This morning… or maybe it was last night? I can’t tell anymore… but at some stage in the not too distant past, I texted back and forth with my brother. He asked me when I was due back to the continental US and I said I had to be in Boston for their marathon this weekend. I also told him I think maybe I overbooked days here in Guam. Not that it isn’t a lovely place, it’s just I’m feeling like maybe I’ve built in too many days to the schedule. I knew I wanted to fly directly to Boston from here on my United mileage ticket rather than heading home and then buying another ticket to Massachusetts. All things being equal, I suppose bumming around a tropical island is preferable to spending extra days in the oddly frigid BeanTown. The weather is looking chilly and rainy for Marathon Monday which is kinda a bummer. So I’ll take humid, hot, and occasionally drizzling here in paradise for a bit longer.
I don’t have a plan but I have a napkin. Scribbling on the back of a local eatery’s serviette, I jotted down a few sights the internet says one should see in G…uam. I was going for the rhyme and then chickened out. So now I’ve just made it awkward. Why should today been any different than any other day, right?
Because, as you’ll soon see, awkward hits new heights… or depths… during my Around The Island Tour of Guam!
My napkin says:
- Two Lovers Point (Sometimes it’s listed as “Two Lover’s Point” — I’m not sure but I think the apostrophe is in the wrong place)
- Tolofofo Beach – green sand!
- Magellan Monument
- Fish Eye Marine Park
Based on that list, I put the destinations into the google maps machine and… presto! Today’s itinerary plotted!
I began the road trip ‘round by heading for Two Lover’s (Lovers’?) Point. This is the legendary spot where two star-crossed lovers were cornered by both their own Chamorro people and the Spanish Army led by the girl’s arranged marriage fiancé. Choosing eternal love as opposed to mortal separation, our tragic heroes intertwined their hair (no, really… the legend says they braided each other’s hair together) and leapt off the cliff as one, death by loving suicide. If you believe that sort of thing. Anyway, it was a whole thing and eventually somebody commemorated the story with a large bronze statue.
But in 2002, strong winds or a tsunami or something toppled the couple. The statue was deemed too mangled and too far gone to salvage so it was sold for scrap. No lovers then at Two Lovers Point. Cut to 12 years later when a woman moved to the island and fell in love with a native. She heard the story of the statue and asked him to help her track down the statue to see if she might be able to save it… and it turns out her beloved was the guy who bought the thing for scrap but couldn’t bring himself to melt it down. The statue has returned and honestly I much preferred the Part 2 story to Part 1. But then I’ve always been a sucker for a romantic comedy.
The lookout also offers some pretty spectacular views of the island… and offers lovers the chance to prove their love with a $6 lock on SOME (but not all) railings. I saw something similar in Paris and my then-girlfriend and I were tempted to add a lock… only to discover this was a very recent “tradition” that was causing various bridges around town to buckle under the added permanent weight of thousands and thousands of locks. I sometimes wonder though if we’d still be together if I had spent the euros back then.
Wandering the place alone, I tried to fake a shot of a lover embrace… I kept messing up the angle and it was a fiasco. I got some weird looks from people too but ya know what? I’m never going to see these people again… so I just kept shooting. I never quite got it but maybe the unrequited love pose is all too befitting for the location, for the story, and for me in general.
Hilariously awkward or just straight up awkward? I’m leaning toward the latter.
The single lover feels like something I’ve seen in detective movies when our gumshoe has to pretend he or she is NOT following somebody and ducks into a corner as if stealing a romantic moment. I’m sure I have seen it somewhere but I think the first time I ever saw the single lover charade was courtesy of the mid-80s game show “Body Language.” Celebrities were paired with normal every day folk and given clue words they had to act out via charades. The clues filled in a mad lib style puzzle and you had to solve the riddle to win fabulous prizes. On one episode, It’s Your Move star Jason Bateman was given the clue “making out” and he immediately went into the solo lover pantomime. Decades before he starred in the big screen “Game Night,” Bateman proved himself a star player.
***
I circled the perimeter of the island in a clockwise manner, coming to what I thought was the Tolofofo Beach. This is supposed to be one of the few places on earth that has green sand. It has something to do with the lava content and various other geological whatzits. I was never very good at science. Anyhoo, I was excited to see the green sand and imagined it as otherworldly and the color of unripe bananas… or Kentucky bluegrass which I know isn’t blue and is grass rather than sand but you get what I’m saying….
I was disappointed that it wasn’t greener. It just looked like wet sand to me more than anything else. But it was a different color to be sure.
Is this in fact a green sand beach? I don’t know. Sure. I haven’t ever bothered to pay a fact checker before so why start now?
Getting back into my car and driving on, I thought, “Maybe the sand is always greener on the other side.”
***
I kept seeing signs for this place along the highway and I suppose it’s akin to South of the Border or Wall Drug back on the mainland.
