Walung Adventure

This past Saturday, 8 of us single brothers went for a day trip to an isolated village on the other side of the island called Walung.  These pictures pretty much sum up our adventure.

Our boat captain was a nephew of one of the brothers in the congregation.  The boat couldn't hold us all so we had to take two trips.  

 So to kill some time, I went and jumped off a bridge...

And while we were waiting for the boat to come back, someone gave us a fresh tuna, straight off of the fishing boat that had just pulled into the dock.  Later on you'll see we made good use of it.  

 The mangrove trees grow all the way out in the water.  It's interesting how they thrive in the salt water.

The tide was a little low, so the boat could only take us so far and then we walked the rest through the water. It was kind of scary walking from the ocean into the mangroves...

Sashimi! This is from the tuna earlier.  Once we added some limes and soy sauce, it was sooo good.

One of our main reasons for going over to Walung was to try to climb some nice rock walls they have.  Of course there aren't very many rock climbers on Kosrae so we had to clean a lot of moss and vines off the wall.  This is Shem and Sam checking out the climbing holds.  

Of course the one weekend we choose to go, we get rained out. Oh well, what can you do?

This local kid was intrigued by what we were doing so, even though he didn't understand English, he volunteered to find a way through the jungle to get to the top of the rock wall and clean it.  He was pretty cool so we gave him some chocolate.

Shem taking a shot at the wet, slippery wall and Brennan spotting him.  The rain made it very difficult to climb.  

 We had many local spectators.  These kids were just sitting around watching us for a good couple of hours.

Baby mangrove tree

The main road in Walung

When it's not raining, this beach is awesome.  Good sand, a line of coconut trees and no houses.

Mike and his fishing pole, he was on a mission.

Group picture: me, Sammy, Shem, Mike, Obed, Ramir, Brennan and Tryone above. 

Everyone doing their own pose, except for the few of us that copy each other...

The mangrove trees are pretty monstrous and the roots are like wooden death spikes sticking out of the ground.

Tryone monkeying around.  We climbed into the mangrove trees to escape the water.  I got bored and started throwing the leaves like frisbees, and it turned into an all-out leaf war for next 30 minutes. Tree dwellers vs. those still in the water.  Probably more fun then it sounds...  

Waiting for our guy to come pick us up, who never actually came.  We were waiting for over an hour in the water.  By the time we caught a ride, my feet were pretty wrinkly. 

These boats were going by every once in a while so we finally tried hitching a ride when we saw it was getting dark.  But as you can see, most of them were already pretty packed so we had split up into smaller groups to be allowed on.  With all of that weight, it sure was a long, awkward ride home.