Then I'm gonna go out walking...

Yesterday, we walked the Tamilyog Trail.

Tamilyog is an old trail that connects the western and the eastern sides of the island. Parts of it is ancient stone paths through the jungle, parts a grassy path through green hills.

When modern roads where built on Yap and cars became common, the trail was abandoned and neglected. It was restored and reopened in January 2004, just to be severly damaged by the typhoon Sudal a few months later. Repairs where completed in July 2005 though and Tamilyog is now popular with both locals and visitors.

It was three really nice kilometers of walking, with excellent views, close encounters with island nature and beautiful reminders of the ancient Yapese culture.

I'll have to do this again before I leave.

You can check out the trail in Google Earth here. More photos can be found here.

-

Completely unrelated - trying to teach Google a new word - fruktbattar.

Walk The Line

This week I've been playing around a bit with my GPS, my photos and Google Earth. I thought I'd try to show you a bit more of how it actually looks here, rather than posting photos of things I find interesting.

If you have Google Earth installed and follow this link - Sidewalking - you should get a pathway and photos from a walk I took after work a few days ago. You can animate the path of the walk by clicking on the "play" symbol top right, or by dragging the slider. Clicking on the camera symbols will show you a photo from that location. You can also click on images in the "Waypoints" listing on the left.

I do this walk most days after work. And when I'm not busy taking photos, I usually do it a bit quicker... It's not obvious from Google Earth, as their height information is way off, but the walk up to the top of the hill is quite steep in places so it's quite a good exercise.

Soundtrack: Supersuckers - Roadworn and Weary

Shake it off

Yesterday's earthquake has been reported as a 5.4, with the epicenter just 15 miles east of Yap island:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2008neah.php

Local people say it's the strongest one they have ever experienced here.

We had a small aftershock this morning, but a very short one.

Earthquake Weather

Experienced my first substantial earthquake today.

Scary.

Still waiting for information on the how's and where's, but it didn't do any substantial damage - some shelves in one of the local stores going down, but that seems to be it.

Me - being on the second floor inside the concrete hotel when it struck - I got quite shook up mentally though. All the stuff you have heard in movies about how to act in earthquakes went through my head - "Take cover under a table or similar, don't try to get out of the building" is what I imagine having heard. So, of course I focused on getting out of the building as quickly as I could as the earth was rocking...

I got out just fine, and would have been just as fine staying inside...

Patrik

...but Tuesday is just as bad

The storm is now due north of us, still moving slowly towards the northwest.

We are seeing some heavy winds and a lot of heavy rain today, but unless the storm changes direction completely, we should be out of harms way now.

Nobody wants to go to the moon anymore

Still looking OK. We have had some gusts of winds and rain, but not too bad. And the forecasts still predict Man-Yi moving north-west.

Not so good; Man-Yi has been moving west more than north during the day. As well as increasing in strength more quickly than anticipated.

All in all, it looks quite OK though, just some small worrying aspects.

More tomorrow.

Waiting for the sun

The storm has picked up speed, moving northwest quicker than previously forecast. According to the latest predictions the center will pass northeast of Yap proper during the evening.

The winds are increasing slowly here, but they are still not bad at all.

More later.

Call it Stormy Monday

The forecasts look OK at the moment. The storm (now named Man-Yi) will pass north of Yap proper tonight around midnight local time (GMT+10), and it will not become a typhoon until tomorrow. The center of the storm is currently over the Yap outer island Furaulep.

The weather here is actually quite calm at the moment. As we are on the western side of the storm, and it is rotating counter-clockwise, the winds are coming in from the north-west. Being on the eastern side of the island, we are protected.

Updates will follow during the day. More information at The Joint Typhoon Warning Center, The Guam Weather Service and Weather Underground.

...and I'm getting blown away

OK, so - according to the pros - there will be a cyclone/typhoon.

But it will likely/hopefully pass north of Yap.

So we will probably see some rough and strange weather the next few days, but not any really bad typhoon activity.

