Aside from being a major stash of Palau’s World War II heritage and a great spot for SCUBA diving, Peleliu Island is also a fairly good place to pack up a tent and a bag full of food and just sit around on beaches for a few days.

My days on Peleliu relied less on my watch and more on very fluid notions of what time meant. After “get up in the morning and snorkel” I generally transitioned pretty easily to “have breakfast and talk a walk in the jungle”, though for the rest of the day it was often a tough choice between “naptime” and “snorkel again” and “read for a bit”. On clear nights, though, “have a play at long-exposure photography” was the obvious choice.

Eventually, when one campsite grows boring, there are always more to be found. My favorite was on a little isthmus of land between two lagoons, with a strong breeze that usually kept the deservedly infamous sand-flies at bay.

The fact that the sun set just behind one of the lagoons didn’t hurt, either. With pasty skin like mine, I need all the lingering last rays of light I can catch!

My last day on Peleliu I climbed the island’s hill, hoping for a decent sunset before I headed back to the ‘big city’ of Koror.

I got my sunset, but what I didn’t expect was the island-spanning rainbow in the opposite direction. Which is, I can report, an excellent send-off from a tropical island.

So, Peleliu isn’t exactly an adventurous destination, but its calmness and quiet makes it worthwhile for a few days of doing very little ay all. My only advice is to think carefully and diligently follow your camping checklist – there are very few services available around the island, so this is not somewhere you want to be caught without the essentials. Particularly given the nice breeze and agreeable weather a high quality beach tent could be of use here, but be sure to pick up something with a rain cover in the event of a quick storm blowing through.