Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale
A tale of a fateful trip
That started in this tropic port, aboard this tiny ship
6 passengers set sail that day for a three hour tour…
Sometimes the very best days are the ones you don’t plan at all.
All I had planned to do today was wander through the souvenir market pier side and come back early. French Polynesia is after all very very hot and very very expensive, and I hadn’t really thought to make any big plans there. I knew there was a beach in the near vicinity, but I hadn’t really given a great deal of thought to getting there.
I was on my way back to the tender that would take me back to the ship when one of the other crew members called out to me from the other side of the dock.
Hey Shaughnessy! Lagoon tour $20! Jump on!
I don’t have any cash!
I’ll spot you! Come on!
So I clambered on to a canopied catamaran that for some bizarre reason reminded me Gilligan’s Island (I really don’t know why) with a handful of other crew members and we zipped off for a tour we had no idea what to expect from. As it turned out, we totally lucked out. We had thought it would just be a scenic tour of the island, and it started out as that it’s true, including a sail by of the breathtaking resort huts that line the far side of one of the lagoons. Dubbed ‘honeymooner’s only’ (though really it’s just ‘very rich people only’) it costs hundreds of dollars just to spend a night in one of these little pieces of paradise. But I can only imagine what it would be like to have nothing to do except…nothing. Sheer bliss. Of course the random flasher that appeared in one of the doorways did kind of break the idyllic mood – at least for me, I suppose it depends on your point of view!
Once we’d put the resort behind us, went out to one of the nearby shoals where we were greeted by cries of “dude! There are sharks!”
And so there were, black fin sharks, small ones and sting rays MASSIVE ones, I mean, you see pictures of sting rays and you have no idea how HUGE they really are. They must have been at least two feet across. While we’re standing at the rail watching our guide – who had gotten down into the water to feed them – the other member of the catamaran’s crew asks us if we aren’t going in after him. So, one by one, we edge a little closer to the metal stairs leading down to the water. This presented a bit of a problem at first for me.
I don’t have a swimsuit with me!
What?
Well I didn’t expect to be going anywhere today!
So what, the water’s warm! Just dive in.
So, since I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt a little water wasn’t going to hurt me. I’m something of a water baby after all, and that beautiful shade of turquoise had been calling me since Papeete yesterday. The water was deliciously warm and cool at the same time, something you only find in the tropics. And the sting rays are friendly. They’ve been debarbed in this area, so that they can be safely fed by hand, the only thing that I kept finding was because I’m so short they kept knocking me off balance! This gave some of the people with me the illusion that I was scared of them. I wasn’t! They just kept knocking me over because the water was too deep for me to get my footing! There were also sharks, a lot of sharks, which you can call to you by slapping the water. Being a little more leery of sharks than I was of sting rays, I scrambled out of the water when the black fins started appearing, and the pictures of me from then on were taken with me on the boat and the sharks safely in the background!
Once we’d all had our fill of marine interaction, the boat tied up in one of the most beautiful lagoons any of us had seen. Pure white sand and pure blue water, and palm trees everywhere. There were no guests there – well, I think there was one – which is shocking as somehow guests always manage to find us where ever we go, so we could do what we wanted and say what we wanted and take whatever crazy pictures we felt like.
After we’d finished taking random crazy photos, we all sat in the shallows and drank beer out of the bottle (well, the others did, I still haven’t acquired a taste for beer), and just watched the world go by.
As though to prove that I was not afraid of sting rays, I sat in the shallows and fed them for an hour, letting them slide up over my lap. They’re very slippery, but also very soft, if you touch them out of the water they’re slimy, but under the water there more…silky. We got scraps of fish from one of the guides and fed them by hand, their mouths are on their underside, so they would slide up over your hand to take it from you. It sounds like it should be creepy, but it wasn’t.
Those who know me, or have followed my travels for a while, will know how much I crave contact with the ocean. I need it; it clears my head and sets me on my balance again. I needed today. Yes, I came away from it with a sunkissed nose and reddened shoulders…but that was a small price to pay for the smile.