Shan in Japan

To be honest, if it wasn't for the GEAR 05, I don't think I would ever have visited Guam.
A popular tourist destination for Japanese, it is often described as a mini Honolulu.

The desired tourist for Guam is your shopaholic money loaded tourist on a safe all inclusive package deal where they never have set foot out of the comfort of the resort area - Tumon Beach. You can see plenty of them about. I guess they keep the economy turning.

Through the GEAR race, I was priveleged enough to get outside that bubble and see and learn some pretty amazing stuff. Moreover, I met some great local crew. After the race, I ended as a homeless backpacker cruising the streets on my mountain bike. Thanks to the hospitality of James, the race director, I had a place to crash and an insightful tour of the island.

It is much bigger than I expected. I clocked over a 100kms on my bike (including the race) just riding around.
We drove down to the southern part where jungle was dense and quite a different feel to the northern part.

The history of the place is a bit depressing... Like many cultures, the Chamorro people were almost wiped out by Spanish missionaries through disease and failure to believe in a little guy on a stick cross.
Then after the Spanish were done, Americans took over in 1898 and lost it at the same time the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour in 1941. After a brief but brutal occupation by the Japanese, it is now an unofficial territory of the US.

Hard to think such a beautiful island was razed through fierce fighting during the war. Interesting story about Sgt. Yokoi who seemed to think the war never ended. He ended up hiding in the jungle until 1972!

After reccuperating from the race on Sunday....yeah ok, and Monday, I got out and about. Had dinner and beers with a couple of local lads - Dan and Tommy. Next day, I went for a beach dive with a dive master named Doug. Viz was a bit poor that day with overcast conditions, but plenty of fish about and warm water. Went down to a max. depth of 30metres. Highlight was seeing a huge puffer fish with these little cleaner fish swimming through his mouth and out the side of his gill!

Sat on the beach reading my travel books and pondering this and that. Then along came Tommy and Charlie with some kayaks amped up for a late afternoon paddle. We headed off out past the reef and up past Gun beach (because there is a big black gun on it) and pulled up a bay just before 'Two Lovers Point'. We headed into a huge cave - that I had actually zipped in and out of during the race to note down a code word.
Now I had the chance to appreciate it at a more leisurely pace. There were pools of aqua crystal clear fresh water at the bottom and the narrow entrance that soon opened up into a huge amphitheatre.
Outside there were some ruins of Latte stones - huge foundation stones carved out of the reef by ancient Chamorro people and used for the foundation pillars of their houses.

Back to the kayaks. We found a nice little reef break with just 2footer waves, they seemed pretty harmless.
After picking off a few and trying not to catch an edge with the cumbersome kayak, I went for one of the larger sets. It jacked up and sucked the water dry off the reef and I speared it with my kayak. Kind of similar experience to my mountain crash the other week. I defended myself from the coral with my paddle and played safe after that.

The final night, Charlie and Tommy took me to a local steakhouse..I forget the name.
'I'll have a baseball medium rare' says Charlie...I was like what?!
Turned out to be juicy nugget of steak - about the size and shape of a baseball. Great feed.

On the last day, I had lunch with James. I owe this awesome experience of Guam to his efforts - legend.
At the airport I finally managed to catch up with Roland - a guy I met at the Xterra in Japan last year. There are nearly zero internet cafes in Guam, so bummer I couldn't have gotten hold of him sooner (I guess I could have asked around because everyone seems to know everyone). Top guy - he hooked me up with a bag of goodies for the flight home. Which concludes that Guam has some really genuinely nice people and thats what counts the most. I'd definitely be keen to head back there again - its only a 3 hr flight from Tokyo too.

Back to Tokyo now. I did manage to score some strange heat rash kind of allergy I have just above my brow....