Island 4: Rangiroa

Our last stop was Rangiroa, which was the exact opposite of Bora Bora. It is an atoll, and basically just a ring of land – quite a few places you could see water on either side of where you were standing. We stayed at a cute little resort, but were a bit stranded, due to lack of transportation. One day we decided to ‘walk into town’ and about 45 minutes later we realized we had walked the wrong way. It was still interesting to see the non-tourism side of the islands. You could actually walk the beaches and pick up shells, which we had great fun doing. Also, it was here that we had our Great Moments in Scuba, by which I mean we acted like morons underwater. Our first dive was what is called a ‘drift dive’ – it takes place in a channel where you dive in and are carried by the current to the pickup location. We were all excited – and we set off, just the two if us and the guide. We jumped in off the boat, and immediately went straight down, to around 100 ft, where there were lots of gray sharks, which we hadn’t seen before hanging out on the ledge. The one rule the guide had given was to please not pass her. So, of course, I immediately began having major issues with this, as she was tiny and pushed less by the current than I. It must have looked pretty humorous – everyone drifting calmly along, with me trying to covertly backpedal like a madwoman. Other than that, it all went along fine, until she took us over to a shallow cave nearby – as soon as I turned against the current, my mask immediately filled with water. I never had any problems with this exercise during class, but let me tell you, it is very different when you are being dragged along; blind, knowing that somewhere in the murk they have both stopped, and you are floating out to sea. I finally got a hold of something on the shelf, and stopped myself to clear my mask. As soon as my vision clears, what do I see? We are in the cove, and David is reaching for the instructors’ emergency air regulator. Apparently, since we aren’t used to diving as deeply as we had, David had really sucked all his air up. Freaky. Finally assured that my husband wasn’t going to drown, the instructor beckoned us really close to a crevasse, which was blocked by a bunch of fish. After waving them off and leaning in, I see – eels. Tons of eels, which have always freaked me out and now I’m basically kissing one. So I backed the hell outta there, and we continued on uneventfully. However, we were too late to save our image from the instructor, who by this point must have though we were idiots. So naturally, we went diving with them again a day later, this time with her husband. We only had one moment of idiocy, when I went to David to ask for the camera (we had bought a special underwater housing for ours) and he looked at me and shrugged like “I don’t know – don’t’ you have it?” At which point we both freaked out, and started looking around, like it was going to stay with the group or something. Then we saw it – or the bright yellow strap anyway, way off in the distance. I could kiss whoever designed that thing with a brightly colored strap. So, our diver guy took off after it, so all our honeymoon wasn’t lost after all, and it didn’t become one of those ‘remember when you were an idiot’ moments in our marriage.
After that, it was a pretty chill last couple of days, only marred by a moment when this man/woman randomly put this lei around my head during the luau dinner with no explanation, which managed to make me uncomfortable for the remainder of the night. At least David had to get up and dance in front of everyone too, so I wasn’t totally alone in my embarrassment


So that was our honeymoon – it was wonderful, perfect trip. Tahiti is the realization of the idealistic island getaway. Hopefully we can make it back someday.