I woke up this morning a little earlier in the hopes of beating a bit more of the heat for my run. I did the same route as I did yesterday.
A tale of two times:
This is not a good omen for the races ahead. This is not a good pace for my Apollo 11 goal of a sub-3 hour marathon at the end of May.
On the plus side, I did snap a photo of that JFK mural outside JFK High… which was established in 1959. I was confused until I saw a plaque saying it was renamed in 1966. I thought maybe Guam really was that far ahead of the rest of America, predicting JFK’s election a year in advance.
It was hot and humid and I walked a lot… as the times above indicate. I did stop for a shot at one of my favorite street names here in Guam. I appreciate naming roads after local people, honoring them for some reason or other, and the idea of including one’s title is fair enough. I could see a President or a Governor. But seeing “Attorney” as a prefix just kinda made me laugh. I can’t tell if the guy was insistent on always being introduced that way, “That’s *MISTER ATTORNEY* Alberto Lamorena to you, bucko.”
It’s clearly time for me to head home though. They pulled down the giant Guam Marathon banner at the PIC host hotel.
***
I was in a conundrum. I found myself wondering if I would regret not going to the Fish Eye Marina Park. Spite is a terrible reason to not do something. But was it spite? Or was I insulted? As I mentioned yesterday, I felt like maybe I was cutting off my nose to spite my face, a phrase intriguingly I first heard from MY attorney-at-law. I thought about going and just paying my $14. But it was fourteen bucks. For some reason that number really stuck in my craw…fish. Had it been ten bucks I probably wouldn’t have even had second thoughts. But there are inevitably lines in the proverbial sand, price points at which the cost-value curve hits a negative slope. And for me, a giant fish observatory in Guam, that price point was $4 over my maximum.
It looks cool on the website but…
And so while trying to get some details from the infuriatingly spotty WIFI here at the Guam Business Motel, I came across some more information about Pagat Point.
You’ll recall yesterday I questioned Google Maps having me “arrive” in the middle of a road and expecting me to pull off to the side of the road and bushwhack through the jungle. Turns out that’s EXACTLY what you’re supposed to do.
Here’s a screengrab of somebody else’s post about it:
I decided that I would do it. I wasn’t so sure about the cave or the cliff diving but the short hike sounded worth doing to get the view. I searched a few other postings and while you could pay for a tour guide to take you, I had a rental car that hadn’t seen a lot of action and a sense of adventure, so… I followed the advice of another traveler who said the sign was kinda hidden by foliage but hopefully there’d be other cars parked there to help “mark” the spot.
Figuring I’d pack a lunch to take with me on the hike, I tried once again to visit Chesa Guam — redemption number 1! They were open! I got a wrap, though the woman told me not to let it overheat if I was going for a hike and to eat it BEFOREHAND so the coconut milk wouldn’t turn. Coconut milk? ARGH!
For the record, I survived. And the chicken kalugen filling was definitely filling. It was pretty tasty.
Back on the highway, it took a few circuits of the road before I finally spotted a tour van seemingly abandoned along the side of the road. It had a sign on it that said, “Not locked; No Money Inside.” I guess thieves are prone to smash and grab stuff out of cars here at the Point. Swell.
Here is the decidedly obscured sign marking the trailhead:
Yeah, I definitely didn’t see that yesterday.
The “short hike” was billed as a mile with a caveat that it got pretty tricky around the limestone rock descent (and even more on the ascent back up). But whatever. I’ve run Leadville. I’ve hiked to the Hollywood Sign. I ran through the African savannah and slogged through the Antarctica gravel. I could handle this.
Turns out I’m not sure about that. I’m really not cut out for this at all.
I lost “the trail” once or twice going down… sometimes it LOOKED like a staircase of rocks or that the trail forked and I opted for the road MORE traveled… only to discover I chose wrong. Had I had my lucky double-sided coin, I’m sure I would’ve been right EVERY time.
My sense of direction proving once again impeccably poor, I got turned around… but after rappelling down an incline (I was NOT looking forward to going back up that way)…
…I eventually stumbled my way around to discover the cave.
Here’s the thing about this cave — it’s pitch black inside and I couldn’t tell from the description if I needed to swim through the inky black cave to get to the swimming hole or if I navigated through the cave to come out the other side to then swim through a hole to get to the secluded swimming section. Either way, let me be entirely honest with you. I’m no Luke Skywalker, no Rey… um… just Rey. This was no Star Wars. I wasn’t prepared to face my fears in the cave. Sure, sure. I had a flashlight on my iPhone and a pair of swimming trunks in my bag but I… well… I’d already been lost getting DOWN to the cave. Imagine what could happen in a pitch black cave in the jungles of Guam.
Somehow I felt like if I went into that cave I wasn’t likely to come back out.
Here’s a video look around as photos didn’t quite seem to convey the atmosphere. It could almost be a moment of Zen… if only it weren’t a moment of anxiety. Remember, this is at the bottom of the trail to the cave… and the trail up to Pagat Point is there… somewhere. See if you can spot it.
As a kid I was a pretty big fan of Douglas Adams. In the mid 1980s. for some red nose charity thing, he wrote this short story called “Young Zaphod Plays It Safe.” I was excited to read it as I was always a fan of President Beeblebrox from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; he did after all create the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. This novella/short story felt flat to me, all the moreso because in the end it’s such an anticlimax. To be fair, though, the turn is revealed right there in the title. Rather than do something or carry on with his adventure, young Zaphod plays it safe and does, well, nothing. I guess that’s a lot of the story of Hamlet too but there at least there’s a killer ending… ZING!
Anyhoo, this blog post’s story of me and the cave is rather similarly anticlimactic as I opted NOT to go into the dark, foreboding cave that honestly may or may not have been the right cave anyway. I even thought about titling this entry, “Old Man Kevin Plays It Safe.”
But this being the 21st Century, here’s a VR CGI dramatization of what I might have looked like inside the dark cave:
Pretty realistic, huh?
***
I did find a rock stairwell that seemed like it might lead up. Eventually I did find my way to the proper Paget Point… and ya know what? It was pretty. Was it worth getting lost in the woods and potentially dying of dehydration? I had already gone through my second water bottle getting here… and I still had to get back. But ya know what? Maybe. Maybe it was worth it…
Getting back proved a challenge though. If I got lost two or three times going down, I got lost twice as much going back up. As I said, rocks looked like stairways… and even though I occasionally found arrows pointing me in the right direction…
…I still got lost. So much so that sometimes I was off-track and must have blazed my own trail. How do I know this? Remember that rope I used to rappel down the stairwell? I never found that again. I went an entirely different way I guess… but ultimately I did make it back to my car.
I was sopping wet and a bit dehydrated… I can’t imagine why…
I hiked the trail. I got lost. And I made it back alive. All in all, there’s worse ways to spend a morning.
***
And now a moment of Zen from Pagat Point (sorry about the wind blowing out the mic…)