Double the fun at Double Reef

Last Sunday Nick and I hiked to a secluded beach called Double Reef. By secluded, I mean it takes an hour of traipsing through the jungle, navigating a dizzying maze of spiderwebs and trudging across a sharp, wobbly limestone forest before you get to said beach. The plus side is when you get there, you have the whole reef to yourself.... two of them, in fact! (Double the reef, double the fun...).

One of the fun things about this hike is that we got a new fancy camera! It's a Canon digital SLR with a zoom lens, and wow, I am so impressed what a difference it makes in photo quality. I saw this shot and thought, hey, I look like a professional hiker! Now I just need to figure out how I can get paid to boonie stomp...

While we usually only boast and brag about the underwater nature shots Nick captures, we can now show off some of the wildlife on land we were able to capture on our journey to the reef.

Not a bad view from the trail  

There were a whole lotta spiders with some pretty impressive web networks. 

They are like spider condominiums and that drywall they spin is unbelievably strong.

 This one is a good five inches across... creepy, yes, but there's very little risk of getting bitten considering how many of them there are. 

The mosquitos are waaaay more of a nuisance.

In addition to the bugs, we also saw a couple of wild boar, and we heard one of the notorious barking deer not too far from us (it sounded like a dog with labor pains)! Halfway to Double Reef, we took a detour to scale a big wall and climb up into Tweed's Cave. George Tweed was a navy guy who escaped the Japanese during WWII (all the American military on Guam were taken prisoner to Japan). He hung out in this obscure cave and the locals brought him food for three years to keep him alive. His knowledge of the area ended up being very instrumental once the U.S. Marines came to shore to free the Guammies on what is now Guam's Liberation Day.

 

On our way up the wall, we ran into this guy... we saw quite a few of them, actually!

The only other place I've seen these monitor lizards is out on secluded Cocos Island. This one must have been honoring the Sabbath day because he didn't want to leave the middle of the trail despite us sneaking up on him. Just chillin.... 

He made quite the little model for us!

 

A little perspective so you can see how big he is

And a close-up so you can see that pretty face

 

A refreshing break from spiders and lizards

 

Once we got to our private, beautiful crystal-water, secluded beach, we made the transformation from hiker to snorkeler and hit the reef. Because the reefs here are so secluded and don't get near the amount of traffic of the more accessible shore dives, the reefs are much more vibrant with sea life. So while we didn't see a ton of new stuff, we saw a flourishing amount of the regular stuff. Where a school of fish we are used to seeing may have 15-20 fish, out here it seemed like it was in the 100s. Pretty impressive.

Still haven't figured out how I can be a professional snorkeler either...

Nick found the biggest snail we've ever seen on Guam... maybe anywhere for that matter

Dogface Pufferfish... arf!

  

Seahorse + snake = pipefish... 

that's not evolutionary math, just my description of this weird looking thing

After an hour of snorkeling, we hiked back out the way we came. Another fantastic afternoon in the jungle and the ocean and that ever glorious sunshine. I love it when Guam decides to show off!