I was up pretty early, so after breakfast when there wa no sign of others I worked on my journal. Late in the morning a group of us (Sue, Bill, Kyle, Stacy, and I) jumped in one of the cars and drove out to the Hotel Nikko - according to the Lonely Planet one of the nicest hotels in Palau and with fantastic views. Well the hotel was pretty eerie - completely deserted and shut down, but most of the doors were open - maybe renovations are going on. We hiked up the hill behind the hotel to where there are a couple old anti aircraft guns. The views were nice, but spotty as they were also very overgrown. We explored a bit - the guns, some of the rooms, and the grounds (even went in to the lobby).When we left we drove down to the water below the hotel, through one of the local villages (supposedly very traditional, but it looked completely modern). Back at the house we had lunch, then jumped back in the car and stopped at Fish'N'Fins (a dive shop) we talked to the manager for quite a while. There were lots of mutual friends via the Jesuit House, so she's going to give us the local rate for diving - a major score. She also had a lot of other suggestions for what to do in Palau. We arranged to rent an outrigger canoe from her tomorrow to spend the day exploring some of the nearby rock islands. After we swung by the house and picked up Todd then headed out to PMDC, a Mariculture Center on the adjacent island of Malakal. The center is similar to MERIP, but much bigger - maybe 50 or 60 raceways instead of eight. Their mostly raising giant clams - some much larger than at MERIP - and I took a lot of photos of their incredibly colored mantels. They also had a few turtles - including one very large (5+ feet) one that was also very curious. We also jumped in the water right offshore to see some of the giant clams on the reef. By the time we got back to house I was exhausted. I used the rest of the evening to sort through the 150 photos I'd taken - even after being brutal I still ended up with more than 40 I wanted to keep. Some of the others went out for beers, but I was exhausted and tomorrow is going to be a early morning and a long day so I just went to bed.