P-MAN XIV Update #22 - Sometimes, Plan B isn't so bad.

08 April 2012

Today we were going to be led to a place where there were bones in a cave. We would take our van to Neco Marine, a boat to a mangrove in Airai, a kayak through the the mangrove to shore, then a hike over hill and dale (what is a dale?) to the cave. Davis was going to lead us there. Unfortunately, Davis called and cancelled. He had a family emergency. So on to plan B. This time, we had one.

But first, a BentProp tradition: pancake Sunday. The bacon was crisp, the coffee strong, the pancakes stuffed with blueberries and the syrup was maple from Maine. We invited Margie and Dave over and a good meal was shared by all. Margie and Dave plan on having us over for dinner on the 12th, but when they found out Flip might be leaving early, they got strong-armed into hosting us tonight. We parted company and off to Neco Marine we went.

We had the kayaks offloaded from the boat and went to the seaplane ramp that Calvin took us to yesterday. We did some snorkeling and diving. Derek and Flip found lots of stuff that wasn't airplane debris: gas cylinders, concrete pilings, large pieces of sheet iron and the rest of the seaplane ramp. They both saw a sea snake swim by and the snake couldn't have cared less about them in the water. Flip, of course, cared a lot about seeing it swim directly at him, though. Pat didn't see much either. But of course, Joe found something and then we searched around it.

Not a lot, but it was a piece of aluminum. Looked like some sort of box. And there might be more around it, but it was stuck in the coral and would not budge. Since we don't dig, we didn't.

Pat and Joe looking and searching.

The box Joe found. How does he do it?

Pile of large-caliber casings.

Picric acid leaking from the pile of casings.

No, Derek isn't sampling picric acid. It's an old beer bottle.

A dry vintage at that.

After a bit of blowing bubbles, we slowly worked our way back to base, visited Margie and Dave on the new boat they're fixing up, out to lunch, over to the store, and then we had a matinee movie. I was mistaken the other day when I reported we were going to watch Alien. We watched Aliens. If one is good, more is better. "Game over, man." One reason to have movie matinee was to rest up for our big hike in the jungle tomorrow.

When the movie finished, we headed over to Margie and Dave's for that home-cooked meal. They used to own Bandido's Mexican Restaurant in town and once a year we get together for dinner at their place. Their view is outstanding and hopefully one of my pictures turned out. They make a great margarita, but we had to limit ourselves as we have scheduled a long hike to get one last set of soil samples. It's a 2.5-hour hike to the site, across raging rivers, muddy embankments and lots of jungle. But more on that after it happens.

Margie, Derek, Dan, Dave and Pat.

Looking across the A-K causeway from Arakabesan toward downtown Koror.

And that's going to happen tomorrow.

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