It’s a restaurant-cum-resort-cum-tourist trap. I was underwhelmed. But I was intrigued that they had a metal sign promising a Lent Menu. Maybe the Spanish Missionaries who helped colonize this place have had a lasting impact. Religious colonialism makes me sad. I didn’t stay long… just long enough to snap a selfie. What? Hypocritical is VERY 2018.
***
Though not on my list, I opted for a detour to Talofofo Falls. It was twelve bucks to get in and for a while as no one was around to work the cable car down to the falls, I thought I’d been ripped off. Only later did I realize I was ripped off in the weirdest, strangest, and yet oddly… compelling way.
Here’s what was included with the price of admission. To be honest, I’ve seen much better park guides…
Like the one in Japanese that was pretty slick… and glossy!
As the cable car was currently dormant, I opted to start in the Ghost House. This walk through haunted house was… well… imagine the scariest thing in the world. Now imagine the exact opposite. Here’s a video moment to illustrate:
There can be only one way to review this Ghost House:
From there I was able to find a cable car operator and get loaded up for my journey down the falls. Here’s a time lapse vid of the ride:
You had to visit Talofofo Falls # 2 before # 1. I might have renumbered them but, hey, go with the flow, yeah? A few shots of the water works for ya:
The grounds also included the Yokoi Cave. At the end of World War II, three Japanese soldiers retreated into the jungles of Guam. They carved out tiny holes to hide in during the day, believing the war carried on and the Americans were hunting them. Two of the soldiers died of starvation in the early 1960s. Shoichi Yokoi carried on until 1972 when an Aboriginal Guamanian found him and brought him up to speed. For 28 years, Yokoi lived in that cave, surviving in the jungle, alone and feeling hunted. He returned to Japan a hero but what a life of hardship and misery. His cave was smaller than a Smart Car.
I was really hoping the Museum was a Hall of Fame for the Greatest Guamanian Beer Surfers. Alas, it was a six or seven room diorama overview of Guam’s history that seemed a bit superficial to me. Neat to see, I suppose, but I was really hoping for a Beer Surfer Exhibit. Why even HAVE a beer surfer statute outside?
After a ride back up the cable car…
…the visit concluded with my asking that question quite a bit. As I approached Love Land and saw this sign, I was laughing and thinking, “oh, ho, ho. This will be funny…”
As I left, having strolled through some weird chicken wire and plaster of paris statue garden that felt like a far less classy, dare I say crassy version of Eyes Wide Shut, I was thinking how I’m a prude and kinda didn’t need to see the Kama Sutra sculpted in such three dimensional detail. It was one f’n weird place… it was a boinking weird place… “boinking” is the right 1980s television show approved euphemism.
And yes I took photos but I feel really weird about it. You come here for the articles, right? Not the photos? Besides, I think I’d need to put some sort of age verification paywall or something to post them. I will say I understood the gist of most of them… but the dog in overalls looked like something out of Luc Besson’s Fifth Element.
Kinda Mangalorian, like this:
Okay, okay… here’s the statue at Love Land, Guam. It’s “Safe For Work” as the kids used to say:
I know I’m not exactly Mr. Grey of Fifty Shades fame, but seriously — what’s up with the dog, Love Land?
***
I made the drive to Magellan’s Monument. It was… underwhelming. Admittedly, after seeing a plaste nude woman astride a giant penis like it was a fixture on an erotic carousel ride, almost any monument would probably have been a let down. The moral of the story is that one should go COUNTER-clockwise in driving around Guam so you can build to the… (ahem)… climax of the sights courtesy of Love Land.
I mean, it’s a obelisk. As obelisks go it’s okay. It’s not the greatest obelisk I’ve ever seen. It’s fine. Whatever. Nice view at least. But it was a long way to come.
***
Even though it was on my list, I decided to skip for today the Fish Eye Marine Park. I have to leave something Tuesday and Wednesday. I did pass it on my way back to my hotel… turns out I also passed it during the marathon. I could hear the waves gently crashing on the shore, but it was so dark (have I mentioned how dark it was?) I never saw it. And I certainly didn’t remember seeing the long pier into the water with underwater viewing. It was a surreal experience to be driving the roads I had run (ok, ok… stumbled) just over 28 hours before.
I stopped for lunch… and got it to go so I could dine outside at a local park. Not a bad way to end the road trip.
***
In the closing kilometers of the marathon yesterday, I passed a mural with one of those multidirectional signposts showing points of interest. I tried to do a shakeout run this afternoon … it went slowly and poorly further shaking my hope for a sub-3 hour run in just over 6 weeks. But I digress… the point is, the sign posts indicate I’m doing okay at randomly finding what I’m supposed to be seeing on this island.
By the way… this is Bear Rock. I didn’t get a great photo as I used the why-even-bother-having-it zoom on my iPhone.
***
And now a moment of Zen courtesy of Talofofo Beach: