Today was Paradise revisited day in Rangiroa. We were here a few weeks ago, and for today we decided to try to go over to the other part of the atoll to the village of Tiputa and visit it.
Tendering began at 7am but we didn't leave the ship until after 9 following a short wait. Others reported waiting some 1.5 hours to get off. Once on shore Angela asked a tour operator where the water taxi was, and we were directed to the other side of the dock. Shortly a small covered roof boat came and picked about 6 people up including 4 from the ship. The fare was 300 francs per person or about $3. It ran on a 30 minute schedule until 5pm.
Once we arrived at Tiputa, we walked to the post office/telecommunications office/ATM building. We also found a local little general merchandise/grocery store plus 2 others as we walked into village. We saw two churches (one Protestant and one Catholic) but neither were open. We walked about a mile down the main road, made a left turn, and found ourselves at a coral beach on the Pacific Ocean side of the atoll. We walked along the coral beach for at least a mile enjoying the many different shapes of the now calcified coral. From time to time we would walk in the tide pool, and Angela sat in the tide pool and allowed a large wave to break over her as I photographed it.
We even found teensy hermit crabs and played with them a bit. At one point the surf deposited a 3" long fish at my feet and it was thrashing around, so I scooped it up and got it back in the water. One small scoop for a fish; a large dose of satisfaction in helping a small creature.
On the way back to the water taxi, we encountered a couple ladies with coconuts. We admired them and in turn they gave us two. They absolutely refused to accept any money and wouldn't let us refuse them. I was able to open one without any tools using my new found skill at opening coconuts! We enjoyed the refreshing drink, and learned that this was really an immature coconut as the meat inside was like gelatin and hadn't hardened. We ended up bringing one back to the ship for future enjoyment.
After catching the water taxi back to the Avatoru village, we enjoyed a raw shrimp ceviche like dish at the restaurant on the left side of the dock as one faces way from the tender. It was quite good. We then headed off to snorkel at the public beach and had Deborah from the ship join us. Angela has been teaching her how to swim over the last few days and today was a breakthrough day. We even joke about adopting her. She's really progressed in losing her fear of the water.
After snorkeling (we saw quite a few fish) we walked back to the tender dock and shopped a bit before catching the last tenders. We were on the second to last and Deborah was on the last one.
After showering we went up to deck 13 above the Crow's Nest to watch sailing through the narrow passage out of the reef. Due to overcrowding we moved down to Deck 11 in front of the gym for an excellent vantage point. There were a few dolphins in front of the ship.
Once out in the open sea, we watched the sunset before having dinner in the Lido with friends. Annie Gong was the entertainment tonight. We've seen her before and she's a skilled Chinese accordionist. Peter Carey told an interesting story about his first trek to count seals at the Snares Islands. I started to watch the movie, "Love Affair" set in French Polynesia but gave up after 1/2 hour. Angela later said I really missed a good one.
All in all, I think we did our own EXC exploration today, and it was really enjoyable. It was also really good to do a repeat visit, and we are going to do repeat visits to Bora Bora, Moorea, and Papeete over the next week.
Tomorrow we are really going to do something well out of our comfort zone. Stay tuned.
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