An incredibly full day which started with two dives in the morning at Ome and Tapu Iti (again). While we still haven't seen any rays, we did see more sharks and even a submarine!
Note the eTrex Vista mapping our voyages, and that today's map is combined with yesterday's because I forgot to save a separate track before we headed out...
Ome had mostly little fish and coral...
...though Matthias did check out three conch shells to see if they had occupants.
Tapu once again had the Lemon and Black Tip sharks, away from which I continued to keep a healthy distance.
Seeing the submarine was a surprise, even though it's only the tourist boat, not anything like an SSN or SSBN. (Which would be rather scary, I think, to encounter as a diver...)
The only new fish for this trip was a barracuda, of which I got a decent picture with a black-tip in the background.
Also, upon returning to shore, we found that the night dive was moved from Tuesday because of unfavorable conditions. And as it turned out, that was only the first of a few scheduling problems which led to us not getting to do a night dive while there. :(
Diving was followed by a quick lunch during which we met a power plant manager from Michigan named Ron. And after lunch we set out with our guide John on a combination jetski tour of the lagoon (which was the best jetskiing I've ever experienced, thanks to the lagoon's calm waters)...
and quad bike tour of one of the motus...
finished by John's coconut show (tm), in which the three life stages of the coconut were shown, opened and eaten. Mmmmm... :) The coconut show really demonstrated how limited my previous exposure to coconuts had been! At two months, the young coconut has a much sweeter water, almost tasting like Sprite, and its meat is more like coconut sashimi (and best eaten with a 'spoon' cut from its own shell). The 4 month old coconut has fallen from the tree, and is what we usually expect from a coconut. Slightly milky water inside of hard, juicy meat which is squeezable for coconut milk. The 6 month stage has a seedling starting to grow from the nut - leaves going up, roots down. This is the coconut heart, with no water inside, but rather an almost marshmallow-like core where the water was. A real learning experience for me.
We returned in time for a shower, nap and dinner, followed by the enjoyment of our bottle of champagne.
