Sunday, February 23, 2020

[GUAM] Dolphins and Fish Eye Marine Park

The thing about weekend trips is you don’t really have to preoccupy yourself with too much luggage. With just a backpack, I checked out for the day and headed to Sheraton, one of the pick-up points of the tour service I booked for Fish Eye Marine Park. You can sit on one of the benches in front of the hotel under the shade. Sheraton is also one of the stops of the tram buses that connect the many hotels and shopping areas of Tumon and Tamuning. The bus parked, I hopped in, and we picked up several other passengers in neighboring hotels.

There is no shortage of beaches in Guam. It’s a small island on the Pacific. Of course, it will be surrounded by beaches. As such, you don’t really have to venture far away from where you are to get your own spot of sand with those turquoise waters in the background. If you decide to go on a road trip, the views promise to be nice. Fish Eye is not that far away from Tamuning, give or take around 20 minutes by car. The tour bus will obviously take a bit longer because of the many passenger pick-ups along the way.

And so, what to see at Fish Eye? It’s a marine park where you can choose from several activities such as snorkeling, beach walking with that astronaut-like helmet on your head, fishing. The main attraction here, though, is the viewing deck under water. Once you reach the venue, you have to walk a bit on the canopy bridge with gorgeous beach views all around. You will then reach what appears to be a small hut. Get in, it’s air-conditioned if I remember it correctly. You then have to descend the spiral stairs to reach the sea floor. Since you are technically under water now, the white walls will glimmer in light blue.

There are portholes of different sizes spread out in that tiny observatory. The spiral staircase is lined with benches should you need to take a rest. The portholes have info boards below or above them with descriptions of various fish that you are bound to see once you peep out of the window. Sometimes you will also see some scuba divers practicing here or feeding the fish. To be honest, the observatory is not that deep. Should there be a freak accident submerging you all under water, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t take an able-bodied individual that long to swim back to the surface.

I only spent around 20 minutes down there. The tour company gives you only that much time. After all, there isn’t much to see. After that, you will head on to your dolphin watching tour, which takes another 25 minutes on the bus. This is farther down at Piti. You will be transferred to your group’s speed boat. The whole return trip at sea including the dolphin-watching activity itself clocks in at just an hour. Your enjoyment will depend on how ambitious the dolphins are that day to take a shot at stardom at Sea World. During our visit, there was only one eager dolphin that did a somersault. That’s about it.

Don’t worry, I wasn’t disappointed. I enjoyed the cool breeze at sea more than the dolphin sightings, to be fair. What follows is buffet lunch at the restaurant across the highway from Fish Eye. Since this trip happened towards the onset of the pandemic, the absence of tourists is already very obvious. After the sumptuous lunch, I was back at Sheraton and my friend decided to drop me off at the airport early. Bored, I took a Stroll back to Guam Premier Outlets to watch Parasite. The airport is just a ten-minute Stroll ride from GPO after all.

I still had enough time after the movie to shop a bit for gifts and vitamins (Buy 1 Take 2) before heading back to the airport. Since Guam does not see that many flights on a daily basis, check-in and TSA were a breeze. And that has been my short weekend Guam getaway. Like I already said in the previous blog entry, this has been a pleasant surprise, and what started off as a trivial attempt to up the country count eventually became a memorable trip.

 
[GUAM] Dolphins and Fish Eye Marine Park

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