The boat is fueled. Frosted beer bottles glint in the ice boxes. The provisions are stashed, and we are about to go and find ourselves our very own desert island.

We're in the right place for the quest. Here in the Republic of Palau, Micronesia, nestled between the waters of the Philippine Sea and the vast North Pacific, there is no shortage of desert islands to choose from.

Micronesia itself is a water world of islands scattered over an area as large as the United States. The population, by contrast, is roughly equivalent to that of Rhode Island, the smallest state in the U.S.

A few islands are squalid. Some may or may not be dangerously radioactive. But many of them are gems.

There's Truk, with an entire Japanese invasion fleet complete with tanks, nearly 60 ships, submarines, planes, cutlery, sake cups and luckless skeletons, swathed in sponges and crusted in corals, sitting at the bottom of its huge lagoon. There's Yap, justly famed for its manta ray dive sites and its improbably gigantic stone money. Forget your wallet. Order a truck. Some of these Yapese "coins" weigh almost 5,000 kg.

There are the 1,000 reefs that comprise the politically troubled Marshall Islands. There's Guam (but the less said about Guam, the better -- it's pretty ghastly), gentler Saipan and, although we haven't seen them, the stone ruins on Pohnpei and Kosrae that are said to rival the giant sculptures on Easter Island.

Then, of course, there is Palau -- which, happily, is where we are. The Rock Island archipelago here has been described as the crowning glory of Micronesia. It is certai nly the crowning glory of Palau.

There are some 200 rock islands clustered close together, roughly halfway down the Palau archipelago. Most are uninhabited. A few have simple guest shelters erected by either the government or Seventh Day Adventists, who proliferate on Palau.

The procedure for staying on your own Rock Island is simple. You take a boat, choose an island you like that doesn't have a stoned hippie or some meathead with a ghetto blaster sitting on its beach, and then you stay there for as long as you wish. Choose with care, and it's yours and yours alone.

You need to be self-sufficient (and that includes taking water) but all camping gear and necessary supplies can be rented or purchased in Koror, the country's capital. Koror, due to Palau's links with the United States, has all the mod cons from doughnut joints and motels to over-priced resorts and usefully stocked supermarkets.

If you arrive at Christmas, you'll even bump into a U.S.-style car parade headed by a sweating islander crammed into a Santa Claus suit, throwing candy at heat-wilted kids.

It's odd the way American culture superimposes itself in this country, in the form of recklessly discarded Coca-Cola cans and imported TV-dinner obesity, particularly in Koror. In one restaurant overlooking a floodlit sea heaving with darting yellowfin tuna, we were informed that there wasn't any seafood available. They were waiting for a frozen shipment from the U.S.

But we digress! Many of the Rock Islands resemble mushrooms wearing emerald wigs of tropical jungle. The curious shapes come courtesy of wave action and the magnetite teeth of an unassuming mollusk. The chiton is an algae grazer, but with every rasp of its mouth parts it also breaks away minute fragments of coral limestone, accelerating the process of erosion at the islands' bases.

Another peculiarity of the Rock Islands is their numerous lakes. The largest, 2.4 km long and 60 meters deep, is to be found on Eil Malk, which also has Palau's hottest lake (37.4 degrees). Spooky Lake has plenty of hydrogen sulfide gas plus some really unusual plankton, and when it comes to marine invertebrates, Jellyfish Lake simply cannot be beat. Literally millions of jellies pulse effortlessly through its slightly brackish waters, attracting National Geographic film crews, wildlife celebs like David Attenborough, and mere mortals such as ourselves, in search of a swim with a view that is nothing short of alien.

The jellies are unaggressive and are reputedly without stings. However, our dream-like float through the surreal clouds of animated underwater parachutes was interrupted by an aggrieved bellow. The cry from our fellow swimmer, in pure New York English, said, in effect: "I'm going to sue the guy who said these didn't sting." He had decided that it would be amusing to put one large purplish jelly on his head. With sadly predictable results.

The Rock Islands are just the green tips of a marvelous marine iceberg that draws snorkelers and scuba divers from around the world. But the marine life isn't the only attraction.

The Pacific War hit Micronesia hard, and Palau was no exception. "Not many people lived here, but many came a long way to die here," was one islander's verdict. World War II left Palau's islands riddled with a morbidly fascinating honeycomb of tunnels, bunkers, rusting tanks, planes and guns. It also left the coral reefs and sandy sea-floor littered with aircraft, ships, barges and an American submarine that sank after its own treacherous torpedo doubled back on itself. Diving around them is great fun.

Palau's marine life, due to a happy confluence of three ocean currents, is some of the most abundant and dramatic in the whole Pacific. Don't just take our word for it. Jacques Cousteau himself declared the Ngemelis submarine cliff that plunges nearly 300 meters into the dark to be the best wall dive in the world.

Corals, sea fans, groupers, reef sharks, teeming shoals of barracuda, sea turtles and giant clams weighing up to 450 kg are just some of the sights. Incidentally, giant clams, like the chitons, subsist on algae. They do not close their hinged shells on the legs of divers. That's a myth.

But enough chat. We've got our desert island to get to. And, oh . . . the agonies of choice!