So far, we have just noticed that the winds are turning and that the evening sky is looking even more interesting than usual...

More tomorrow.

There's calm in your eye...

It's been extremely calm and hot here for two days (with some excellent manta dives...). Apparently this might have been the quiet before the storm.

There is currently a tropical depression - with a high risk of becoming a tropical cyclone - forming over neighboring Chuuk, which might pass close to Yap during the next few days.

Or, as the Joint Typhon Warning Center puts it:

"THE POTENTIAL FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF A SIGNIFICANT TROPICAL CYCLONE WITHIN THE NEXT 24 HOURS IS UPGRADED TO GOOD."

"GOOD" actually meaning 'quite bad...'

More tomorrow. Further updates can be found at the Joint Typhon Warning Center.

Meanwhile, listening to Ian Hunter - Welcome to the club. It took me 4 days to download from iTunes, but it was worth it. Up there with Thin Lizzy's Live and Dangerous as one of the few really great live albums. Classic Mott the Hoople meeting later Ian Hunter solo. And all Mick Ronson. The only thing I will ever agree with Magnus Uggla on is that Irene Wilde might be the best rock ballad ever.

Gone fishin'

Yesterday, we went fishing.

We headed out for Hunters Bank, a seamount 30 kilometers north of Yap, at five in the morning. As it is summer, we expected calm seas, but they actually turned out to be quite rough, so we where soon soaked in salt water. As we arrived at Hunters, it got even worse, so after an hour of fishing we turned back to Yap and spent the day trolling the leeward western side of the island.


We didn't catch much fish, but we did get a couple of Wahoos, a couple of Barracudas and three quarters of a big Yellowfin Tuna. The yellowfin required a lot of work on the reel. After it was landed it was obvious why - the tail part was missing. A shark had been fighting to keep the tuna to himself. You could actually see the teeth marks.

On the way back we where joined for a short while by a pod of dolphins playing under the bow. They left before I had a chance to get a good photo though.

All in all a very nice day.

Getting back to the hotel, washing away the salt and sunblock, putting on dry clothes and going for some fresh Wahoo sashimi wasn't too bad either...

Laundry day

Today is laundry day, which means bringing my laundry over to the laundromat across the bay and filling washing machines and driers with clothes and quarters. And doing some blogging in between machines.

Yesterday I skipped my daily evening walk and went kayaking instead, around O'Keefe's Island and across to the mangroves in the southern part of Tamil and on to Meqruur. If you have Google Earth installed (and you should), you can check out my route here.

I am a big fan of mangroves. Kayaking among them is very peaceful and relaxing, and they play a major part in the ecosystem of an island like Yap. The way the plants in the mangroves have adapted to the hostile environment is also fascinating. The cone-shaped things sticking out of the water in the picture to the right are the roots of one type of mangrove tree - Sonneratia - which acts as the lungs of the tree, providing oxygen from the air.

The next time I will try to remember to put on some mosquito repellent though...

On my daily walk the day before yesterday I crossed paths with an adolescent Coconut crab. While you see mangrove crabs all the time in Yap, seeing the Coconut ones is a much rarer occurrence. Coconut crabs are the largest land living crabs, and they make quite a nice meal... unfortunately so nice that it is getting harder and harder to find a mature one. Correction - the crab in my photo is actually an Indonesian hermit crab, not a juvenile Coconut crab.

And yes, it is all legal...

Yes - in case you wondered - the partying last night was all very legal. I do have a Yapese drinking permit.

Hmmm... while we are at it, I can't see any reason not to post another cat picture.

This is Tiger.

In the middle of the street

Yesterday evening we went to the O'Keefe bar across the street for some wine and then proceeded to a local Yapese outdoor bar/nightclub. I met a Yapese guy who had actually been to Sweden. In 1976. For the Nobel party.

It got quite late so today has been a really slow day. Just reading (the latest Carl Hiaasen, Nature Girl, quite good) and going for a walk. Lacking more interesting things, just a few words and some pictures regarding my living conditions.


