Where shall I start?
Nakesa
Mon 10 Sep 2012 17:54
Where shall i start!
I know its been a long time! Last post we were just entering our first of
the Tuomotos Islands..it seems so long ago!
Well we had a few days visiting Makemo and then Tahanea. The weather was
not that good and we felt a little remote, however the snorkelling was out
of this world, lots of sharks and endless coral gardens...We were about to
give up as the atolls are quite challenging as one enters normally through
a narrow pass between breaking surf and often with a strong current. The
islands are only about 1m high and so in strong winds you feel very
exposed! We decided to vist one last island Fakarava...and here we fell in
love. The weather changed, there were a few restaurants and a great resort
for lunch, Aston and I went diving on the reef and then the following
morning I did a deep drift dive through the pass with 400 sharks. Amazing!
We were met by 'Cant' and 'Double Brown' and celebrated Johns birthday,
this amounsgst other things included a game of 'dodge' ball in the street
with some local kids and I manged to catch a ball badly dislocating my
finger...here started weeks of pain and my first excuse for not writing
for so long.....it is just about bearable to tap at a keyboard now!!
You can navigate down the lagoon in Fakarava, this is difficult in many
islands due to coral heads and reefs but we motored the 35 miles down to
the southern pass for lots more fun with the guys on 'DB' and 'Cant'. This
included another great dive with about 200 sharks in the pass...probably
my best dive ever!
We also had the great pleasure of befriending the Salmon family who own a
resort on a small 'Motu' (island) nearby. The grand daughter was styaing
with them who was Atlanta's age and so she ended up spending every
afternoon fishing and exploring on the beach of her own private island!
One evening on picking her up the Grandfather returned with fish caught by
the guests. Cleaning the fish attracted about 12 sharks coming in to the
landing stage to feed on the spoils! A young guest was putting fish heads
on a rope and pulling the sharks out of the water as the feeding frenzy
got more and more excited..at the very peak the family dog (a small one)
decided to join in the fun and jumped into the middle of the wildly
thrashing sharks......we feared a very grizzly end to the pet but to our
suprise the sharks got very scared and fled back into the pass...not to
return despite the food being thrown in the water...so its official sharks
are scared of dogs!
We aslo befriended the son Aroma. Many of the dive instructors had the
most beautiful tattoos and whenever I asked I found they had always been
done by Aroma or his brother. So next stop Tahiti and a visit to Tika Hiri
which is not only a tattoo shop but the name of theri rock band which is
pretty outrageous...see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky925tRRXeE you
will see what I mean!
Also in Tahiti were our dear friends 'Tranquility' ...more on this in next
episode..there is still a months worth of stuff to tell you about but my
finger hurts!! and the internet is expensive here (second excuse for not
posting for a long time)!!