We Love Guam! (2 of 3)

The next few days of our Guam trip consisted of a little shopping, shooting at a gun range, watching Dark Knight and going for a scenic drive around the island.

As you may recall from a previous post, Guam is home to the world's largest KMart. After having been there, I'm not sure if it is the largest, but I will say that it's pretty big. The carts seemed especially huge, though. We're getting pretty used to the little tiny Japanese shopping carts so the carts at KMart seemed enormous! They also had a HUGE selection of SPAM-turkey, Italian, hot and spicy, bacon, garlic, etc.  I had never seen so much of it in my life. 

We also finally got to watch Dark Knight. They have it here in Japan now, but we hadn't gotten around to watching it. We scored a matinee so we both ended up watching it for only $8.50! I really enjoyed it, but I thought it was a little lengthy. Two and a half hours is too long for me. 

Before we left for Guam, Travis made it very clear that he would really like to go to a shooting range if we could find one. Unfortunately, we did find one. It was extremely overpriced, but as soon as we walked in, the owner said, "You guys get 50% off." Umm...ok. Guam is a hot spot for Japanese tourists. There's a ton of duty-free shopping on Guam and it's a short flight from Japan. I would venture to guess that 90% of all Guam's tourism is funded by Japanese tourists. That being said, nearly all touristy activities are overpriced because Japanese tourists have the incomes to support it. Since the shooting range owner could tell that we were obviously not Japanese and knew that the pricing was nuts, he gave us half off. I wouldn't exactly call it fair, but I wasn't going to argue.  Anyway, we ended up shooting there for a little bit. We chose a package that included a Desert Eagle and an M-16, which was pretty cool. 

The individuals working at the shooting range definitely could have used a gun safety tutorial from Max Thornsberry, but we did manage to survive unscathed.  Below are a few pictures from our shooting escapade. I will admit that they are a bit disturbing, but the shooting range dudes insisted that we take them. I did a little extra "work" to them in iPhoto so they'd be even more disturbing. Enjoy!

I'm thinking this one will be perfect for this year's Christmas card.

Travis and I decided we wanted to see as much of the island as possible, and because Guam is a tiny island, it wasn't that hard to do. We drove around the southern part of the island and stopped at various attractions along the way.

This guy was just laying beside the road. This animal is indigenous to Guam. It's kind of like a water buffalo. It's called a carabou.

This photo is of one of the highest points on the island. If you look closely, you can see crosses at the top of this mountain, Mt. Humuyong Manglo. The crosses were placed there by faithful Catholics who trek up the mountain annually on Good Friday. 

Here we are at the Cetti Bay Overlook. We enjoyed a spectacular view at this stop.

Another view from the Cetti Bay Overlook.

We also stopped at Talafofo Falls on our drive. I won't go into much detail here in the interest of time and space, but it was by far one of the weirdest and freakiest tourist attractions I have ever been to. If you want to know more, just ask. 

This photo of the Falls was taken from a cable car. We had to ride down in little cable cars to see the Falls up close. It's also important to note that near these falls is a cave called Yokoi's Cave. Yokoi's Cave isn't actually a cave. It's more like a small hole in the ground. A Japanese soldier, Shoichi Yokoi hid from U.S. soldiers in a small hole near Talafofo Falls for 28 years during the War. He was eventually discovered in 1972 by two hunters. Kind of a random tidbit I just threw out there, but it is pretty crazy to think that some dude lived in a little hole in the jungle for 28 years because he was too scared to come out.

One of the most famous Guam tourist attractions in Two Lovers Point. Two Lovers Point is said to be where two lovers tied their hair into a single knot and plunged to their death in the waters below. Apparently the girl was a daughter of a rich Spanish aristocrat, and she had fallen in love with a young warrior from a Chamorro family. She got word that she was supposed to marry a Spanish captain so she ran away with her Chamorro boy. They were supposedly chased by Spanish troops to the high cliff. That's when they tied their hair together, kissed and jumped. So sweet, isn't it?

The view from Two Lovers Point.