So you enter and see lots of pigs, just wandering around, eating piles of feed the tourist paid a buck for and then just threw on the ground. There is the cheesiest Ghost House ever. Scariest thing in there was Stephen spooking me in the first minute as we walked in, then it was just funny.
The Ghost House is in the basement of the cable car building from which you take a cable car down the hill, and see all the falls as you go - and this is making you see the beauty of the area. The bottom of the falls is where you can swim, but it was full of tourists, so we decided to hike around and see what else was there first.The big attraction other than water that runs down rocks, is Yokoi's cave. Back when the US took Guam in WWII, a bunch of Japanese soldiers ran for the hills and hid. Some were caught, some died from food poisoning, but not Yokoi. He dug himself a "cave" and lived there for 28 years not knowing the war had ended. Then one day he was discovered by some Chamorros in the forest and the US military quickly deported him back to Japan where he is considered the ultimate hero.
While checking out this hole Yokoi lived in, a Guamanian came a long leading a tour. He was explaining the Yokoi story to his troupe in Japanese (i think) and then pulled us aside. He thought we were University of Guam students for one (he's a UOG student), and secondly he said his professor said this Yokoi cave is a fake and the real one is much deeper in the woods. We're okay with that though, because the funniest things were in the "museum of guam" on location. The museum is this maze of encased carved sculptures that has one scene of the native Chamorros and how they believe the island was formed and then the rest are about the different occupations of Guam. On each display the explanation is obviously in Japanese and English (if we can call it that). Some of the English versions, actually did not make sense the wording was so poor. And it also stated that WWII began in 1941...now I'm pretty sure I learned in history class that WWII began in 1939, but the Japanese joined in 1941. SO, we deducted this was a Japanese owned property there to celebrate Yokoi, and it's just sad that they didn't spend the money to get a translator that would write up the English versions correctly (at least grammar wise, I don't much care if they go with their version of history).
Now laughing quite a bit, we went back to the lower part of the falls, where the tourists were packing up to leave for the day. Once gone, we had the whole falls to ourselves. A few people walked by, but no swimmers. The river there has dug out a hole big enough to swim in but I wouldn't go in because the fish kept coming up to me and then Stephen said he thought he saw a snake - yeah, no way I'm getting in a confined swimming hole with a snake. It was cooling and quiet and peaceful (once the tourist headed out) and that is what we enjoyed the most.
Then it was cable car back up the hill and go home time. Not a half bad day here on Guam.
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