Fakarava

Our next stop in French Polynesia was at Fakarava. Unlike the previous islands, which were mountainous remnants of volcanoes, Fakarava is an atoll, where the volcanic cone has completely eroded away. All that is left is the reef surrounding a large lagoon.

Not a lot of people live on Fakarava and there isn’t much infrastructure. Given this, we had no real plan for the day. We took a tender in around 10:00 and looked around the pier area. To the right looked a little better than to the left, so we went that way. Almost immediately we saw a sign for tourist information, so we went in there. We were assisted by a very nice young man who had a large photograph of the area and helped us figure out where we might want to go.

We walked down the street a bit and found a shaded grassy area looking out over the lagoon. Looked like a good place to try, so we set our stuff down there. While looking out at the water we saw three different nurse sharks cruise by, which was very cool. Linda, David, Liz, and Thomas headed out to snorkel while DJ, Tom, and myself stayed at camp. Then we would rotate. The snorkeling was decent if you went out far enough. I was lucky enough to see a sea turtle while I was out there.

A number of other ATW passengers came by and joined us and after a while we had a pretty good beach party going. Some of us walked down to the “coral church,” which was a very pretty Catholic church. Inside it was decorated largely with ornaments made from local materials.

After the church we made the short walk to the ocean side of the island, which was much rougher and windier than the sheltered lagoon side. And then it was time to tender back to the ship.Läs mer