First day, Raiatia and it’s twin island of Taha’a … rain and a huge surf breaking on the fringing reef of Taha’a welcomed us … it was something of an indication of the day to come … sunny breaks between heavy rain showers driven by strong winds.

But the “town” gave us a sunny welcome.

We arranged a boat excursion with some locals, Mark and Eric … (girls, this one is for you …)

They took us to a pearl farm in this gorgeous tropical setting … black pearls are a big deal in Tahiti.

Everything was explained by another local, Isabelle … and of course, you were able to make purchases.

Then we were taken to a snokelling place …

Where we snorkelled with these locals … that was fun!!!

The rays were up to about 700mm across and the sharks were maybe 1.2 metres. Afterwards we fed an annoying tourist to the sharks …

Then we went into the jungle to a vanilla farm. Taha’a is one of two places in the world where vanilla beans are grown successfully.

Here we met Brian(?), a former French Foreign Legionnaire, who explained everything about the extraordinary, labour intensive process of creating vanilla esscence from the beans.

We then had a great lunch of local produce (seafoods and fruits) on this little sand island (motu) … time for a swim after lunch …

And then off to another place for a drift snorkel (drifting along in the current) through a channel between islands over coral beds. And I did make it back …

  
This was supposedly one of the great sights … hmmmm … it just made me appreciate what an absolute wonder of the world we have in the Great Barrier Reef … we should all be doing everything possible to save it!

And so it was farewell to Taha’a and Raiatia