Location: Still at Tahanea

We had a special start to our day today. John on Orcinius had been cooking again (he is quite the Renaissance man, like Bob) and called late last night to say he had made quiche and invited us for breakfast! And the timing is perfect because although they get up early they don’t eat until after 9 am! So we waited for the call and rowed over for a fabulous breakfast of quiche, Bloody Marys, coffee and sliced pears. Yum!

After breakfast we all decided to go ashore and investigate our surroundings. Back to Charisma to get our swim suits and pack a lunch and back to Orcinius to pick them up. We anchored the dinghy just off of the “beach” (really it’s just coral, so didn’t want to drag an inflatable dinghy over the sharp rock) and waded ashore. We then proceeded to work our way to the other side of the island to explore the shore. It’s all of 100 yards so not that big a deal. And what fun we had. We found moray eels, crabs that stood on their back legs with their claws in the air backing away from us, groupers, and best of all John and Bob danced with the black-tipped reef sharks. Kind of. John was wading in waters that kept getting a little deeper when suddenly he was surrounded by 4 or 5 reef sharks. He scared them as much as they scared him. Which of course caused him to jump up and down in a little “reef shark dance”. Bob didn’t know what was happening but he saw John “dance”, then he saw the sharks and “danced” a little himself. We also saw a 15″ Grouper very close in to shore. Good hunting.

Then we decided to cut across the island back to our side and find the dinghy. With Bob leading the way we crashed through the jungle trying not to get lost. I meanwhile kept my supply of cheese and crackers and Gatorade that was in my backpack a secret. I have learned that with Bob you always need to be prepared. Fortunately with Lisa in the lead at the halfway point, we found the other side. And not more than 100 yards down the beach we looked up and saw a very narrow sandy cut through. Oh well, no adventure in taking the easy way back.

Our dinghy was anchored right off a little shack on the beach (where the seasonal workers who harvest the coconut trees for copra) very conveniently had a bench and a table. We even think that the half plastic bottle tied to a stick might have been a tip jar. However since there was no Wi-fi we left no tip. But we did enjoy the cheese and crackers prior to wading, now waist deep, back to the dinghy to return to our boats. It was 4:30 by the time we returned. Where does the time go!

Tomorrow, we’re going to do a “Pass dive”. You take the dinghy out the pass into the open ocean at slack tide and drift in on the incoming tide past the sides of the reef. John and Lisa will do the actual diving as they have tanks. Bob and Ann will do snorkeling and have the dinghy tied to a leash on one of them as we float/drift on the incoming tide back into the lagoon.