Ngulu

So... if you read the last couple of posts I've put up here, you know things have been a bit rough, as of late. I needed to get away from things for a bit to get some balance back in my life. Fortunately, a great opportunity came up at the beginning of the week.
My buddy and fellow PCV Eriks has been talking about taking the state ship down to Ngulu, a small outer island of Yap to the west. The ride is only overnight, and the total trip lasts less than two days. Well, the ship returned from the eastern outer islands on Sunday, and it headed to Ngulu the next day.
Fishing gear in hand (two coils of 300 lbs. test line affixed with squid-tuna lures and jumbo hooks), Eriks and I hopped the ship on Monday. We spent the ride there joking around with Eriks' host mom and sister, chatting with folks and trying to fish from the ship, but didn't hook into anything (fishing lingo: makes me sound knowledgable in spite of the poor performance).
The next morning we arrived in Ngulu, met with the island's representative (the ONE man out of FIVE people who live there--the rest of the population has moved off island, including Eriks' host dad, the govenor of Yap) and wondered around the island for a bit--wound up on the shore walking bare foot across very rocky beach. I found myself a mismatched pair of throw-away flipflops for the last little part. After munching down a bag of banana chips, Eriks and I busted out the snorkel and mask and checked out the reef. It was amazingly beautiful, of course. It's Micronesia, what else could it be? We headed in when I noticed the ship moving suspiciously far away from the island, but we found out later that it wouldn't head back to Yap until 10 pm that night.
We hung out for a bit, reviewed the photos from snorkeling, walked around the rest of the island and then went to find some lunch. After a delicious meal of smoked fish, coconut crab, boiled breadfruit and bananas, we headed back to the main beach. I took a nap for a couple hours while Eriks swam and entertained the little kids with his antics in the surf (pretending to attack and be attacked by waves). We relaxed the rest of the day away, had some dinner, watched the sunset and loaded back up to get on the ship and return to Yap.
Exhausted from the sunshine and poor sleep the night before, we both grabbed some floor in the general boarding area and slept till morning.
The whole trip was over too soon. Would have been nice to spend a night on Ngulu, but it was so good for me. I really relaxed for the first time since I heard about the impending closure of Woleai and felt some semblance of inner peace. Good trip.