P-MAN X Update #21 - Spleen 1
12 March 2008 - Wednesday

We've been playing phone tag with several guides and witnesses, and that led to a pretty slow start this morning.

We eventually hit the road and did an interview with an elder who lives in Meyuns. We dropped off some permit applications. We discovered that another elder no longer lives where we thought he did, but we think we know how to find him now. We had lunch at the north end of the Koror-Babelthuap bridge. Then we headed back to Police Hill. Who would have guessed we'd wind up back there?

Team member Dan O'Brien told us about a theory he has about another possible execution/burial site in that area, so we decided to check it out. It has some possibilities. We started this year's investigation by naming our top suspect site something vaguely anatomical. Adjacent to that site is a smaller but similar site that we decided to refer to as the "vestigial" version of the original. And Dan's proposed site then, by anatomical extension, has become "the Spleen." The story isn't all that interesting, but if you hear us refer to "the Spleen," that's what we're talking about.

After we finished our preliminary survey of the Spleen, we made a quick side trip about 4 Km north to try to locate a GeoCache that was left there a couple of months ago by some skydivers. Didn't find it. But did discover that Flip couldn't find his sandals, which he believed he had left on the top of the van as we were changing after emerging from the jungle on top of Police Hill. On the way back, we found one sandal right in the middle of the road. We turned up the rutted path that goes to the top of Police Hill, and found the other sandal part way up. If only crash sites were so easy to find...

After a quick shower turn-around at the hotel, we were joined for dinner by our old friends Yoji Kurata and his daughter Emiko, both biologists living in Koror. We're going to visit again on Friday with them, to let Kurata-San review some newly acquired photos of Palau from the WWII era.

Still waiting to make phone contact with the guide who's supposed to take us to a crash site on Ngeruktabel tomorrow, so we won't know how that will play out until morning...

- Reid
 

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