Our World Trip: Guam – a Pacific Island

Despite the best entreaties of Cunard to go on a tour and ignoring their simply useless port information, we decided to do our own thing and try to get a flavour of the island on our own by taxi. Overcoming a condensation problem with the cameras (humidity about 85% and temperature 32C) such that the shots of Miss Guam are a bit cloudy, we boarded the Buick and headed off.

First colonised by Spain and handed over to the US after the Spanish/American War, Guam has been an important military base for many years. The Japanese invaded soon after Pearl Harbour and occupied the Island somewhat cruelly until July 1944 when the Americans returned. Asan was one of two landing beaches and there is a Memorial Park on the site, so we started there and followed on with a visit to a private Pacific War Museum, run until recently by a US Marine Veteran who had been at the landings. There are a number of fully operational vehicles and recovered guns and planes at the museum, plus exhibits from both the US and Japanese standpoints. Very interesting stuff, particularly as 2 Japanese soldiers stayed in the jungle for 25 years and one for 30 years before surrendering! In fact the last one (Sgt Yoichi) had been on the island so long after the War ended that he was entitled to honorary US Citizenship.

Guam is about to have a huge influx of US troops when 20,000 Marines move there, with their ships from Okinawa, so the Guam population is looking forward to their spending power.

Without exploring square miles of jungle there didn’t seem to be a lot more to see, so the driver took us through Hagatna – the administrative centre featured by Cunard fro no obvious reason – and on to the shopping area of Tumon where the ship shuttle collected.

A poor imitation of an out-of-town shopping Mall, Tumon had either outrageously expensive shops like Bulgari and Louis Vuitton or total tat, so it was a quick look round to get the benefit of the air-conditioning and a leisurely Hard Rock Café lunch, before queuing with 1200 other guests for the bus home – ah well, the ship’s fuel must have been cheap! We used quite a bit of fuel reversing a mile into te basin before an 180 turn through the narrow entrance in a full scale tropical rainstorm

Commodore’s noon thought for the day included the fact that from the bridge of the ship they can observe 640 square miles of ocean, which must be pretty boring as we have seen nothing of interest apart from a few flying fish! Let’s hope they can spot Japan before we hit it tomorrow – the ship is obliged to turn off its C Band satellite connection when within 5 miles of the coast, so we shall lose Internet and Mobile Phone connectivity from the ship for the days near land. Slight correction to yesterday – the Mariana Trench is 7 miles deep!