Guam - Palau - Oahu, Hawaii (2025)

Alii from Palau! Aloha from Hawaii! And… hello from Guam, where America’s day begins!

Starting this terrifically long trip, we flew through Tokyo to get to Guam, which felt like one step forward and three steps back, but luckily Robert splurged to upgrade us to the Polaris section on United (as a birthday present to me!), which was both of our first time in lay flat beds…. And they were great!!  The food was awesome, it was nice to have a whole pod to yourself, and neither of us slept a wink. 

Guam was about half what I expected, and half not what I expected.  It felt like it was stuck in quintessential America circa 1998 with most of the restaurant options being things like “Hard Rock Cafe” and “TGI Fridays.”  And with having 4 US military bases on the small island, these culinary gems were situated in between the classic American staples of shooting ranges and strip clubs. Bang, bang, no matter where you stop!

However, we did manage to find a really amazing spot called “Frances Bakery” which offered really delicious classics like croissants and cookies (for breakfast, why not), but they also offered something incredibly unique…. Stuffed bagels.  Have you ever had one before?  I know we hadn’t.  I got an Ube bagel (Ube is a purple sweet potato… so delicious) that was stuffed with mochi (!!) and topped with toasted coconut.  And they also had a jalapeño bagel stuffed with cheddar cheese, which was a slightly less inventive combo, but still amazing. 

These kept us filled while we did a ton of driving around the island visiting famous battle sites from World War II.  Did you know that Guam was attacked by Japan on the same day as Pearl Harbor? Or that Japan completely took over the island, and kept the native Chamorro people under Japanese rule for almost three years?  These battle sites still had bunkers in the sides of the cliffs and a few anti-aircraft guns mounted into concrete, hammering home just how real these battles were. 

Probably our favorite stop on the island was…. The K-mart of Guam! Famous for being one of the last three K-Mart’s in existence (the other two are in the US Virgin Islands, and Miami (and even Miami is not a full size store)).  K-Mart had everything!! From kitschy touristy stuff (I <3 Guam K-mart t-shirt anyone?!?) to a full aisle of SPAM (Guam is the largest per capita eater of the product) and a separate full aisle of ramen (the bulk of Guam tourists are from both Korea and Japan.) We stocked up on unique chips flavors, covered macadamia nuts (the white chocolate/strawberry combo was delicious) and of course, Mountain Dew for Justin. How else could he survive? 

Lastly, Guam is an island, and we would have completely missed out had we not spent any time in the water.  The beaches are gorgeous, with white sand, tons of scurrying crabs, and on our last morning there, we hiked to Sharks Cove beach and went snorkeling.  The reefs were pristine, and we saw a ton of cool stuff, like squid, blue starfish, and several anemones complete with clownfish.  And best of all…. We were the only people there!!

Guam Summary: 

-Westin Resort Guam: 4/5, would stay there again

-Frances Bakery: 5/5

-Primo Pizzakaya: 4/5

-Little Pika’s: 3/5

-K-mart snacks: priceless 

On to Palau… the bummer part about flying through Guam to get to Palau, is that our flight left after midnight, and didn’t arrive until 1:30am.  By the time we cleared customs and immigration, it was very very late when we got to our hotel, so we had picked the closest one to the airport, the Airai Water Paradise Hotel.  As far as we could tell, there was only one other two-some staying at the hotel, but breakfast was delicious, Kristen and I laid out by the pool in the morning (though we opted not to have them turn on the water slides, it could have been fun), and they mixed up some cocktails for us before we left to get on the Black Pearl live aboard, which we had been looking forward to for over a year!  There were 22 guests on the boat, and 13 of them all worked for the same travel agency out of China, so there really were 9 of us in our group, and half of that group was our foursome from Colorado! There was a couple from Barcelona, and three single travelers, from Oregon, Hong Kong and Switzerland.  What a fun group!! The highlight from the first night was watching the sun set from the top deck of the boat.  Absolutely stunning! 

What followed were 8 days of overall incredible diving, totaling 28 dives.  Though I’ll be honest… we would do a few things differently for next time.  First, Palau is not big enough to need a liveaboard.  We anchored in 3 total stops, including the harbor and then took small tenders to each dive site.  Second, the high season is in February and March… and we were there in September, exactly opposite.  The visibility was not as clear as we expected, and even though the volume of wildlife was incredible compared to the Caribbean, there was not nearly the diversity that they get in other times of the year. Also, it was rainy season, which lead to some interesting tender rides, especially with a typhoon not too far from where we were. Third, Palau is visited mainly by Chinese tourists, and it seemed like most of the Chinese divers that we saw underwater were more interested in taking selfies than seeing wildlife, which led our dive guide to spend the first few days trying to get us to take “cool” pictures underwater and racing around each site instead of letting us travel at a slightly more sedate pace just seeing what we could see.  But once we cleared that up with the dive guide, we were really able to enjoy the best that Palau had to offer (for September.)

First, I absolutely love love love mantas!! And we got to see a bunch at the German Channel, which we ended up diving at least 3 or 4 times because it was such a favorite.  This is a known feeding area and cleaning station for mantas, so we got to kneel on the sandy bottom and watch these majestic creatures basically visit the spa!  They open their mouths and unfurl their cephalic fins so that small cleaner fish can get in there and clean off dead skin and parasites.  We even saw one manta do a little spasm when some fish tried to clean near his nether regions!  One of my favorite facts about mantas is that the markings on their belly are unique, kind of like a fingerprint, and can lead to the identification of each manta.  The boat had a book, so we learned we were hanging out with Sparkle, Freckles and all their friends. Watching them do barrel rolls and turn and swim so effortlessly is just absolutely magical.  It was definitely the diving highlight for me!  

