Your first view of the Rock Islands comes from the tender, and on day one, it’s the one that sticks. Hundreds of mushroom-shaped limestone formations, impossibly green, rise from water so clear you’d swear someone forgot to render it. The four-deck Explorer sits anchored in their lee, where the water flattens to glass. Beneath the surface at the nearby Ngerchong Reef – our first dive of the week – the coral is among the best preserved on Earth. This spot is genuinely, incomprehensibly pristine on a global scale. Turtles play in the shallows while lionfish lurk under the coral umbrellas. At the adjacent German Channel, Palau’s population of manta rays cruises through for pit stops at “cleaning stations”, where smaller fish pick parasites off the car-sized animals in an underwater highway that peaks with the tides. We just float here, kneeling in the sand, mouth slightly open, burning through our tank in bewilderment.
Ngeskill
The sound of the anchor chain grinding upwards serves as our alarm clock some mornings. Not every morning, but it is for this one. By breakfast, the Explorer has already slipped east from Mecherchar through the outer fringes of the Rock Islands toward Ngkesill, and we’re playing catch-up with a coffee, banana pancakes, and a briefing card. First up: a snorkel at Rose Garden, where soft corals gently sway in the current. The afternoon, however, is all about Shark City – and incredibly, despite the name, it is one of the most relaxed places to learn to dive.
Those without an Open Water certification can get a taste of diving with a one-on-one scuba experience alongside the boat’s dive chief. You’ll learn the basics on the beach before descending to a modest 12 metres, onto the bay’s sandy floor. Dozens of black-tip reef sharks pass overhead, their silhouettes cutting across the sun’s glare piercing through the surface. It’s shallow enough to feel safe, close enough to feel real, and calm enough to catch the dive bug that brings most here.
