Håfffffaaa Adaaaaaaaaaaai Guam

Post breakfast balcony view

With apologies to Robin Williams and all Chamorro speakers everywhere for the title…

It was very odd last night to arrive at a pacific island themed hotel lobby and find a snow covered Christmas tree with polar bears though.

Arriving after dark makes it hard to actually figure out where you are

View from Asan Bay overlook

One of our agenda items today was to visit a memorial for the natives of Guam who suffered labor camps and forced marches under Japanese occupation, to find the names of Dave’s parents and grandparents.

Dave pointing at the name of his paternal Grandfather
A lot of name in just 3 years…
Direction and distance markers to all the major battles in the pacific.

One thing I learned here is that the battle of Guam had nearly as many casualties in 20 days as Guadacanal did in several months.

Entrance to the memorial

We also went to the Baptist cemetery where two of his grandparents are buried.

Dave looking at the headstones of his paternal grandparents.

The evening plan is the “chamorro village” night market, to explore the locally made trinkets and foods.

The Wednesday night market at Chamorro Villiage
The food was tasty, but judged not sufficient coconut.
They do rides on something called a Carabao, which it turns out is a water buffalo. Some enterprising soul brought these creatures to Guam in the 1600’s. What a boat ride that must’ve been.

After getting back to the hotel we went for a walk on the beach. It’s pretty at night. Water is plenty warm to stick your toes in, and there are little fish dartin and splashing around.

On the way back inside I was once again perplexed by the polar bear theming.

If you can think of a LESS likely place to find a polar bear than here you’ve got a better imagination than I… Maybe the utter strangeness of it is what makes it interesting?

Not sure yet what tomorrow will bring, but I imagine finding some other local foods will be involved.

2 Replies to “Håfffffaaa Adaaaaaaaaaaai Guam”

  1. Enjoying your posts and the explanations with each image, thank you. So interesting to learn about Guam.

  2. Beautiful picture of Bevin! Josh, you’d better watch out–That polar bear is looking right at you. One false move….