Learning the bus systems. . .

Some of the buses had the feel of a trolley

(The last few blogs were written a few days earlier and transferred from Facebook. This is today's blog.)

Yesterday, I was recovering from a migraine and touch of what I think was food poisoning. Who gets a migraine in a beautiful paradise like Guam? Evidently, I do. It was my first day on my own because Bob had business to attend to. I packed up my fabric sling purse with water, sunscreen, and maps and headed toward the nearest bus stop.

Tropical Necessities: Sunscreen, sunglasses and a hat!

I studied the bus map and schedule given to us by the hotel front desk but it was very confusing. It wasn't until I boarded the wrong bus that I learned that the map schedule actually covers about 5 different services which explained the overlap of colored arrows. The bus driver spoke to me in halting English and explained the various schedules. He was from another Mariana Island and spoke Japanese quite well. Many of the service workers speak Japanese which is important since most of the people I see visiting are from Japan. In fact in the four bus trips I took today, I was the only non-Japanese rider in all but one.

It is speculated that Guam's earliest inhabitants migrated from the seafaring people of Southeast Asia. The Chamorro people have similar cultural and linguistic similarities as the cultures of Malaysia, Philippines, and Indonesia. The Spanish arrived about 1521 with Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer who named the island "Island of the Thieves." On first contact with the ships, the islanders rowed out began helping themselves to all the items onboard. They didn't have the same concept of ownership and intended to trade. The crew fired a cannon to scare them off but later they did trade items with the native people.
It wasn't until 1565 that Spain claimed Guam as their property and another two hundred years until it was colonized.

In 1895, Americans captured Guam during the Spanish-American War. We felt it strategically made a great warm water base near the Philippines, another area we had colonized and let us keep a good eye on Japan. It was ruled by the U.S. Navy, in fact, the governor was the Navy Commandant. Guam wasn't really taken seriously as a base by Congress until after World War II.

War in the Pacific National Historic Park

A few days after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, they invaded Guam and took possession and kept control until 1944. The other Northern Mariana Islands have been under the control of the Japanese sinceWorld War I. These events combined with the proximity to Japan has made Guam a favorite tourist spot for Japanese.