Priest's Pools and Merizo Pier

These past few weeks have been packed with tons of fun in the sun.

For the middle child's birthday I and a few friends took the kids to Tarza Waterpark (same place we went for the oldest girls birthday).I'm beginning to think this will be a theme for all the birthdays here. That's fine though. Makes for a great day, and even the baby is a water slide junkie.

This past week was spring break, so it seemed as if all our friends wanted to go to the beaches. We didn't take the full week off from school, but we did manage to make it out to Gab Gab beach and Taga'achang beach during the week.

On Friday, we also managed to go on a short hike. This time we went to Priest's Pools, a series of cascading freshwater pools in a volcanic rock formation at the southern tip of the island. It acquired the name because priests used the pools to bathe in following their arrival with the Spaniards in the 1500s. I've wanted to do this hike for a while, and we managed to drag quite a few people along with us.

swimming in a pool

Following the hike and playing in the pools, we decided to head over to the Merizo Pier and jump off into the beautiful water overlooking Cocos Island. It was supposed to be a short stop, but we were having way too much fun and stayed for quite a while playing.

The oldest got this gem. I may have had some fun that day :)!

Such a great Guam day!

Taga’chang Beach

I keep saying I need to get back out to the beach. It's only been a few weeks, but it feels like forever. While it's nice seeing the ocean all the time, there's an aspect of dipping my toes in the water and sitting on the beach while listening to the waves that will never, ever, be replaced.

To that end, despite stupidly rolling my ankle while (of all things) getting on the elliptical this morning, we went to the beach again. This time, it was Taga’chang Beach, which is just south of Pago Bay on the Eastern side of the island.

Like a few of the beaches we've gone to since getting here, to get to it we had to descend the mountain. As with the others, the view from above was astounding

 As you can probably tell from the picture above, when we headed to the beach it was pretty cloudy. I banked on the direction of the cloud movement keeping the rain away for a little while at least so we could go out.Luckily, it worked! :)!

At the bottom we found a little cove surrounded by high cliffs.

looking north

looking south

Like so many other beaches, other people were a rare sight. The restrooms there are under renovation, but the work was so far away from the waterfront it had no impact on us and our visit.

view of the clear water looking out to the Pacific

We had a great time swimming, looking for shells and just sitting and letting the waves crash on us. The kids found large bamboo sticks to play with, and at one point the 4 oldest ones were trying to use them like rafts. Part of me wondered if they were trying to get away, especially when the middle one mentioned my previous joking comments about turning them into a Polynesian-style rowing team so we could island hop.

Unfortunately after only an hour we had to leave to ensure we beat the rain. It was nice to get out and enjoy the quite beach time that we already love so much about this island, though, even if only for a short time.