P-MAN VI Update #21
Saturday, February 7, 2004

Today started with an optimistic ride to east Koror to meet with a friend of Joe's who reports that he knows the location of the plane we were seeking a couple of weeks ago down in the mangroves (where Pete's boot got sucked off in the mud, remember?). But the friend never showed up, and no one seemed to know where he might be found.

Plan B involved going back to Joshua's so we could make contact with his brother Johnathan - but Joshua wasn't really expecting us till later. It turned out that Johnathan went fishing last night, and hasn't returned. We took a drive over to the area where Joshua thinks the aircraft of Johnathan's might be, but couldn't find anyone else who had a solid enough idea of its location to make it worthwhile to do any jungle hacking. We'll try later to contact Joshua and Johnathan. We did, however, make a tentative date with Joshua for next Saturday, to go down to Urukthapel and check out a site that he knows about down there.

We then swung by Belau Air and talked again with Madrei, who said her brother Ben had checked out a location on one of the rock islands just south of Airai, where he thinks there's an aircraft up on the island, but that he hasn't found it yet. He'll look some more, and let us know if he finds the aircraft. Since we still needed to photograph a couple of items at the location shown to us last week by Madrei and Ben, we went back down there at the junction between the forest and the mangroves on the south side of Airai. The late-morning lighting was better in the deep jungle than last week's late afternoon lighting (except for a brief downpour today, when the whole area at the edge of the mangroves looked almost more like a dive than a jungle hike). We got better photos and video of several of the objects that we first saw last week, and Joe found a couple more pieces in a large flat area just above the swamp.

Jennifer had spent the morning working on a press release for the President's Chief of Staff. We picked her up at the Internet Cafe, went to lunch, and headed back to the hotel so the rest of us could dry off and change clothes for a quick visit to deliver the press release to the President. Up at the President's office, the place was closed. We suspected there might be a problem when we weren't able to contact the Chief of Staff, but it was worth a try. We'll try again on Monday.

Then it was back to Neco Marine, where we reviewed some of the still photos that Bert Yates shot yesterday on the dive with the President. We picked a couple to be scanned for inclusion with the press release.

Before leaving Neco, we buzzed our archaeologist friend (and member of an earlier BentProp team), who was able to join us for some snacks and beverages at sunset, and to discuss some recent successes that various organizations have had in getting their missions on track. Joe related a Palauan story that says remarkable success usually follows a disruptive period. We're optimistic.

Tomorrow, we plan to visit the B-24 site with a couple of our incredibly helpful friends from the SeaBees.

Onward and Upward! Strength through Joy!

- Reid