dates and the more advantageous the dates and bigger the animals, the harder it is to draw the unit.  But after five additional years of application, I now have 8-13 points for most species in most states.  This process costs me somewhere around $1200/year.  That's the nonrefundable part.  But I usually outlay about $14,000, which the states hold onto for two months until they hold their drawings.  Then when I am unsuccessful I get a refund.  But having some liquidity is necessary every spring.

Well this year the stars aligned for me.  I did a lot of stats research and tried to put my name in the most advantageous hats so I could get some tags (as opposed to the last five years when I would only put my name in the best hats because drawing multiple tags would spell trouble for my job).  The drawings kicked off in March and I was surprised not to get as single tag (of seven applications) in New Mexico.  Next up was Idaho where I had applied for the mountain goat unit with the best odds in the state (last year was 1:4).  I drew it.  I think the odds were 1:6.  That tag is once-in-a-lifetime and in an incredibly remote area.  Remember where I killed my Idaho elk last year?  Same area.  Problem is that goats inhabit the ugliest parts of the roughest mountains.  And my unit is huge.  I want to find the biggest billy in the unit, but that could take me weeks of hiking to visit all the goat habitat and check out all the goats.  I could shortcut some of the time needed by flying the unit, which I may do, but that will cost a minimum of $600, so there's that.  I won't get a record-book goat out of this unit (feed isn't good enough), but I hope to get a really nice hairy coat to tan and put on my bed. For that I will have to kill my goat later in the season.  My official season goes from August 30-November 8th, but I will shoot (ha!) for sometime in early October to get an early stage winter coat.  November would obviously be better, but it's very likely the mountains will be covered in snow by then and unless I have my goat patterned and pinpointed, I don't want to risk having to find a white goat against a snowy backdrop.

Next was Nevada.  Nevada has big animals.  It's one of the most popular states to apply for because they manage their game populations very well.  Unfortunately it's a $242 nonrefundable fee to enter the draws every year.  But this year, for the first time, I drew.  An August antelope tag with decent potential to kill a record book animal and a late October mule deer tag, which is a backpacking hunt.

Last was Washington.  I was holding out hope of getting an elk tag, but there were about 1100 people applying for the 45 tags in that unit (though with my 8 bonus points I had 64 entries in the hat) so the odds were still way against me.  Well, I not only drew that elk tag, but I got a huge surprise by drawing the sheep tag I'd put in for against 1:3700 odds.  The world record California Bighorn was killed out of this unit two years ago and there's rumored to be another big one in the unit this year that could challenge that record.  This is a huge deal.  That hunt begins September 15th and lasts three weeks, though hopefully we'll have the ram pinpointed by opening day and it won't take too long to get him down.

Here's the tentative schedule:

August 4: arrive back in the U.S.
August 6-8: go sheep scouting
August 11-13: bring the Zamami-son homestay students - who are staying in WA this summer - back to my house for the weekend
August 15: go to NV early to scout then hunt antlope
Antelope Hunt Ends; go to WA immediately to begin sheep scouting
Sept. 15: sheep season opens
Sheep Hunt Ends: go to ID for mountain goat scouting and elk hunting
October 20th: go back to WA for the elk hunt
October 27th: WA elk hunt opens
Elk Hunt Ends: go back to ID for deer hunt
November 1-18: late season ID deer

Nevada deer has been removed from the list because it overlaps with the WA elk hunt so I will return the tag to get my points back.  I will hope to draw the NV deer tag next year when I probably won't have five other awesome tags to my name.

There's some pretty interesting ideas for December, too, but I will hold off on announcing those until they solidify further.

Sabani 2012

I leave Japan a month from today and as you've noticed from my lack of blog posts, I'm busy.  Every night is filled with things that need to be done before I leave (complicated a lot by the elaborate presents I am giving to ~150 people) and the blog has fallen by the wayside.  Certainly not for lack of content, just too much on my plate.  Okay, so Sabani..

[Team Shimawarabi (my team) before the start]

[Eventual second-place, Team Kaisou.  I'd marry any of these girls if they'd have me.]

