Guam, U.S. Territory
I was able to change the tee time to 10:30 from 8:45. Customs at 8 and then off to the course.
Every passenger had to go see the custom agents. The little form was given to one of the 12 officers that were processing passengers. If you had something to declare you were immediately labeled (sucker) and sent to another line. If you checked “nothing to declare” you were moved along quickly. The tall round container that the collected forms were put into filled up quickly. I’m sure they will be sorting these later. The processing went smoothly because the officers really didn’t do anything. Some were busy with donuts, others asked about the golf game as we had our clubs in tow. Processing is in the dining room. For good reason. HAL takes care of these officers with lunch when they are finished. Free donuts and lunch? I’m sure there is no issue with getting officers to volunteer for duty and I’m sure there are very few, if any issues getting the ship cleared.
The course was about 8 miles away and we were able to get a taxi right outside the port. It was hot and humid. The taxi was expensive and we paid almost as much for the taxi as we did the round of golf. Travel was slow. About 30 mins to get to the course.
The folks at the golf course knew that we were from the ship and were interested in hearing about our adventure. They know everyone that comes to play the course and we were definitely “outsiders”. They really went out of their way to take care of us.
We were ready to go at about 9:30 am and they let us start early. We started on the back 9 as there was a larger group starting on the front.
We missed the sign on the cart that says “cart path only” and had our cart lock up in the middle of the fairway on hole 10. A few good shoves got it moving again but this rule really slowed play down. We might have played faster if we had a pull cart.
The course was in good shape and the greens fast. A good amount of water in play but not so much jungle on the sides of the fairways to loose balls in. Balls in the pro-shop were $10. Not a box, a ball. Glad we had plenty in our bags.
We finished our round at about 2:30 and called our taxi driver. Raphael showed up quickly and soon we were back in port.
We watched the ship pull out of the harbor during dinner. Only 130 miles to our next port in Saipan. We will be crawling to get there.
Evening entertainment was a movie (with popcorn). We decided to play cards out on the back of the Lido deck. My lead diminished by one.…