Scanning tunneling microscopy of freshly cleaved NbTe2 van der Waals surfaces reveals that Te vacancies regularly appear in the topmost chains of the Te surface layer. As a result of reduced symmetry with regard to the parent Cdl(2) structure microdomains of three possible orientational variants are formed, separated by ortho (60)- or meta (120degrees)boundaries, while the para (180degrees)-boundaries are not detected. Regions close to the boundaries are often modulated with periodicities of the adjacent domains, confirming that the boundaries in neighboring Te Nb-Te triple layers do not necessarily coincide. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.