January 25th, 2024

Since we were docked overnight in Papeete we did not have to wait for anything this am to get off the boat. They actually announced that we could get off the boat when we docked at 8:30 last night but none of us knew that so very few people went out. Not sure what we would have done if we did go out.

We did catch the full moon off the back of the ship though.

You can see Moorea off to the left.

Kathy was doing the ships included 2 hour walking tour of Papeete and I had arranged to dive with a company I have used before. Kathy’s trip was at 8:30am so she got off before me. I packed up and walked a little ways to the tourist office and waited for a pick-up. The pick-up turned out to be a very nice Mercedes van taxi anti was just me. The driver was a very nice Tahitian lady who told me a lot about the country during the drive. We ended up on the other side of the island and the dive shop is actually part of the Intercontinental Hotel.

It was a little overcast when we went out but lucky for us it never rained. The boat ride was not bacd and you can see Moorea off in the distance.

There were 5 divers and 1 divemaster so not too bad. The first dive was a wall dive and we did see lots of stuff.

This is part of the wall and if you look closely you can see a small turtle that looks like coral in the center of the picture.

We also saw 5 black tip reef sharks that were hanging out in the sand. We watched them for a few minutes and every now and then 1 would move around or swim away. They never came close to us.

Kathy did some of her walking tour but was not really interested since we are lucky enough to have been here twice before. There were several Viking groups walking around and a lot of people were peeling off the groups and doing their own thing. I was thinking that after the dives I would meet Kathy and we would go back to the market and look around. What I did not realize is that Tahiti does 2 tank dives differently and you do the first dive from 10:30 to 11:30 and then you don’t go back out again until 2pm. So I let Kathy know I would not be back until late. The dive shop manager came out and let me know that I could use any of the facilities at the Intercontinental Hotel so I started walking around. The have a cool lagoon that has turtles in it and they actually rehab turtles who have been injured by propeller blades.

One being rehabbed and it seems like the vest helps the turtle float but also keeps the shell together. The other one was just hanging out on the bottom.

They also had a beautiful pool and while Kathy said it was stroming in town we had sunshine so I enjoyed the pool for a bit.

You can see Moorea through the trees.

The second dive was a much swallower dive and there were a couple of wrecks intentionally sunk to make artificial reefs. The sun was out and strong and the water color was fabulous. Made you want to jump in.

The beautiful color

The had a plane and a medium size boat to swim around.

They also had this weird venue of a desk and chair. The dive master motioned for me to sit in it so he could get a picture. Just goes to show that you can work anywhere 🙂

We also got a picture near the plane wreck.

They had lots of coral heads with tons of little fish and I also asked for a Nemo.

They are bigger than the nemo we are used to but still very colorful.

I loved the 2 yellow fish in front of the coral and on the right I loved the small black and white fish. I believe they are a form of clown fish.

This one was cool because of all the little baby fish between the 2 heads of coral.

This one just had a ton of fish in it in all different colors. The dive site was called Aquarium and you can see why.

After the dive I was able to rinse off all my gear and let it dry a little and then they called the same taxi driver to take me back to the boat. Kathy had stayed on after she did her walk about and said that everything was very expensive including the flowers in the market which we remember being very affordable in the past. She said even a small bag of chips in the market cost over 6 dollars.

Since it had rained most of the day in town we were greeted with a double rainbow.

They brought locals on board for a native dance show and then we had dinner with 3 other couples including Roger and Marilyn who dove today but with a different company so we could hear their experience.

We left port at 7pm and heading to New Zealand so 5 days at sea and we actually cross the international date line so January 29th will not exist for us. We will go straight from the 28th to the 30th.