(Photo Credit Instagram: @abe_ngan)

And then there were the turtles, which were hiding around almost every corner!  Some were a little shy, because apparently even in the protected waters of Palau in 2025, some fishing boats still come in to hunt turtles for turtle soup. One turtle that we found must have felt particularly cornered, so he just turned on the jets and sped out of there, which was kind of comical to see (even if we didn’t mean to scare you, little buddy)! And then there were the bumphead parrotfish spawning events!  While not nearly as “sexy” as we were hoping, I’ve never seen so many bumpheads in one area before, and that in and of itself was really cool!  Spawning was something new to me, so since fish don’t procreate the way that we humans think of it, they have these elaborate mating rituals in which the female will choose the male she wants to mate with, and they will swim cheek to cheek toward the surface, releasing their eggs and sperm into the water in the same area.  Not wanting to miss out, many other males will try to join in, forming a giant orgy of up to about 15 fish all racing toward the surface, leaving behind large visible clouds that are carried along with the outgoing tide until the juvenile fish are large enough to swim back to the reef.  We didn’t see any groups quite like that, but it was cool to see thousands of the huge fish in the same area!  

We also attracted a remora on a few of our dives.  These fish have special flat oval heads that allow them to attach generally to sharks, turtles and mantas, for whom they are thought to perform a constant cleaning service in exchange for the remora hitching a ride. Though the remoras we met were slightly confused, because they kept swimming between Robert, Kristen, Justin, our dive guides and I.  It tickles a little when they suck on, and it’s comical to watch them swish in between everyone’s legs and up the shorts of the guys. One attached itself to my tank for almost a solid minute and I didn’t even realize until I saw a video after the fact.  And one was trying so hard to get all the way up Robert’s leg that I laughed so hard under water I flooded my mask!  

Lastly, there were some more one off type of encounters that were really incredible.  I saw my first leopard shark.  He looked like a nurse shark just laying in the sand, but was spotted all over.  Then, we saw a spotted sting ray that swam through right underneath me!  We saw an octopus. We saw some crown of thorns sea stars, which were really spiky and cool.  And we saw a few mandarin fish, which are really small and hard to photograph, but they’re orange and navy and really pretty! Also, there were so many tornadoes of fish that you could have easily gotten swept away in them.  And maybe it’s not quite the same as seeing fish and big stuff, but the coral was really healthy and colorful and beautiful! There was one “head” of lettuce coral, which was the biggest I’ve ever seen! 

When we finally got back to land, one of our boat mates wanted to see Palau from the air, so we were able to rent a plane, and see all the places that we dove from the air.  It was crazy to see how shallow most of the area around the islands were!  Special props to the tender drivers who were cruising along in the shallow water, sometimes in the pouring rain (we actually had to stop the tender during one particularly aggressive storm, since no one could see enough to drive, and I’m reasonably sure that we didn’t know where the big boat was!) And then we met up for dinner at the Drop Off.  It was really hard to say goodbye to our new friends! We miss them incredibly and hope to see them on future dive trips! 

Palau Summary: 

-Airai Water Paradise Hotel: 3.5/5, would stay again

-Black Pearl: 3/5, probably wouldn’t stay again

-The Drop Off: 3/5

-Smile Air: 5/5

Flying back, we left Justin in Guam so that he could continue his WWII adventures in the Northern Mariana Islands and Kristen, Robert and I continued on to Oahu!  None of us had ever been there before, so our first stop was to see Pearl Harbor.  WOW! What an incredible slice of history.  The museum was really well done, and we were fortunate enough to be able to take a boat out to see the USS Arizona memorial. It’s really emotional to be able to stand on a platform over the sunken ship where nearly half of the people who lost their lives during the attack succumbed.  It was also really interesting to learn a little more about the timeline of the attack… including concurrent strikes on Guam, Wake Island and the Philippines (though technically December 8th due to the international date line), and also that radar operators picked up the incoming Japanese planes on the north side of the island, and had they not misinterpreted these blips as the friendly ones they were expecting later that day from the continent, there might have been a little more warning for those involved.  

Once our civic duty was completed, we cruised around mostly the western half of the island.  We stopped in the cute town of Haleiwa and did some shopping, then ate at the Haleiwa Beach House.  The Kalua Pork grilled cheese is my new standard for what I want in a grilled cheese.  It was the perfect combo of fatty and cheesy and I would love to go back and have another one! And the sunset right across the street was absolutely incredible!  

On our last night in Hawaii, we decided to go to Toa’s Luau.  We got there early to hike through the nature reserve and swim in the waterfall.  You probably could give that part a miss if you go… they made everyone wear life jackets, so we just bobbed around like corks and applauded when one of their lifeguards managed to dive under water and locate the dropped scooter key of one of the waterfall patrons!  But the luau itself was incredible!! Kristen got selected to be the HIGH CHIEF, an incredibly important position, and luckily not the talking chief… that poor guy had to make a big speech welcoming everyone to the luau.  The food was authentic and delicious, the drinks were strong and the dancing was phenomenal.  They portrayed a variety of dance styles popular on different Pacific islands and, of course, finished with the fire dancers, one of whom was 13 years old!! 

It’s always sad to be done with a trip, but we were really excited to get home to Bailey! 

Oahu Summary: 

-Turtle Bay Resort: 5/5, would definitely stay again

-Haliwea Beach House: 4/5

-Poke For The People: 5/5

-Waiahole Poi Factory: 4/5