The Tuamotus: Rangiroa & Fakarava Atolls

After an hour and five minutes on an ATR-72 from Bora Bora we land on the largest atoll of the Tuamotu archipelago (and while we're at it, of the world), Rangiroa. The dimensions are just crazy, the lagoon being some 80 by 20 km meaning you cannot see the other shore. To avoid paying for a taxi we head out from the airport by foot with 4.5km to walk to the place we're about to try for the night, Pension Taine & Marie.

About half way, as we're being drenched by a sudden downpour, we're scooped up from the rain by Raie Manta Club diveshop car and get a ride all the way to the pension. And the guy who gave us the ride also volunteers to be our interpreter for negotiating the prices at the lodge. Awesome, thanks! The facilities are pretty basic especially considering the price tag but the food that they bundle with the room is just awesome. We share the place with a bunch of Frenchies not too fluent in English so dinner conversation is pretty much off the table for us.

But screw socializing, this place is all about diving, all of which here is centered around the two deep passes into the lagoon that have strong currents between the deep ocean and the lagoon, attracting loads of marine life both big and small. We persuade the lodge staff to let us call the dive shop and manage to fix us a morning dive for the next day. And come morning we head out to the pass at the other end of the spit - Avatoru - and are just blown away by what we encounter; immediately on the way down, several large sharks surround us and hang around for good 5-10 minutes while we just stare dumbstruck. We write off silver tips, grey reefs as well as white tip reef sharks off the list of stuff yet to be seen. A lone big Napoleon Wrasse also shows himself. We end the dive by getting surrounded by a gigantic school of big eye jacks, several thousands strong. What a dive!

The second site is the Tiputa Pass, where the water flows into the lagoon (or the other way, depending on the tide) through a 50 to 15 m deep and maybe 50m wide channel, providing us a massive waterslide of a drift dive. The dive starts "in the blue", meaning in the open ocean where the bottom is well over 50-60 meters deep and you totally lack points of reference as well as sense of direction. There we gaze the grey reef sharks and a massive school of Chevron Barracudas before getting sucked in to the channel that pushes us to the lagoon over the next 5-10 minutes. This is something that makes you wanna shout "again, AGAIN!" so it shall be on the menu on the next day too.

The next morning we dive Tiputa Reef, a dive starting out mellow with a intact reef full of life that soon turns crazy when napoleon wrasses, a turtle, manta ray and dolphins find their way to us. Ooh! In the afternoon we repeat the drift dive, this time seeing loads of sharks and spotted eagle rays in the deeps way below us. And having concluded our Rangiroa adventures, it's time to start looking towards the next one..

The last stop for us here is the fantastic Fakarava; second largest atoll in the Tuamotus, featuring splendid coral reefs as well as the occasional pristine white sand beach. The northern pass is the widest in the region, almost 2 kilometers, and while not quite as deep as Rangiroa's, it provides a casual diver fantastic opportunities to inspect the passing marine life as the mouth of the pass is only at 25-32 meters and you're able to hang on to the rocks there and watch the big things swim by.

Due to the nature of the dives - most of the time spent in the deep end for maximum time with the resident underwater fauna - they encourage everyone to dive with Nitrox. We haven't yet paid PADI the ripoff 100ish euro for the certification, but they give us the Nitrox tanks nonetheless to enjoy the dives to their full potential. Awesome. Once again it's sharks, sharks and sharks, with as much as huge Napoleon wrasses to look at as your neck muscles allow. The weather conditions seem to change rapidly: one of the dives we start while it's raining sideways and a thunder roaring nearby, but as we emerge some 55 minutes later, there's not a cloud on the sky.

French Polynesia Recap 

Obviously the diving here was remarkable. It also was our first real shark dives, making it doubly exciting. After numbing ourselves to the level of the prices of everything as well as to the fact that almost every other tourist was French speaking, it was pure bliss to spend two amazing weeks on the islands. On the way to the airport on the last day I'd try my best to permanently burn the image of the lagoon into the back of my eyes.. really sad to leave, but it's good to be moving again.

See all the pictures from Rangiroa here!
See all the pictures from Fakarava here!