Ushi Point/Coke Bottle Hills Hike - Novermber 24, 2007

On November 24th, ten of us set off on an easy hike to look at a pile of coke bottles up by Ushi (North) Point. These hills of coke bottles are next to a latte site that was heavily disturbed by World War II.

As we met for the hike, the sky was very gray and it had been raining off and on all morning. Luckily for us, it did not rain on the hike.

I have to thank Jude and Mitch for the pictures for this blog.

This hike was through secondary forest that was composed of small tangantangan trees. A lot of these trees had been knocked over by different typhoons and storms that we have had here in the Mariana Islands. In the picture below, you can see Jude carefully steping over down trees as Stacy looks on.

I was a little off as we hiked into the jungle and missed the latte site and the coke bottle hills. We ended up near the shore. I asked the group if they wanted to wait in the jungle or by the shore while I looked for the coke bottles. They all decided to wait by the shore to avoid the mosquitoes in the jungle. To find my way back to the group, I had marked their location with my GPS. Below are Mitch and Erica enjoying the view from the rough coastline where the group waited for me.
So, I set off to look for the latte site and Coce-Cola bottle hills. I found the sites I was looking within 10 or 15 minutes. On the way back, I happened to bump into a big boonie bee nest. I was surprised that the nest was there since we really had not seen any on the whole hike.

After rounding up the group, we set off to the latte site and coke bottle hills.

Below is me sitting between two latte stones. The pillar stones are not very large, at the most one or two feet high. This site was heavily disturbed by World War II, but when the archaeologists surveyed the area, they found a lot of buried features. I happened to visit the site while the archaeologists were working here.

About 50 or 75 feet south of the latte site is the coke bottle hills. There are two or three huge piles of coke bottles left from World War II. Almost all of there are dated from either 1944 or 1945. Some of them even have names of different cities on their bottoms. In the picture below, you can see me sitting by the main pile of coke bottles.
In the picture below you can see more bottles and where some one had been digging in the hill, most likely looking for bottles with city names on them.

Below are Stacy and Mitch looking at the bottles in the hill. Even one Pepsi bottle was found by Ariuka.

The picture show how good the condition of the coke bottles are.

After the hike to the coke bottle hills, we walked down the road to White Cross. This cross commemorates the drowning of eight people that occurred in the 1970's. Also, next to White Cross is a memorial to more people that drowned in the 1990's. Usually the waves are great to watch from here, but unfortunately the waves were not too large on the day of our hike.
Below is a picture of most of the group. From left to right are Rick, Melina, Jude, Mitch (in the front), Erica (behind Jude), me, Aruika, and Dan. Pete and Stacy are busy taking our pictures.

Below is a picture of Pete trying one of the wild passion fruits that grows along the road.
On the drive out from Ushi Point, we were on the outlook for papaya that was low enough to pick. Pete wanted to try some. So as we got near the atomic bomb pits, we found a papaya plant that was low enough to pick the fruit from. Below is Dan holding some of the harvested fruit.
As we drove back from the hike, it started to rain fairly hard. At least for the hike, be avoid almost all of the rain. We did have a few light sprinkles, but nothing too serious.

Everyone was really impressed with the huge piles of Coca-Cola bottles that we found. As for the boonie bee count, there was only one, me as I wandered the jungle by myself.

The next hike will be on December 1, Saturday. We will be hiking the cliff line behind the high school to the Korean Monument. This cliff line has a lot of features left from World War II. There is even a cement lined tunnel. This hike should only take a few hours and may have some steep areas, but no cliffs to climb. Meet at 8 AM at Grace Christian School.