Guam 4: Tarague Beach Campout

One of the hightlights of our visit to Guam four years ago, was the campout at Tarague Beach.  It is organized by the Agat Church and Pathfinder Club.

Tarague Beach (clickable link) is on the Anderson Air Force Base, so you have to have special arrangements made to go on base, if you are a civilian.  I remembered this camping trip and wondered if we the church might be having one again.  So a couple months before we went to Guam this time, I contacted the church pastor to see if it was happening, and if we could come along.  He said yes, it would be the second weekend after we arrived on Guam.  We were able to make some pre-trip arrangements in time to get on the approved list.  Which mean that this weekend we were able to go on the Tarague Beach Campout.  Tarague is pronounced Tur-raw-gee.  Here is is more information about the history of the Tarague area. 

We arrived on Friday evening, just before dark, which was nice, so we could get oriented while it was still light.  The Pathfinder Club allowed us to use one of their tents and an inflatable mattress to sleep on

Kuniko, originally from Palu, cooked for everyone from the Agat group.  Two other Guam Pathfinder clubs were also there camping beside us.

The full moon rose orange, shortly after dark, right above the edge of the ocean. Many thanks to the Ironwood tree that helped me stabilize my camera enough to get a pretty good moon shot.

 It rained twice in the night, but for only a short time, so no one got really wet.

 Sabbath morning was beautiful. I got up just as the sun was rising and making the clouds by the ocean glow.

It was quite a warm day, so a little cloud of humidity seemed to be hovering around me, following me wherever I went.  I enjoyed being pretty free to do as I wished because I wasn't a Pathfinder member, nor did I have kids in attendance.

One thing that really caught was some black butterflies congregating around a tree.  Actually it wasn't just "some" butterflies, it was a very large number of butterflies.

 They are black with some tiny black dots on the outside wings.

When they sit down, they hold their wings shut and then only occasionally they will briefly open them so you can see their beautiful periwinkle blue circles they have been hiding.

I asked quite a few people what kind they were, and no one knew.  A few even said it was the only kind of butterfly on Guam, which I knew was not true, because I had seen others on island already.  This black one is just the most common one.

When I got back to wifi I had to do some digging to figure out what this butterfly is.  It was a bit tricky, because I learned that there are ones on different islands with different color patterns on the inside wings, that are still the same butterfly.  It has an amazing name of Blue Banded King Crow, Euploea eunice.  Here is an online guide to the Butterflies of Micronesia, by Ilse H. Schreiner and Donald M. Nafus, complete with color plates.  See page 23 and 24, color plate 7.

Another black butterfly I noticed was a type of Swallowtail, called a Common Morman.  It hung out in the parking lot a little while and then took off.

Sabbath lunch was yummy haystacks.  Afterward, everyone sat around and talked and rested through the hottest part of the day.

Around 4:00 the Pathfinders walked to some cave, and Rob and I headed out for a walk on the beach, because that is the place I always long to be, watching waves come and go.

The northern part of the island has lots of limestone, including the beach.  These rocky piles are made of limestone.

 
The sand varies in quality, but it is mostly white, with some tan/orange colored sand.

 Among the tan/orange sand is some star sand.

Star sand is just over 1mm across, and clearly star shaped. (Note the round pieces of "sand" in the upper right of the above photo, and their size relation to the star sand.)  It actually sticks to you more than ordinary sand, due to their tiny points.

Unlike most other sand on the beach, which is ground up shells and rocks, star sand is the exoskeletons of marine protozoa, called Foraminifera.  (The star sand in the photo below was photographed with my macro lens, and then enlarged on the computer.)

When the creature dies, the shells remain, and are washed up to the beach with the tide.  There is a famous beach in Okinawa, Japan with start sand, but the northern tip of Guam also has it.  I took these close up photos with my macro lens on white paper, once I was back at home

Another component of the sand is little round disks, some with holes. These also appear to be the home of some kind of organism, but I haven't yet figured out what.  They are much larger than the star sand, maybe 3 - 5 mm across.  If you know what they are, please let me know.

My favorite part of the beach walk was the waves on the reef, not far from the beach.

You could see a rise of water headed toward the reef, watch rise, crest, and then fall over the edge, crashing into white foam.

Over and over I watched this happen with fascination.  I love the changing colors, the movement, the beauty of these waves of water.

As we walked along the beach we saw the usual litter of objects in the high tide line.  Beaches on the Oregon Coast usually is full of driftwood, Kelp, broken shells, rocks and other natural items.  Occasional there are plastic items washed ashore.

On Guam the high tide line is full of non-biodegradable garbage from people, towns and boats.  There was an amazing number of flip flops in this beach junk, almost all missing their mates, except for the unusable aqua pair of in the above photo.  There were many plastic bottles, lids, and other mysterious bits of plastic.

I found a tooth brush, and even an intact light bulb.  It was burned out, but still intact.

Rob made the coolest find, just steps away from the light bulb, a small, glass, Japanese fishing float.  We found a few of those on the Oregon Coast when I was a young girl, but I haven't seen one out there since.

What I can't figure out is how all those Pathfinders walked by this place, and no one saw the float before us. 

We also saw Hermit Crabs everywhere.

Here is the largest one I noticed, and the smallest one that a Pathfinder found, just bigger than a grain of rice.

Most of the time if you saw a shell, it contained a hermit crab.  but a few shells were empty.

I discovered that bivalves are most likely to be uninhabited.  Money Cowries and Hebrew Cones are also usually up for grabs, along with Limpets.

On Sunday morning, I was out early to watch the sunrise again, which was good because it was a little bit different than the morning before.  The biggest treat while I was out was to spot a bird flying by.  Birds are not common Guam, due the evil Brown Tree Snake that eats bird eggs for dinner. 

While I was watching the sun rise to my wonderful surprise a Pacific Reef Heron flew right past me and landed on some rocks.

 I could only see it in silhouette, since it was between me and the sun, but I still found it beautiful and very special.

On Sunday morning the Pathfinders worked on camping skills, such as fire building.  Why do they need a fire when R45the temperatures are over 80 degrees?  I am not quite sure.  But they were learning to start fires without matches, in a rainy drizzle.  That's impressive.

I grabbed my paint kit, and decided to try a plein air watercolor.  The sea was looking beautiful, with several shades of aqua.  But just as I started to paint, the light changed, and so the colors changed, and I had to paint the colors from my imagination.  Then it started to rain, and I had to dash for the shelter.

After a while, I was back outside, at a different picnic table, and a different tree in front of me.  I guess that is one of the risks of plein air painting.

The painting is in my travel watercolor journal, to remind me of the lovely time I had at the beach on the northern tip of Guam.  

I hope my readers also enjoyed this mini vacation away from everyday life, and took a few minutes to breath deeply and enjoy the beauty of God's creation.