I have to say it is more effort to research independent tours and book them in advance, but inevitably there are fewer people on these excursions. When we arrived at the vanilla farm for instance, there was a ship’s tour with about 60 people involved while our group consisted of 10 people! Our boat had 2 people from France, 2 others fluent in French, a couple from Hong Kong and a couple from Illinois and J & I (the Canadians). We had Bruno as our captain and Rani as his first mate.
Our first snorkel was with black tipped sharks and a few rays. We then visited the vanilla farm. We learned in Raiatea they hand pollinate each and every flower on the vanilla plant. The plant is surrounded by coconut shells to constantly keep the soil moist. I purchased some vanilla and vanilla tea.
Our second snorkel took us further around the island of Tahaa (the secondary significant island of Raiatea). This was a drift snorkel and the current was quite strong.
We stopped at lunch and J commented it was reminiscent of a lunch we had eaten at somebody’s home in. Belize!! It gave you a sense of what it would be like to live on this family’s home. Simple, but tasty food.
We then visited the Iaorana Pearl Farm! They export 600,000 pearls per year - mostly to China and sell each pearl for an average price of $30. Fascinating operation. It is a science to getting those pearls to grow -and no accident that they arrive! They have a 90% success rate in producing a pearl in each of their oysters.
Snorkel 3 was another drift snorkel that was really interesting this time - though J felt bad for some of the coral as others in our group were not capable snorkellers attentive to keeping their feet off the coral. It did require considerable effort in the strong current. But we saw some really cool anenome!
Most exciting to cap off a super day was spotting a pod of dolphins frolicking along - perhaps a group of 50 or 60 were playful and jumping!! Bruno turned the boat around so we could all get a good view up close!
After returning to the ship I kept running into friends - socializing, I then watched the best entertainment yet on the ship - a production show with Sonny and Cher era music!!! I still was in my wet clothes from the excursion so raced to our room to shower, change clothes then go to Martinis to meet friends for a Drink before supper!
We then headed to dinner on the terrace to meet with the young couple from our hometown. They got a great table overlooking Raiatea as we pulled away from port.
After lots of laughs, we acknowledged we were all ready for bed. So as soon as I post this blog, I, too will heed to bed!!
We are really enjoying this vacation! It is just stellar!!
No comments:
Post a Comment