Waterfall Valley and Black Sand Beach … jump right in!

Today, Anna and I hiked out to two different destinations. The first, we had visited earlier this year with my parents and the second was a brand new hike (for us at least).
The impetus for the hikes today is that there is another group of six cadets from the Air Force Academy. They’re again visiting Guam to get an idea of what the “real” Air Force is all about. My part in that was to show them what the “real” Guam is all about.
We started down south with a very pretty valley that contains 5 waterfalls very close to each other. However, we spent most of our time at the last two.
As you can see in these next few pictures, we decided to jump right in! Don’t worry, the water was plenty deep. Also, it’s brown because there has been so much rain lately.




I know you can’t really tell from this picture, but here Jamie is just about to complete a one and a half flip. He almost made it all the way around. I give him a 7.0.




The only hard part about jumping in (although it was sorta fun), was that you had to climb back up the waterfall to get out.

Here are four of the six cadets.

This is everyone who hiked with us (except Anna and me who were taking the pictures).

Just the cadets again.

Here are some of the guys trying to look tough (or perhaps thoughtful … I’m not really sure which).

Here is the other waterfall we played in. It was a lot smaller, but fun to get behind the falls.

The girls were having lots of fun playing in the falls.


You can see in this picture of Lindsay of just how muddy the trail was.

That concluded our hike to waterfall valley. After we (sort of) cleaned up, we jumped back in our car, drove 5 minutes north and parked at the Talafofo Bay trailhead. Although we didn’t really follow a trail, we went coast steering to reach the black sand beach of Guam. The beach is black due to the presence of the mineral magnetite (a form of iron oxide). A large quantity was carried to the beach by a nearby river, and kept there by wave and current action. Although, it was most likely deposited originally by the volcanic activity that formed the island. It’s interesting to note that magnetite is the most magnetic of all the minerals on Earth. If you hold a magnetic to the sand, it will pick up a number of the grains. Another random fact about this fascinating material is that crystals of it are found in numerous animals (including humans).
In fact, the black sand is also useful to write messages on your back.

Another interesting use of magnetite sand is as war paint on your face. These guys were imagining what the ancient Chamorro warriors were like.

OK, so this little guy’s shell didn’t blend in too well with the black.

Here are the cadets again.

While the black sand was very pretty (and certainly unique), the beach itself had a LOT of trash on it. Perhaps it was just washed up from local fiestas, but it basically ruined an otherwise beautiful location on Guam. Unfortunately, it’s an all too common occurrence here to find a spot that could be simply stunning that is marred by an abundance of trash. So, if you ever visit or live here, please help clean some of it up, even if it’s one piece of trash at a time!
Overall though, it was a great day of hiking. We enjoyed hiking with the cadets and other CGOs from the base.
We can’t wait to go again. Our time here on Guam is drawing to a close (we have about a month left), so we’re trying to get everything in that we haven’t done yet. So much to do, so little time…
Until the next adventure.
–Jim