Rangiroa

Yesterday, the captain announced that he had never sailed to Rangiroa, but he was confident that he could find it!  Ha ha ha, he is really a funny guy.  Well, we did find it and the weather conditions were such that we actually were able to enter the lagoon to anchor.  To enter Rangiroa's interior lagoon, you sail through one of two main passes.  I understand from the excursion people, that this can be tricky to do; all the conditions have to be right or it’s a no go.

Passage out of the lagoon and into open ocean

So here we are, on Rangiroa, an atoll located 220 miles northeast of Tahiti, in the Tuamotu Archipelago.  From the air, the atoll - the second largest in the world - seems to be a giant pearl necklace laid upon the water.  More than 415 motus (tiny coral islands) surround this atoll, each no more than three feet in elevation, encircling an interior lagoon -- a lagoon so vast that the entire island of Tahiti could comfortably fit within it.  With fewer than 3,000 citizens, sleepy Rangiroa is perhaps what you've always imagined as a tropical island hideaway, complete with a pink-sand beach and a spectacular blue lagoon.

Rangiroa is a paradise for divers and snorkelers who will thrill at the sight of sea turtles, bottlenose dolphins, hammerhead sharks, manta rays and stingrays.  Some of the guests did either a snorkel or glass bottom boat excursion and told of the many beautiful fish, sharks and eels they saw. 

So what is the big attraction here besides diving and snorkeling?  PEARLS – BLACK PEARLS.  There was an excursion to the pearl factory and I did not go because these are usually places to get you to buy.  I understand from one person who went, that they demonstrated and actually showed how the oyster was seeded and how they extracted the pearl when done (after 2 years).  I would like to have seen this.  Besides tourism and fishing, this is the big industry on the island.  Here is the process of making a black pearl:

“The breeding of pearl oysters in the lagoon can produce black pearls. In fact, black pearls (meaning the marine cultured pearls produced from the black lip pearl oyster shell, Pinctada margaritifera) are abundant in the atolls of French Polynesia. These pearls, which have a wide range of natural colors, from white to dark and all kind of grey, are the only cultured pearls in the world with so many different natural colors as the famous green rose peacock.

The technique to produce marine cultured pearls was developed in Japan and, except some minor details, is similar in French Polynesia. A mother of pearl bead is inserted in the animal together with a piece of tissue (mantle) taken from another pearl oyster. The piece of tissue, as a graft tissue, will develop quickly and will form a skin around the bead and then will deposit mother of pearl on the surface of the bead. Bead rejection is important and concern about 30% of the seeded shells, mainly because the graft tissue is not enough close to the bead. Even with perfectly round beads, only 20% of the pearls will be perfectly round at the harvest, about 2 years after the seeding.

Pearl farming is done in more than 30 atolls of French Polynesia and is the main activity for numerous families in the Tuamotus Archipeligo. In Rangiroa, a few farms exploited about 1,000 acres (4.0 km²) of water surface in the lagoon loan by the Tahitian government. The biggest farm, Gauguin's Pearl employed more than 50 local workers, with a strong impact on the economy of this 2,000 inhabitants atoll. A school dedicated to the pearl farming techniques and a research center on pearl oysters are also implanted on the atoll of Rangiroa, which make it a kind of pearl center for this industry.”

Like many atolls, there is no running or fresh water; each household must retrieve and store rainwater in tanks.  There is only one main road and you can ride it in one half hour by bicycle.  That’s about all I know about Rangiroa living.

So now that the geography lesson is over, what did we do today?  Since we had no plans, we checked with the destination people to find out what to do – perhaps there was a nice beach we could go to.  Nope, the good ones are privately owned, usually by a resort.  We could see a resort from the ship with nice sand beaches and huts built out over the water.  There are few public beaches, and the one suggested was rather rocky and had no shade.  So that idea was scrubbed.  Well, we are here so we go ashore anyway.  It is hot and humid.  We get to where the tender docked and found a few booths selling trinkets.  AND THAT’S IT.  There was really no town to go to, no taxi to hire.  We could see the unprotected side of the atoll, so I put up my umbrella for portable shade (which I could have sold many times over) and off we walked down the main road. 

We passed a “grocery” store that was clean, but not well stocked (everything has to be imported except fish and coconuts).  There was a slight breeze but it didn’t take long for both of us to get hot and sweaty.  We passed houses that were rather rundown, yards that were unkempt, and fences made out of coconuts!  Palm trees were loaded with coconuts. There were piles of coconuts everywhere. 

Coconuts growing low to the ground as well as high up in the trees

Coconut fence

 We had no idea what we would see when we got to the ocean side of the atoll.  Being formers boaters, we were delighted to find “overfalls.”  The water was running in and out at the same time, causing six foot waves in the middle of the water.  While watching this phenomenon, we saw dolphins jumping out of the water, executing a perfect 10 high dive in the waves created in the overfall.  It was quite exciting to watch.  People brought towels and wore bathing suits thinking they would swim and beach.  Not this beach.  It was totally composed of coral, and the water was quite wild.  I picked up a few pieces of coral (my souvenir) and we enjoyed watching the water and dolphins. 

Overfall was here; saw dolphins jumping out of water

Coral Beach

There was nowhere else to go, so we headed back to the tender pier.  By this time, sweat was dripping down my face (which NEVER happens) and my clothes were soaking wet.  Even Michael, who rarely sweats was dripping.  At this point, we were both thinking POOL.  And that is exactly what we did when we returned.  Ah, so refreshing.  You know that I have to be HOT, really HOT to get in the pool.  By the way, the pool is filled with filtered seawater. 

Cleaned up after a hot and sweaty day

The evening breeze came up and cooled things down for the sail away party on the pool deck.  Tahitian dancers and singers entertained us as we made our way out of the lagoon and into the open ocean.  We capped the evening off with a fun filled and mentally stimulating dinner outside on the pool deck with the Simpson sisters, Deb and Nan.

Tahitian entertainers

Michael with Nan (left) and Deb (right)