I must say, I never thought I’d be laying in a hammock at 8:30pm at night with nothing but the sound of wind in the trees, the humming of crickets, with water calmly splashing against the rocks and the faint sound of music from the bar writing about my trip. If this isn’t paradise I don’t know what is.
After an early morning get up, some coffee, some gravol induced sleep, food and some good music, it was time to head to Chuuk!
The Honolulu airport was really neat. It was small and so cool to see all the locals lining up for the flight. They had bags after bags after bags. Some had tubaware containers and boxes. Our best assumption was that they were filled with supplies. I kid you not; the majority of people had 4-5 bags/bins to check. Our flight was so full of luggage that they actually had to stop any further luggage loading/standby passenger boarding because we had reached our weight limit.
I was seated next to a guy who grew up in Chuuk but hasn’t been back in over 12 years. The other guy seated in my row was a agriculture/fishery consultant being flown in to look at some projects that had been started a few months ago. They all seemed so interested in my plans to scuba dive and explore the wrecks of Chuuk. It got me even more pumped up as it all started to become more realistic.
Our plane was known as an Island hopper. It stopped off at 4 islands before finally reaching Chuuk. The airports were tiny, but very pretty to fly into. If you’ve ever been to St. Lucia it was very reminiscent of their vegetation. I was thinking of going into more detail but I don’t want to take away from the uniqueness of Chuuk.
We arrived at around 4:45pm and our mini van was waiting for us at the airport to take us to the Blue Lagoon Hotel after a long 12-hour flight. From pictures I saw online, it looked a little old but had very nice grounds. It is located 3km from the airport however, the roads use in Chuuk are the original roads that the Japanese had built during WWII. Lets just say I will never complain about potholes again. It was a bumpy 30min ride to the hotel. On the way we passed plenty of houses and it was very easy to see how the locals lived. Chuuk is (to my knowledge) best described as third world. Most of the houses were tin shacks with plenty of scrap metal or car parts sitting out front. I even witnessed tires used as flowerpots (pretty creative if you ask me). I can see life being fairly simple in Chuuk, you make do with what you have an live of the land. There were plenty of small fishing boats on the drive to the hotel so I imagine the Chuukese are very resourceful people.
Upon arrival to the resort its beauty blew us all away. The rooms were way better than what I had seen online and the grounds were even more breath taking. It was a nice warm 27°C with high humidity. I spent a good hour just walking around taking photos of the scenery and still can’t wait to take more. There is absolutely no cell service here and it feels great to disconnect. After dropping our bags off at the room, I headed to the bar for a beer and we all decided to eat dinner at the bar so that we could watch the sunset and enjoy the fresh smell of the south pacific. Dinner was great. I ordered Fried Lempiras (vegies and meat wrapped and deep fried) and Fettuccini Alfredo dish. For dessert, I treated myself to a Banana split.
There are talks of some of us doing an Island tour tomorrow instead of diving. Since I know I’ll be doing plenty of diving over the next bit, I may take the day to learn about Chuuk and experience the beauty/way of life with a guided tour of the island. For now, I’m shutting down and heading to bed, either way tomorrow will be educational whether I decide to wreck dive or not!
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Justin Steele
The Green Ranger