Displaced Beachbums

The island-hopper from Guam to Honolulu follows this route: Guam-Chuuk-Pohnpei-Kosrae-Kwajalein-Majuro-Honolulu. We choose to get off on Pohnpei, Kosrae and Majuro. The flights go Guam to Honolulu on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays. The reverse route goes on Tuesday, Thursdays and Saturdays. You’re out of luck if you want to take a flight on Sundays 🙂 It truly is a milk run and I wouldn’t recommend it unless you plan to spend a few days on the islands. When you land, even if you’re not staying on the island, half the plane has to disembark so they can clean and inspect the plane. Time on the ground is about 45 minutes at each location.

After checking-in at the Pohnpei airport for our flight to Kosrae, we were advised there were mechanical problems (with the air conditioning) and the plane in Chuuk had to return to Guam. I wasn’t too sad because Continental gave us lunch vouchers for The Village Hotel restaurant and also a day room. Since it was going to be at least a 6 hour delay, we returned to the wonderful ambiance of the Village Resort, had lunch and a little nap. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

One of the things I love about traveling, besides seeing new sights and meeting local people, is talking with other travelers and hearing their stories. Once our flight was delayed, we had lunch with the Englishman who was on our tour boat the day before. What an interesting story: he had a very successful but grueling business in England for about 10 years and recently sold it. He used a portion of his proceeds to pay for a 5 month diving trip. He started in Eygpt and was going as far as Kosrae and had stopped at many places in-between. He’d already been to Chuuk and Yap when we met up with him in Pohnpei. He stayed at the same hotel with us in Kosrae so we had dinner with him there as well. It was fascinating to hear about his travels and which places he liked the best. Thailand was his favorite place.

Another interesting character we met was a mechanic for Continental. He flies on the plane through all the islands and gets off in Majuro. He refuels the plane at each of the island stops and is there for any mechanical issues. We ended up talking to him at dinner in Majuro and, again, an interesting story. He actually lives in the Philippines and takes a flight to Guam to start his workday. Now, that’s a lot of flying! He goes home for the long weekend (Thursday-Monday).

Three of the nicer hotels in Pohnpei and Kosrae are owned and operated by expats. Both Village Hotels (Pohnpei and Kosrae) are owned by Americans who found their way to the islands. The owners of the Kosrae Village have been there for 13 years and are super duper dive experts. Everything was tech diving, nitrox, etc. I’d be happy going down 20 feet!

The owners of the Kosrae Nautilus hotel are Australian and built their hotel 13 years ago as well. They left for eight years and their partner ran it until their return 2 years ago. Again, they are big on diving which is the thing to do in this part of the world.

Meeting all these wonderful “pioneer’ spirited people has FM and I really thinking and talking about what we want to do post-army.