It wasn’t a heavy rain, but once we took a tender over to the island, it was apparent it had been raining heavily. In fact, I did receive another email from Dive Spirir Fakarava stating that today’s snorkelling excursion would be cancelled because the water was too “agitated”. I believe that was the translated term too state the water had poor visibility because it had been churned up due to the rain. So disappointingly, we would not be snorkelling today.
Our backup plan was to rent bikes on the island to explore. You see, there are no formal excursions offered on this island with Oceania, so most of the 1200+ guests would be looking to explore the island which is home to just over 800 inhabitants. Our ship would be more than doubling the population of the island.
Fakarava boasts an ecosystem that is so unspoiled the entire island has been designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve to preserve rare species (that I have never even heard of like Squills and sea cicadas). This atoll is long and skinny - measuring 60 km in length.
Our tender took us to the village of Rotoava (with its population of 800) and there is a grocery store and other necessary amenities. And as we were travelling with Missouri Mother (C) and daughter (E) we were looking to rent 4 bikes. It quickly became apparent that all the bikes in town were rented out! C wanted to wait for a bike to be returned. E, J and I decided to walk the 3 km towards the Topaka Lighthouse. It is a 45 foot high pyramid with a square light tower. We wandered along the exposed side of the island and walked the beach before finding our way to the main road and the lighthouse.
We returned to the bike rental place, by about noon. We were fortunate to find three one speed bikes available. We rented 3 bikes for 3 hours for $30. We thought that was s good deal! In fact, the operator was only going to charge us $25 and was thrilled with the $5 tip!!
We cycled the other direction, clearly the more developed side of the island with shops and homes, not to mention some great beaches. We cycled 11 km, then turned around and cycled back into the wind!! E and I needed to stop and eat, so just before 2 pm we found a little cafe and ordered some tuna, fried and poisson cru! J had a Hinano beer. It was a lovely spot right on the water!!
We then cycled the last 4 km into the wind to return our bikes. It was an active day!!
A swim and a shower was in order once back on the ship. We enjoyed watching the sail away from the 15 deck of the ship.
We were both hungry for supper at 6:30 pm so headed up to the buffet on the Terrace Grill. After dinner we went to the shops on deck 5 and ran into all kinds of friends.
I plan to go the production show at 9:30 pm - so we will see just how wonderful it is!!
Life is great!
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