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10/7/05:
Missed a few days in there: Turned out that we made it up to the lookout for sunset on Tuesday night, (10/4/05) despite obstacles such as the Front Desk not being able to give us the key (due to rains sometime in the past few days) though the girl quietly mentioned that if we walked out the front driveway and turned right, we could climb the stairs on our left anyway... :) On our way up, we met many folks coming down, as if they'd already seen the sun set :|, but we persevered. Toward the top, we asked a couple we'd met on the jetski tour if we'd missed the sunset, and they said yes, but that they had too and the sun had set behind an island so we hadn't missed anything. Ha! Were they confused! I'd used my GPS to look up sunset at our location, and it was still > 10 minutes away. Moreover, when we finally reached the top after a sweaty 15 min ascent which was expected to be a gentle 25 min, we saw that the sun had simply been behind some clouds and the reflections off the water must have confused the other folks. So, we got to enjoy a lovely polynesian sunset atop a ridge-line lookout by ourselves. Very, very enjoyable. :) And since we had such a good time, we decided we'd have to watch a sunrise, too.
So... Wednesday morning we got up in time to watch the sun rise from the comfort of the Club Med dock. No strenuous climbing involved - just sauntering out to the waiting chairs. After sunrise gathered our dive gear, grabbed some breakfast and headed out to go diving. The first dive was rather a trial at Muri Muri. The current kept switching on us and as a result we spent most of the dive just fighting to keep our position and not be swept out to sea or too far from the boat. We did see some sealife, notably a black-tip shark and barracuda, but mostly it was an exercise in exercise. Not a super-fun dive. The second at the sandy bottom of Toopua, however, more than made up for it. In addition to the many many fish, including a HUGE grouper under a rock, there were excellent anemones, plus the high point of our diving safari experience: an Eagle Ray floating through the distance. We never did get to see the hoped-for Manta, but the Eagle was quite a sight. We used the afternoon and evening to lounge around, read some Carl Hiassen and do a couple loads of laundry.
Thursday morning diving with Thiery again. First was Teturiroa (a.k.a. place 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. Still, a fun dive. Second 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 bluefin tuna and lionfish, and also a really beautiful anemone with clownfish - perfectly Nemo-like. But the highlight of the dive was clearly 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), so some shopping, and generally be tourists fora couple hours. Our first stop was the tourist office, where we found that they didn't have any really good maps, but pointed us to a boutique on the second floor above a snack shop, 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 the Grande Ballet Du Thaiti (from which our schedule into and out of PPT conspired to keep us), but we enjoyed it thoroughly.
This morning we did our last two dives: at Muri Muri and Haapiti. For the first the currents were much more forgiving this time, and we had a good reef dive, punctuated by attention from two very large and mildly threatening gray reef sharks. They eyed us much more hungrily than any others we'd seen yet, until we left what must have been "their area". The second was an excellent "final dive" for the trip: There were massive collections of fish of all hues and sizes, from the tiniest coral swimmers up to what must have been a 20-25 lb grouper(?) with a scary looking snaggletooth. There were black tips in small numbers, and we even saw three different lion fish hanging out under ledges and in hidey holes. So, we end our underwater adventures here without seeing any mantas, or even any rays of any kind up close, but it was great diving anyway. :)
After lunch we snoozed a bit, then prepped for the climb some, got dinner, prepped more, and now plan for sleep before going into vaitapee tomorrow around 9:30am to go climb the mountain. :)
~11pm