date line

My friends and I took a sixteen day trip to Yap and Palau (with layovers in Honolulu and Guam) that involved a total of seven flights, six hotel rooms, and three time zones (other than my own).

All that schlepping around paid off. We got lots of sun to cure our winter blues. We went diving and saw so many sharks, mantas, and Technicolor fish that it put Animal Planet documentaries to shame. And I don't care how much you go hiking and camping -- you haven't seen stars until you've sat on a dock or a darkened boat in the middle of the ocean off of a private island in a remote corner of Palau (which is already a pretty remote place). Ridiculously fantastic.

The trip back took almost a whole day door to door, spread out over three flights with some layover time, but we crossed the International Date Line, which meant that despite traveling for almost a day (and feeling like we had traveled for about three days), when we landed in San Francisco, it was less than two hours later on the same day as when we took off.

Trippy.