Rangiroa
Blue Sky's Voyage
George & Michael
Sat 3 Jul 2010 05:22
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Hello
Friends "14:58.0S
147:38.4W"
We've been exploring Rangiroa - or
at least the bit around the larger pass into the atoll. Depending on how far you
zoom into the googlemap you can see that we're tucked into a sheltered corner of
the atoll, just to the west of Passe de Tiputa, Tiputa being the very friendly
village on the other side of the pass.
The principal attraction here is
the snorkelling - both in shallow water inside the lagoon and also drifting with
the current in the pass.
Just in the lee of a small
sandbank inside the pass is an area the locals call "the Aquarium" which is a
great area to see the tropical fish. To some extent the fish congregate when a
boat arrives as they are accustomed to being fed by the dive boats with
tourists.
Here's a few underwater photos
courtesy of Greg's underwater Lumix camera.
these little fellas are everywhere
around the dinghy when you pick up the mooring and are very tame
 and the clams - maybe the size of
your hand - are brilliant blue or purple
 this one we called a unicorn fish,
but we don't know what it really is
 and these bright little chaps are
everywhere and swim right up to you as well - we saw them in the fish counter at
Carrefour in Papeete
 and you may be thinking that all
this looks good fun - so did Greg
 We also did a drift snorkel in the
pass, which is amazingly deep and has very steep sides. You get dropped off as
far to seaward as you dare (it's rough) and drift back inside close to the steep
coral walls. This wasn't quite so good as the water was a bit turbid with the
swell crashing on to the reef outside and washing bits in with the tide.
But we did see a full size shark
swimming past below us, fortunately occupied with other matters as well as huge
shoals of fish close to the wall. We also saw what we subsequently identified as
a stonefish - terribly poisonous of course - which looked very odd and which
Michael poked with the tip of his long fins. At least we know what to avoid in
future. I'll leave you to google a picture of a stonefish as we didn't have the
camera with us.
Tomorrow we hope to sail across
the lagoon to inspect 'the Blue Lagoon' which is a pool inside the thickness of
the atoll perimeter on the SW side. Again, I think you can see this on
googlemaps.
Other than this, there's not too
much to report. The weather has not been entirely to our liking though the fresh
winds keep it cool and the bugs away; however the occasional squalls are rather
irritating !
Best wishes from
Rangiroa
George, Michael and
Greg
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