Just like last year, I hopped a boat ride before the start over to a small island that has a lighthouse.  This island serves as a 'corner' after the first straightaway, so the teams cut very close to it.  My goal was to get a picture of the string of boats (Zamami-maru leading) with the sun out and the coral and beautiful blue and turquoise waters showing.  Last year I went up to the lighthouse but I was too high so I didn't get the shot I was after.  But this year I went over a full hour beforehand and climbed up some cliffs and through some brush to get to the perfect viewpoint.  Then I waited 45 minutes for the race to start, anxiously watching the coming clouds.

[I had to jump out of the boat and swim through that water to reach shore, then climb those cliffs to get here]

[My view of the start.  Waiting..  waiting...]

[and here's the shot]

[a couple minutes later my team (above) passes through the narrows, about 8th back]

[the school team, who eventually finished in twelfth, is second-back in this shot]

After getting the shots I wanted I carefully but quickly descended the cliffs and then went over to the edge of the coral and jumped in, then swam out into the current for the support boat to pick me up.  I photographed for the next hour.

[Team Uminaivy, Zamami's women's team (finished eighth)]

[after I've been switched in, I'm second back]

[I'm the guy who looks like he's ready to cross the Sahara]

[finished in sixth place overall, 31 seconds out of the top three for our class]

[31 seconds from winning one of these]

[winner Zamami-maru and those wonderful Kaisou ladies, who finished just five minutes back and never traded out any of their members during the 3:40 race.  Even Zamami-maru concurred that they are the better team]

[the championship trophy]

Zamami People Project - Opening

It began in April, 2011 as an idea to celebrate my time on Zamami and say thank you to the community.  Fourteen months, 60 [final] photos, and about 200 people photographed later, I had held the opening party to my exhibition last night at the port.  The timing couldn't have been better as there are usually no tourists on Sunday evening, but even less so with the approaching typhoon.

Despite a weekend totally full of printing, mounting, hanging, and baking, I was able to pull it all off with no minutes to spare.  In fact, the air conditioning at the port started warping the paper and pulling apart the two-sided tape that I'd used to secure the photos to the mats, so throughout the show I was running around with stronger two-sided tape fixing up the photos to salvage all the work I'd put into making them look perfect.

[most of the kids and teachers from school came, which was really nice]

[the mayor giving an opening speech]

[The lowlight of the evening was definitely me struggling through my Japanese speech.  It was long and I didn't have time to practice and I sounded like a first-grader.  Considering the importance with which I valued the speech's content, I wish now I'd had it translated a month ago and I'd spent a lot more time rehearsing.]

[I held a raffle for all the attendees and I gave away five prints.  This junior high third-grader won first  choice.  He was featured in the J.H. 3rd grade photo.]

[The policeman's 3-year-old son won 2nd place.  He was featured in the policeman's family photo.]

[This woman helped me immensely in photographing all of the old people, so I was glad to see her win.  She was also featured in a 'Generations' photo of her family.]

[Genta - wasn't in a photo but he's a very nice kid.]

[This guy snubbed the generational photo of his family, leaving only his parents and daughter, so I think he felt bad about winning.  His daughter yelled out "cheater!" to him, which was amusing. He was one of just two people who avoided or declined to be photographed for the project.]

[The marlin captain surprised me by ordering this huge bouquet of flowers from Naha for the opening ceremony.  What a generous present!]

There were 73 names in the raffle bucket, plus at least 10 who didn't enter or came late, so my conservative guess is 85-90 attendees, or 15% of the 582 people who live on Zamami.  There were a few important friends who didn't make it, which saddened me a bit, but I'm getting over it.  Their absence was offset by the people who brought beer, sake, wine, or tea to donate and the mothers who donated their evenings to helping set up, take down, and keeping the general logistics under control.

Ultimately I'm happy with how the show turned out.  Neither my computer nor printer broke and my camera and lights worked almost flawlessly.  And while I didn't get much sleep this weekend, the end result was exactly as I'd envisioned.  I just hope the community 'gets' the purpose of the show, which is to say thank you for my time here.

The photos will be up for five weeks before I will take them down and give them to the subjects.

The Oldest Woman

There's actually a woman who is older, but she is bedridden.  This 97-year-old walked a couple of blocks to come for this photo, so she deserves the extra-large-sized print she'll get in the show.