Location: Palau
Today, we had the WWII history tour. The group was picked up from the boat around 8:30 this morning and started the two-hour boat ride to Peleliu, singing in the pouring rain on the way there. The tour started in the Peleliu State capital building where we walked through a small museum with rusty guns and lining the hallways. On the tour, we saw many rusty tanks with flowers growing out of them, abandoned buildings in the jungle, and downed planes still sitting in the mud. Our last stop on tour was the One thousand-man Cave. The cave was only tall enough to stand up in a select few places, so we crouched most of the way through an elaborate cave system that had been blasted into the ground during the war. To the distress of Lainey, Reagan, and Annabelle, huge spiders, cave scorpions, and bats were regularly seen crawling on the walls and ceiling. Nearly everyone had a bat fly straight into their face. During a post-tour snack run, U.S. Army troops mistook us for a group of Mormon missionaries despite our provocative shoulders and ankles showing as we sipped our coffee. On the boat ride back, Austin was almost thrown off the boat when his cushion slipped underneath him on a turn. The skipper of the little speed boat was whipping around tight corners and threading the needle between rocks. Once we got back to the boat, it was time to shower. Normally, we are not delayed when it comes to showering; however, today, we had to wait to shower because there was allegedly floating excrement in the ocean from the heads. After waiting ten minutes to get into the water, some took advantage of its exfoliating qualities (photo attached). For our nightly squeeze question, I decided to ask everyone to come up with a fun fact that seems to fit the person on their right. Answers included falsified identities and double agents, a horseman, a middle school science fair paper airplane champion, a baby teeth-hoarding psychopath, and a guy who had a small book of jokes growing up.