Pagat Cave

Josh’s and my second big outing here on Guam was a hike to the ancient Chamorro village known as Pagat. The village is uninhabited now, and in fact, is believed to have been so since around 1700. So, most evidence of the village has long since been destroyed, but what remains is quite fascinating and lovely. As we are learning is the norm here on Guam, the hike began through a fairly dense jungle. Jungle hiking is always beautiful, but also always quite hot and mosquito infested! Fortunately, we have finally learned to travel nowhere if lacking sunscreen and bug spray, so this wasn’t as much of an issue as it has been in the past. (“Be Prepared!” is now our motto too, along with the Boy Scouts!) Personally, I was more concerned about how steep the climb down through the jungle was…what goes down must go up, and I was not looking forward to going up! It also seems to be the norm here on Guam to find ropes strategically placed throughout the hike to ensure all hikers go home at the end of the day in one piece. I suppose hiking here is just not for the faint of heart! At any rate, we braved the heat, bugs, and slippery slope and made it through the jungle to the highlight of the hike—Pagat Cave.

Pagat Cave is located in a sinkhole at the entrance to Pagat Village. (I can’t imagine the ancient Chamorros left their village very often after personally experiencing the hassle of reaching it!) There are two rooms in the cave—the front room is dimly lit by light seeping in from the outside, but the back room is pitch black. This would be interesting to explore to begin with, but now add in the piece de resistance—both rooms are filled with water! Apparently, this cave was the fresh water source for Pagat Village. For two water lovers (a surfer and a swimmer), this was pure heaven! Exploring the front room of the cave, commonly known as the Wading Pool, was fascinating, but our real interest was vested in reaching the back room. However, reaching the back room of the cave was quite literally a tight sqeeze! There is a very narrow “hallway” between the two rooms, and as someone with a slight distaste for small spaces, I can’t say that going from room to room was the best part of the day. What I can say is, it was well worth the trouble. The back room of the cave is huge, big enough to be commonly known as the Underground Swimming Pool. This swimming pool is a bit different from the ones I am so accustomed to, however. For starters, there are rocks on the bottom, and sometimes rocks poking out the top. So here, swimming would be better known as swimming with obstacles! Now, factor in the total and complete lack of light…swimming with obstacles would now be better known as swimming blind. It’s amazing how much you miss one of your senses when it is suddenly taken away. Something that would be beautiful normally becomes slightly scary and intimidating. Fortunately, Josh had been warned to bring a flashlight so we were able to swim in the dark and in the light. And after I encountered a few rather large cockroaches in the light, I preferred swimming in the dark!

Once we left the cave, we continued to hike through the village until we reached the coastline. The coastline here consists purely of high cliffs of limestone rock. Unlike most of Guam, there is no coral reef offshore here, so the waves break directly on the cliffs. This made for beautiful scenery and a great soundtrack! We explored the coastline for a while and then finally began to make our way back to and through the jungle. The ascent was every bit as undesirable as I had anticipated, but I would (and I expect we will) do the whole thing again in a heartbeat. How blessed we are to live in such an amazing place!