Walking to Malem

Continuing on South, the road winds around the natural Lelu harbour, through banana farms and barely restrained jungle into the marvellously underwhelming capital city of Tofol.

I have probably missed some vital information as to why such a small location is, in fact, the capital, but  it does house a post office, the governor's house and the visitor's bureau.

It also has a small path leading up the hill to a secluded watermelon farm that offers a wonderful view down onto Lelu harbour area and Kosrae's brand new solar power farm.

There is also a small grove of the Australian gum eucalyptus with rainbow-coloured bark, clashing rather violently with the otherwise bushy and brilliant green jungle.

Further along the coast, I finally came to the famous abandoned tank. Or at least, after wandering up and down the coast a little more to verify that there were no other obvious tanks, I had to admit that this was indeed the famous tank.
After verification in the guide book, it seems it is in fact an abandoned Japanese micro-tank. But I'm not sure whether that isn't more of a statement than an actual model.

Further mico-construction vehicles can be found along other areas of the coast:

A mico-bulldozer on the shore of Lelu Island

A micro … something ... for making lots of holes? on the far eastern side of Tafunsak.

To be fair, most of the houses on Kosrae also look like they were abandoned after WWII, but as I shot photos of this place, in the hopes it might be the old abandoned high school building, a lady wandered out with a cup of coffee and a plastic chair to enjoy the morning breeze.

Even buildings on which the roof had long since gone were still used as handy places to hang out the laundry, or simply to sit around on the floor chatting and passing the time.

Walking back to the hotel as the sun started to set over the sleeping lady, I finally found the reason for the persistent uncomfortable feeling I had had on the roads since arriving.
Having become independent from a US governance, everyone naturally drives on the right. However, due to political strategies in the Pacific, an overwhelming majority of cars are Japanese builds… Japanese cars that, because they come cheap, have not had the privilege of a change in steering.
Therefore the strange feeling one gets on the roads in Kosrae is due to the entire population driving on the right with the driver on the ditch side. And this also explains the rather erratic passing laws, as the possibility of passing a large van or truck depends entirely on whether you have someone in the passenger seat capable of seeing if anyone is coming in the other lane.

Luckily, Japan has shipped an entire army of their small pickup trucks to Kosrae, and the
 number of passengers per car was usually closer to 10 than to the legal 4, with everything from newborns to 80-year-old grannies holding on at the back.

Best not to worry and just enjoy life with a nice coconut fresh from the tree!

Kosrae

The small resort I was staying at was conveniently propped up in the middle of a huge mangrove swamp, and I was lulled to sleep every night by the popping of the little crabs and the chirping of the geckos in residence outside my windows.

The mangroves extend to the sea on both sides, with huge, magnificent mangrove trees.

And some giant crabs, too.

A quick walk down the road leads to the causeway connecting Lelu Island with the rest of Kosrae,

and the best view of the Sleeping Lady.

There is also an old rusted barge that ran aground and is now too much trouble for anyone to remove.

Further along is the site of the Lelu ruins. An important cultural and economic capital for the Pacific Islands about 500 years ago, many of the shaped basalt walls and roads of the royal complex are still visible, despite much active overgrowing by the neighbouring jungle.

Hopping Islands

It was in the early hours of the morn that I set off to catch the famous Island Hopper!

We were a merry crowd in the waiting lounge, with colourful mumu-type dresses, Hawaiian shirts and flower crowns galore. The plane was a Boeing 737, much larger than I had expected, but it was also rather filled with many large polynesians.

And as the sun rose over Hawaii, we set out on our journey back across the Pacific.

A little under 5 hours from Hawaii, but back into to future on our side of the date line, we came in over Majuro, serving as main city for the Marshall Islands chain.

What Majuro does not appear to have is very much land–

– But we were all relieved to find the runway was more than sufficient for a plane of that size, although we did have to do an U-turn at the end to get back to the terminal, as there is really wasn't any room to make a special taxying area.

About half the passengers got off here, and they kindly informed the rest of us that we could remain on the plane should we wish … but that the bathrooms would be closed for cleaning. That affectively got everyone off, and we had a 30 minute rest in the small passenger lounge area.

We had definitely stepped into a new little world here. The little food stall was selling a strange assortment of Japanese/Chinese and American snacks as well as batches to local dried bananas.
And there were large signs up everywhere indicating it was forbidden to spit Betel nut or "Copenhagen" onto the walls and floor.

When they had finished refuelling, they started boarding with handicapped people going first, as is proper. Then after they had wheeled the two old grannies out to the plane, a technician came back in to ask us to wait a little longer, as they had discovered the walkway was not at the right height for the plane. …. One can only hope they discovered this before dumping the grannies into the plane!

The next stop was Kwajalein, which is a US military base, and so were weren't allowed to take photos. From the air, it looks much like Majuro, but with a much larger atoll, so that you can probably barely see the other side when on the ground. We were also not allowed off the plane, so we all just stood up and wandered around the isleway a little.

Luckily, they refuelled rapidly and were were off again, for my final stop, Kosrae. I was unfortunately on the wrong side of the plane to see the Island approach, but I've been told it looks a little like King Kong's Island.

And so after an unplanned stopover in Hawaii and about 10 hours of hopping between Islands, while being careful not to spit Betel nut on the walls, I had finally arrived in Korsae!!

En route to … Oahu?

Today, I'm off for a week of pure summer vacation!

Leave steamy Okinawa behind, have had some quality time in Yokohama, and then off to Narita for an early morning flight to Guam, the first stop of my Pacific adventure.

That was the plan, at least.

It turns out this was the most hectic start to any vacation, ever, as tropical cyclone Chan-hom also wanted to spend some time in Guam, it seemed. The verdict: flight delayed not by hours, but to leave the next day – my connecting flight in Guam long gone.

So, what to do?

Wait for my delayed flight to Guam? But then what? The connecting flights run only every 2 or 3 days, and that'd leave me exactly 28 hours of vacation time before my return flight...

Or ….

 I could fly to Honolulu, and catch the next best flight, cutting only 2 days off my vacation time.

Thus, en route to Oahu!

.

But first, a quick stop by the Gallery Toto at Narita air terminal!
Toto, the toilet manufacturer, of course.

Only in Japan, I think, could you have a large public bathroom in the middle of an airport terminal, with large shadowgraph murals of people merrily going about their business, changing their clothes, or getting bored and doing yoga or crawling into the toilet bowl.

Having enriched my life with that experience, I was now ready for Hawaii!

As I had had no plans to visit Hawaii at all, I was very lucky to find a vacant room at the hotel I stayed at when I came for the conference last year.

The hotel is an easy walk from the beach and the nice park in front of the Ala Moana shopping centre, and I spent a pleasant afternoon putting my new camera through its paces, and enjoying the marvellous sunset over the sea, surrounded by a horde of Japanese tourists.