Thursday morning we dove with Thiery again. First was Teturiroa (a.k.a. Palace Blanc) and very very deep, with only 2 advanced pairs of divers (Me + Megan, and one other pair). It was more of a "hang out in the middle of the abyss" dive than our previous "glide over the reef" type-dives, and involved a lot of crystal clear deep deep blue.
Regrettably, the only large sealife we saw was one sleepy shark on the sandy bottom below who did nothing more than move from one comfy spot to another. (Pictures #10-13) Still, a fun dive.
Second Dive was Tapu Nui, for our second time there and definitely the most sharks we've ever seen in one dive! There were plenty of fish, including some angelfish and lionfish, and also a really beautiful anemone with clownfish - perfectly Nemo-like.
But the highlight of the dive was definitely ascending into a cloud of Little Black Fish(tm) which were being circled by about seven black-tipped reef sharks and a couple of meandering monstrous 4 meter long Lemon Sharks! It was an amazing experience seeing sharks all around like that, and I've never before had fish "blot out the sun" as that cloud of them did. It was also the first time I got even a little nervous about the sharks we've seen here, but I made sure to hug the bottom and not get too close and we all came back fully intact. :)
After diving, we got back, cleaned up, got lunch and then hopped the shuttle into the town of Vaitapee to look around (i.e. reconnoiter our hike up the mountain), do some shopping, and generally be tourists for a couple hours. Our first stop was the tourist office, where we found that they didn't have any really good maps, but the attendant pointed us to a boutique on the second floor above a snack shop down the street, which she said might sell one. The shop did have the map, but not for sale. :( It was hanging temptingly on the wall, just inside the entrance. :S But the shopkeeper had no problem with us taking a couple pictures of the map, including one focused on the now more fully substantiated route from town up to the mountain top! We picked up a few souvenirs there (and I would have tipped her had we not) and headed out, well pleased to have a more formulated plan of attack for the mountain.
Across the street was a beautifully stocked Art Gallery Boutique, but the prices were a little rich for our blood for simply decorative wooden artifacts. (Besides, Uncle Chris gave us so many such things for our wedding that we don't really need more now. We stopped and looked at a few pearl shops before going into the (Club Med recommended, but still quite nice) Nycos store, where we considered a few options. If we were ever going to get cultured black pearls, this would be the time and place, so... Megan got a custom pair of Keshi dangly earrings and also a little keshi which I'll ask Duane at Orrs to set into a nose stud for her. And I got two matched silver-green pearls which I'll have turned into cufflinks at Orrs too. Nycos could have done the cufflinks too, but they only had white gold, not platinum, and their price for the settings was more than the price for both pearls together! So, Orrs it shall be, and Duane will continue to be surprised by the experience of dealing with us. :)
While waiting for Megan's earrings to be assembled, we looked in some other shops, scouted down the trail leading up the mountain, bought some T-shirts, had a snack and looked for gifts for other folks.
Once the pearl buying was complete they shuttled us back to Club Med, where we deftly had the folks at the photo hut print us a 6x8 glossy of the trail map picture for our use on Saturday for hiking. They were very kind and helpful, even to the point to photoshopping the pic to improve the contrast. 'Lurve' the photo hut. (They also have the only on-demand US-made photo-printer in the entirety of French Polynesia.)
We got dinner and watched a very good Polynesian dance performance,
done by Sultry South Pacific Women,
Buff Polynesian Men,
and the most enthusiastic seven year old boy in the history of dance.
Not quite Les Grands Ballets De Tahiti (from which our schedule into and out of PPT conspired to keep us), but we enjoyed it thoroughly.