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Travel Tales: Yap, Micronesia
by
findingDulcinea Staff
Located a thousand miles from anywhere you’ve ever heard of, the island of Yap is a remote outpost of forest, swamp and steep coral walls, set beneath the most stunning Pacific sunsets you are ever likely to witness. Though the outside world grows closer with each passing year, Yap’s beautiful isolation remains: a rest stop on the way to nowhere.
Far Away from Anywhere Else
On June 1, two weeks after my college graduation, I boarded a plane headed west, on my way to becoming a Peace Corps volunteer. After 30 days spent digesting cultural and professional training that would ultimately prove worthless, I landed at just past midnight on the island of Yap (Wa’ab in the local language), in a fog of late- night heat.
I had not been told about my final destination until the previous week before and had done little to prepare myself for the two years and three months that lay ahead. Misguided as it may have been, I assumed that the less I knew about where I was going, the richer the experience would be. I was probably wrong.
We disembarked after 12 hours of island-hopping from the capital island of Pohnpei, via the lagoons in Chuuk and stops in Guam and Palau, and were greeted by what looked like the entire island. We would later learn that because these 757s only landed on Yap twice a week and there was little else to do, many families would make the trip down to the airport to watch the plane arrive and depart again, whether they knew a passenger or not. Most of them, did, though: on this island of 8,000, it seemed as if everyone knew everyone.
I had not been told about my final destination until the previous week before and had done little to prepare myself for the two years and three months that lay ahead. Misguided as it may have been, I assumed that the less I knew about where I was going, the richer the experience would be. I was probably wrong.
We disembarked after 12 hours of island-hopping from the capital island of Pohnpei, via the lagoons in Chuuk and stops in Guam and Palau, and were greeted by what looked like the entire island. We would later learn that because these 757s only landed on Yap twice a week and there was little else to do, many families would make the trip down to the airport to watch the plane arrive and depart again, whether they knew a passenger or not. Most of them, did, though: on this island of 8,000, it seemed as if everyone knew everyone.
Small World
Approximately the size of Manhattan—minus the buildings, concrete and people—Yap sits on the western edge of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), a gathering of small islands that became a country about 15 years before I arrived. Prior to World War II, the islands were claimed by various nations, including the Portuguese, the Germans and the Japanese. The islands became protectorates of the United States at the end of World War II, when U.S. forces moved from island to island in the Pacific on their way to Japan, removing occupying forces as they went. The FSM gained autonomy in 1986.
Source: Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) Government home page
One of countless outposts overrun and forgotten in the years after WWII, Yap has held fast to its traditions, turning down foreign investment, tourism and all the benefits they brought. While other islands in the region have accepted the shallow trappings associated with “modern progress,” the world seems to have passed by this small, proud strip of rainforest and mangrove swamp.
Source: VisitYap.com
Beneath the Trees
With the exception of a small town center and the airport (built upon a WWII-era runway), signs of the island’s population are almost completely invisible from above. Most homes, whether they’re constructed from fragile bamboo and wooden planks or modern concrete blocks, are hidden beneath quick-growth foliage. The few that can still be viewed from an eight-person German missionary plane on its way to Yap’s outer atolls are structures that date back centuries. Great mahogany trunks support peaked roofs of coconut branches, woven tight and held together by thin coconut-husk rope, soaked in mud for weeks before being rolled taut on a bare knee or calf. Beside each house, seemingly anchoring them to the soft ground, sit wheel-like pieces of stone money: heavy, traditional currency carved from the rock islands of Palau and brought by small sailing vessels generations ago.
Source: The BBC
The road that loops around the main island is new, built thick upon ground that will most certainly turn to loose mud in the long rainy season. Gardens of taro root, mangoes and flowers are carefully tended to; they’re necessary supplements to the steady flow of canned goods that have inundated the island since the air drops during the post-war period. Beautifully cared for with little more than a machete and a pair of scissors, village lawns invite potluck picnics and lazy, late afternoons.
The Eternal Sea
Travelers do come, but less for to visit the island than to experience the sea. A great reef surrounding the island is home to fish, sharks and turtles, all watched over by massive mantas milling away in the coral breaks on the northwest and northeast corners of the island. Lounging in the current as tiny feeders eat bacteria from their underside, they appear not to mind the divers who are clinging to anchored chains, trying not to be swept away. With the exception of small boat motors and flashing underwater cameras, nothing has changed beneath the waves, and it seems as if nothing ever will.
Source: Beyond the Reef
Chris Coats
Senior Writer
Senior Writer
© 2012 Dulcinea Media, Inc.
