I will take a moment to explain Micronesia because it is a bit complicated and provide a big picture look at it, then in later posts I will discuss our real time experiences at the different islands.
I had never heard of Micronesia before I watched Derek Zoolander being brainwashed to assassinate its president, so it was a bit of a suprise that this wasn’t just some made up Hollywood country. I guess Geography was never my strong point as Dean would attest to when he plays the daily Worldle game, and by far the majority of the countries that come up, I can never recognise let alone heard of, particularly those African in origin.
So we’ve established that Micronesia is real, the name of Greek origin meaning small islands. And this is apt since it is made up of 2000 of them covering 4 million sq miles. As such they have been ruled by many nations including Spain, Germany and Japan. From 1947 the UN awarded the US administration of most of the islands, after the defeat of Japan in WWII. After the transition period nations were then awarded districts and were able to form their own governments while still maintaining close ties to the US in order to get economic and defence support, US postal service/weather service/Coast Guard. It means they also use US currency which makes it easy for us as we move between islands.
Covering such a large area we won’t be visiting all of the districts that include Northern Marianas (formed in 1978), Marshall Islands (1979), Federated States of Micronesia (1982), Palau (1982), Guam (unincorporated territory of US), Nauru (Independent) and Kiribati (Independent).
Our arrival will be in Federated States of Micronesia that consists of the districts of Kosrae, Pohnpei, Chuuk and Yap and comprises of 41 islands, covering an area of nearly 800 000 sq miles, of which land area is only 270sq miles.
Lelu Harbour on Kosrae is our entry port. Thankfully for us, the boarders were open after Covid-19 closures, in time for this journey but we had to begin application to enter well in advance of leaving Vanuatu. There is a process to go through well documented on Noonsite and basically if you don’t get an answer from the formal agencies your last resort is to cc the local hardware owner into your email, and he gets things moving. We didn’t get that far and got a reply on our second round of emails and after filling in our forms received our certificate of entry. Closer to our time of departing Vanuatu we provided a better eta, but had to fill out the same forms again on a new letterhead reflecting a change in the departments name, and got issued a new certificate. So overall it was a fairly painless exercise provided you allow plenty of time.
Before we departed Vanuatu, luckily for us, the requirment for a Covid test was dropped and all that was required of us was to provide documentation of our vaccinations, of which we had had our 4th dose while back in Brisbane.
Run to Paradise 