Republic of the Marshall Islands - Majuro

After a quick 2-day stop in Honolulu, Pearl Harbor, and some surfing on Waikiki we landed in the Marshall Islands. On arrival the place was beautiful, clear blue water, and palm trees lining miles of white sand beaches. The owner of the flametree backpacker hostel picked us up at the airport and we headed into the main area of town (the D-U-D municipality). As we approached town the reality of the place compared to our expectations began to sink in. Extreme poverty, very dirty, and whatever tourism industry had been here is now pretty much dead. One look at our room and upon the owners own recommendation, he politely took us elsewhere. We ended up at the RRE Hotel where they were very helpful and were able to rearrange our itenerary so that we had more time on other islands and less in Majuro. The next thing we learned was that the last dive operator had left town months ago so...no diving! The 4 days proved almost as disappointing. The local people here are not friendly, and if it's possible, even less motivated. The children here however are extremely friendly and love to try and talk to you every chance they get, I think they like practicing their English (Marshallese is mostly spoken but english is taught in the schools). Luckily with the help of our hotel we were able to track down someone to take us diving and had two great dives seeing whitetip reef sharks on both dives and tons of bright colored fish.

We also headed out to Laura beach on the tip of the island about 25 miles away from town and really enjoyed that as well.

Between Laura beach, the diving, and the tataki style sashimi at the Tide Table restaurant at our hotel we managed to stay positive and salvage the first few days of the trip. Definitely an interesting start ;)