Guam part II

What's the best way to celebrate no longer working? Going on a tropical paradise vacation with the bonus of it being a port call and getting to see your husband! Last year I couldn't do any port calls because I was working and we were saving for our cruise. First half of this deployment I was also working and we had just gotten back from our cruise so taking time off right away probably wasn't the best of ideas ha. Timing wise worked out perfect, I knew I wanted to stop working when the outdoor pool closed and the boat was hitting Guam a few days after. It was meant to be :]

When you book for a port call you have to be open to things changing last minute. I mean that is our life with the military after all ha. Thankfully the date only changed one day forward. A friend and I who were flying down together decided to do stand by the day before we were suppose to leave since that was now the day the boat was getting in. It was really easy and we both ended up with either our own row (Sarah) or one person at the other end of our row (me). It was a night flight so we didn't get into Guam until about 2:00-2:30 in the morning (Guam is a 3 1/2 hour flight from Tokyo), had to take a short cab ride to get my first rental car (since we got in a day early I couldn't pick up my other car until later in the day), then went through some hoopla to  get checked in at Sarah's hotel for the night. By the time this was all said and done we were finally in bed by 4:30 in the morning and had to be up in 3 hours.

Not a bad view to be waking up to though...

 

After grabbing something to munch on and figuring out how to get to base we were off to pick up our men!

 

Once we got to base we had no idea where to go to meet the guys. We ended up going down a dead end but got to see the nice beaches they have one base. As we were taking this road (above) to see where it lead us we saw a bunch of cars parked and people we knew waiting at this parking lot. Found out from them that the pier was down the road but we couldn't go down, instead we had to wait up top. Doesn't help that we have no way to communicate with anyone ha. We did find out that they had two different types of buses taking everyone off the boat. One school buses were going to the Exchange and the charter buses were going to a hotel out in town (central drop off/pick up for town). The white school buses would go slow and randomly stop as someone on them would see their spouse, but the charter buses were flying by. At this point Sarah and I weren't too sure what to do but figured we could go hang out at the NEX if need be and find our husbands there.

After a little while one of the charter buses stopped.. which was odd since they weren't dropping off on base. Some guy got off the bus waving his arms (it was pretty far down the road by the time the bus stopped) and then started yelling. It was Franklyn :] I asked if he knew he was on a bus heading out in town.. nope had no idea ha. Needless to say he was pretty lucky to have spotted me on the side of the road. After waiting some more for Sarah's husband we decided to just go to the NEX. Sure enough he was on the buses behind us!

At this point it was time for me (nobody else was hungry) and thousands of others to squeeze into the food court and eat!

Since we were taking Sarah and her husband to pick up their car we decided to see if our original rental was available yet. It was ready but of course it couldn't be easy! They didn't want to run our card because it is a debit/check card. Things is, I never set up the debit part so the card won't even work as debit. Because of this they kept telling me they would have to put a huge hold on the card. Being the budgeter that I am I had already budgeted for vacation and that amount was not included. With no wifi to check our account it was making for a very stressful time. I would say it took a good hour, but everything worked out and shocker they weren't able to put a hold on our card because they couldn't run it as debit.

We figured that was the last of our worries and we would check into our room and go relax. Not so much. First off I have never seen so many people check into a hotel at once. I really wish I had a picture, there was well over a 100 people in line. At least 45 minutes later we were heading up to our room. I had been told the hotel was outdated  compared to the pictures, but that's pretty much typical on Guam I guess. So that part didn't bother us, what bothered me was that I paid extra for an upgraded king and we had two doubles. I would have even been okay with two queens as least. I already knew that they had upgraded others who were not satisfied with their rooms, so my room that I paid in full for was pretty much given away. And with the hotel being completely booked at this point we were stuck. Not happy! The only thing that made it manageable was the fact that the AC was really cold on average and we could turn it down even lower at night so we could squeeze into a small bed and not sweat like crazy. A bonus, we got a military discount of free wifi and a discount at breakfast! After that whole day I was physically and emotional spent. I decided to end the night with a bath (it was only 7:00.. maybe haha) and then we just laid in bed watching TV.

Off to explore the island while rocking my $14 sunglasses ; ]

 



 

 

Love this sign!

 

No idea what is with these.. but it was fun coming up on them.

All of those pictures were taken on the South/West sides of the island on our drive. It was so beautiful on that end. You could easily go to Guam and not need to venture to the other side.

*The rest of the pictures were taken on my phone so they are in the previous post.*

 

Our third day together was also our last. Frank had duty the next day so he had to be back to the boat that night, but that morning we found out they might be recalled the next day due to a typhoon that was heading our way. We spent our last day together relaxing at the beach and snorkeling. Very much appreciated.

 

The next day the boat left early and it turned into a girls weekend our last few days in rainy paradise. Made a stop at Ross (much larger than we thought it would be!) but were overwhelmed with how busy it was so we checked out the mall in hopes of finding maternity stuff. Come to find out Ross and the Exchanges are the only place you can get maternity stuff! The next day myself and two friends headed up to the air base to check out their Exchange. Stephanie and I hit the jackpot on maternity clothes. After we were done shopping we headed down the other side of the island and stopped and had lunch at Jeff's Pirate Cove before heading back to my hotel for a lazy night. 

 

My wifi wouldn't let me connect so I called the front desk to get it figured out only to find out I had been checked out. Umm strange since I had one night left and I was still very much there. They figured it out but my only guess is that because so many people checked out early due to the typhoon my paperwork was accidently included due to someone not paying much attention. The next day when I went to check out for good it made for a headache because they were telling me I had to pay for one extra night. After 30 minutes it was all straightened out, however, it would have been nice if they put a note on my paperwork explaining what happened so I didn't have to go through it twice.

 

All in all it was a nice little (almost) week long get-a-way. Of course it would have been nice to have more time with Frank but 3 days was much better than nothing.