Saturday, September 16, 2016

It was our day off, so we decided to go to Managaha Island which is a small islet which lies off the west coast of Saipan.

“It is the burial ground of the famous Carolinian Chief Aghurubw, who is said to have established the first Carolinian settlement in Saipan in 1815. A statue of the chief commemorates his achievements in leading his people from Satawal after a devastating typhoon to Saipan”. We happened to be there on the weekend of their 46th annual celebration of this event.

The ferry ride to the island was free because of the weekend celebration and we arrived on the island at 11 am.

The celebrations started with a church service in the morning.

This was followed by presentations and traditional native dances. Complimentary food was available for the celebration and it included, rice, fish, chicken, roast pig and ham.

It is a very small uninhabited island but there is a shop and a restaurant on it. There are several activities available on the island, such as swimming, snorkeling, scuba diving, parasailing and boat rides.

Micah and Blake went parasailing and snorkeling and I took advantage of my time on the island to go snorkeling. There were all sorts of unique looking fish among the coral and I was able to capture some of them with my camera, however, some of the other, more unusual fish didn’t want their pictures taken.

We took the ferry from the island back to the Saipan mainland at 3 pm and drove to Ben’s house.

Ben had invited us to come to his house for 4 pm, where he and his wife, Linda, treated us with a wonderful meal. After the meal, they surprised us, by giving each of us two Saipan T-shirts in order to thank us for the work we had done on their house. It was a very humbling experience.

If you look closely at the picture, you will see that Ben is not a very large man, but he told us that he used to weigh 296 pounds and he had lost most of his weight by watching what he ate. He told us that he used to eat rice with every meal and he hasn’t had rice for 3 years.

We were all quite tired from our day’s adventure when we got back to the campsite, so we finished our day with a light snack and some lively conversation.