Over Christmas break we were able to take a vacation to Pohnpei, which is the largest island in Micronesia. It was almost a 2 hour flight from Kwaj and we greatly enjoyed the vacation. It was definitely different than any other vacation we have ever been on, since we have never slept under mosquito nets before or hiked through the rain forest! We were on Pohnpei for 4 nights. and were able to do a lot of fun things. We went on a 6 waterfall hike, we snorkeled, kayaked, ate at restaurants, explored the island, watched the Hobbit at a movie theater with popcorn, and thoroughly enjoyed our vacation! This first post is going to highlight our visit, the hotel, and some of the things we did. Another post will be coming that shows the waterfall hike.
Above is a picture of our room. It was literally in the jungle. It was up on stilts on a hill at the edge of the hotel grounds. You can see the roof is made out of palm frond leaves. I think the picture above gives a better description than my typing does. The rooms were stand alone units more like a tree house than anything else
Here is the view from our room looking through the screen windows. The rooms were open air, with a ceiling fan. The view was pretty cool, though! We don't have hills on Kwajalein, so to be up off the water like this was great.
Here is a picture of our room during the day. The bug nets are pulled up and you can see straight into the jungle around us.
When we came in at night the bug nets had been draped over the beds to keep the misquitoes and other critters off of us as we slept.
This picture shows one of the many geckos in the room every night. Matt would try to catch them and throw them out, but eventually there was to many and they would just run away so we just let them be. This was particularly hard to do, because on the first night here one managed to get into the bug net. Mindi woke up and it was hanging inside the net directly over her head!!!!!! Quite the way to start our first morning on vacation! We made sure to tuck the bug net very, very tightly each night after that!
The hotel was very beautiful and offered some great views. We really liked hanging out in this little gazebo which hung out into the jungle and offered great views!
From our hotel we had a great view of Sokeh's Rock, which is one of the main landmarks on the island.
We really enjoyed some great food at the restaurant at our hotel and tried to take advantage of it. Above is a picture right before eating dinner.
Here is the picture we took before dinner on the 2nd night!
It turned into a tradition to take this picture before each meal. Here we are again out in that little gazebo.
For one of our excursions we took a taxi into the village and walked through a part of the island called Kapingamarangi Village. The people are densely populated in this area, and it is known for wood carvers. We were able to see people carving the sculptures that we have as decorations on Kwajalein.
We had the carvers make a nativity scene for us and here is a picture of it. The guy who carved it is walking through the picture as well. You can see some of the sharks and other things they have carved in the background.
We were able to go to a real movie with popcorn! We saw the Hobbit, which was awesome! It was fun to see a movie that hadn't been released 6 months ago. This was a lot of fun, and the taxi ride to the and from the theater certainly offered some entertainment as well as we learned about some local folklore and more!
Here is a picture from the ruins on Pohnpei. There is an anceint city built out on the water called Nan Madol. The rocks were all moved in by hand and placed here to build islands and a village. We kayaked through the ruins and observed the old city!
Here is a picture of some locals kayaking through the ruins in a hand made boat out of an old tree trunk.
Our kayaking adventures were not limited to Nan Madol, we also went on a long kayak one afternoon that was around 5 miles. Needless to say this was an adventure and then some. I don't know if we will become professional kayakers, though.
Our kayak took us right through the middle of a mangrove swamp! This was pretty interesting as we hadn't been in a mangrove swamp before.
Pohnpei was a lot of fun! These pictures definitely do not do it justice!
One aspect of our trip was the 6 waterfall hike and we will have another post coming soon to highlight that!
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