Rangiroa March 25th

Not all South Pacific islands are outstanding in their beauty..... Almost hidden to the human eye, we anchored out of Rangiroa on March 25th nearly before we knew there was an island directly in front of us.....   Lying fairly flat in the ocean, Rangiroa has no magnificent towering peaks, and not even an abundance of foliage like most of the other islands we have visited.   Even though it is encircled by more than 630 square miles of lagoon, it only has 15 square miles of land!   There are only 750 residents on the island.   

Going in on the tender

The little pier with a few vendors at their tables to greet us

This is not to say it’s not beautiful.....  There were miles of white sand beaches, and there are over 250 small motu’s, or islands within the lagoon.   Inland, the coconut trees are bountiful as well as other trees and flowering bushes.   There is one main road and two small towns.  Most of Rangiroa’s residents live a very quiet lifestyle, a great place to get away from the tourism activity of the other islands.  Because of the size of the lagoon it’s a great location for scuba divers, and snorkeling is easy in it’s quiet, shallow waters.

Taken from the bus on our way to the Pearl farm

We chose to take a tour to the Pearl farm, as Rangiroa has one of the largest of all the islands we have visited, again because of it’s lagoon size and rich sea life the industry thrives here...    It was really interesting to watch as the workers go through all of the steps required to implant millions of oysters which will produce the beautiful black pearls the south sea islands are so famous for.  The employees range from those who bring the oysters up the pier to the implant station in wheel barrows, to those a little further up the scale who do the actual implants and grafting.  

We were first given a demonstration of each step

This is a picture of how the oysters are hung after

implantation... They will hang for up to two years 

or more before being x-rayed to see if the implant 

was successful, they depending on the size they

may hang for another year or more

Part of the implant process as the seed is put into the oyster

The implants come from the Mississippi River in the U.S.

In the store that sets along side the farm we seen loose pearls of all sizes, classes, and colors, along with jewelry sets... priced from $10 to $50,000.   

It was stifling hot and very humid so it didn’t take long to start “melting in the sun”.   After the pearl farm tour was over at 10:00 we were more than ready to return to the ship for a break, cool off, and later had a club sandwich for an early lunch in our room.  Then at 12:30 we tendered back and went on another tour....  This time we boarded a glass bottom boat......  It was a short tour, only an hour but we rode the small boat further out in the lagoon where he cut the motors and we floated for a good distance, seeing many beautiful fish, sharks, and huge mounds of coral.  


This was a funny tour, the first picture is the "Captain of our boat.... Little did we know that she had hired a diver to bring the fish to us..  Not quite natural settings but we did get to see a lot of fish......

Our Captain

The "diver" feeding the fish to get them close to the boat

He would attach bait on the end of the spear you see

next to him in the water, and stick it under the boat

by the glass in the bottom.  We laughed over his

antics to make sure their passengers got to see many fish! :)

Sharks and other smaller fish as seen through the glass bottom

Colorful smaller fish through the glass bottom

It was a beautiful, calm day at sea and we did float over beautiful Coral gardens and seen many of the large clams through the water

I can't say enough about how great the guys were that run our tenders at each port we could not dock at.   They were very professional and quite good sailors taking good care of us in all sorts of conditions.   I took this picture of the tender crew as we were waiting on some of the other passengers to return for another trip back to the ship.  

Returning back to Pier our tender crew was waiting

to take us back to the ship.

This is a picture of one of the tender boats that is carried on the side of the ship.   They were lowered at each tender stop, and the guys spent all day taking passengers back and forth.   The second picture is taken from inside the tender boat as we came along side the ship.  We had to step from the tender boat to the ship platform on arrival...  Some of the "steps" was more like a jump when the waves were big and the weather was rough like it was on Fanning Island.

Tender boat

Back on board early in the afternoon we decided it was a good chance to capture some quiet time for a nap......

Leaving the lazy little island of Rangiroa at 5:00, our dinner at 7:00 was wonderful.  we were served a delicious meal of pear & roasted red pepper salad, prime rib, baked potatoes & vegetables, ....topped off with a strawberry sunday with mounds of whipped cream and nuts and strawberries that were almost too big to fit in the sunday glass! 


Below is another picture of Jim and Mary "dressed for dinner". We took this as a self portrait setting the camera to do it's own thing, then running into position as it went off.  If I look like I just finished a marathon and posed, that's why... :) 

We are “at sea” today on our way to Nuka Hiva, where we will dock on the 27th.  Sad to say It will be the last island we will visit.   Today we have another cooking class scheduled, and will probably just wander around the ship to see what we can find after that.  We did get a notice in our mail box that one of the on board stores is having a tee shirt sale so I might have to check that out.....  It’s nice to have a slow day with not many events.