Currently I stay in a hotel room, which is fine for a short time, but not in the long run. My more permanent living quarters, in a separate little house on the hotel grounds, are currently being renovated with a new bathroom and floor tiles put in. Hopefully it will be ready in a week or two.

It looks like it will be real nice when it is finished, and it will be real good to get my own place and cook my own food.


One drawback is that I will be staying on top of the compressors that are used to fill the diving tanks with air. Quite a noicy process. Fortunately this only goes on for a few hours during daytime, so I don't see it becoming a real problem.

And it has a nice breeze going through it and comes with a sea view...

...new horizons will appear

While the Octopus was impressive in it's own ways, yesterday's arrival Alingano Maisu is much more so to me.

The micronesians explored the vast waters of the Pacific in little sailing canoes - using just the stars, waves and birds to navigate - long before the Europeans managed to reach the region.

This ancient knowledge of how to navigate the seas has had a renewed interest in recent years, especially in Polynesia, with a lot of help from the last surviving Micronesian master navigator Mau Piailug.

Maisu was built as a gift and tribute to Mau and Micronesia by polynesian voyagers. It was sailed from Hawaii to Yap earlier this year and is now serving as a school ship to teach young micronesians the old art of wayfinding. She just returned to the main islands of Yap from a trip to Ngulu. I am looking into any possibilities to join the crew on a shorter trip.


The diving down south yesterday was really nice. Good visibility, nice walls and schools of giant Bumphead Parrotfish as well as smaller creatures such as Leaf Scorpionfish.

As always - more photos over on my Flickr pages.

Hmmm... for some reason the posting dates and times on the blog seem to get confused... they are supposed to be in local Yap time... will try to sort that out...

From the ships docked in the harbour...

I went for a long walk this evening. Up to the top of Madeqdeq - the highest hill around Colonia. Quite a climb, but worth it. Fantastic views from up there. The next time I will bring a wide-angle lens.

Tomorrow I'm going southbound, down to Yap Caverns and Lionfish Wall.

We would shout and swim about...

The last few days we have had the company of Paul Allen's yacht Octopus. This is not your ordinary yacht - it's the 5th largest in the world, comes with a crew of 60, 2 helicopters, a basketball court, etc, etc... And it is just one of three yachts that the billionaire Microsoft co-founder keeps on the move around the world.

Paul is not on it though. He only shows up a couple of times a year and this is not one of those times.


The crew seem to really enjoy their stay in Yap - diving, taking tours on the island and having a few local beers on the Mnuw while the moon rises over the Octopus.

When they head out of here on Wednesday they plan to go down to Ngulu and do a few dives there. I wouldn't mind joining them - apparently there is plenty of large fish life and quite a few tiger sharks in the waters of Ngulu.



More photos over on Flickr.

Patrik, meet Patrik

Went for my first dive this morning, in Goofnuw channel.

Goofnuw is one the dive sites in Yap where you regularly encounter manta rays. They come here to get "cleaned" by small fish that remove parasites from the skin and gills of the mantas.

We got lucky today - 10 minutes into the dive the first one joined us, and during the following hour an additional 4 kept circling the "cleaning station".


To me, it was extra special, as one of the mantas was "Patrik", a manta that I named almost 8 years ago which has since then kept showing up on my first dives in Yap.

My underwater camera isn't really that good for these kind of big animals, but as it's at least possible to tell that it *is* mantas in the shots, I post a few anyway.

Note to self: I need 6 *kilos* of weights, not 6 *pounds*... diving with the mantas is much easier if you don't float like a cork. Some extra weights from the dive guide Chomed saved this dive. Kammagar Chomed!

Happy hour for felines

Patricia Acker's kittens had a little milk party going on the Mnuw this afternoon.

Guess which one is Midnight and which one is Snowflake...

Moon over Colonia

The moon and the clouds really came out tonight as we where sitting on the deck of the Mnuw enjoying the breeze.