In turquoise waters
I don't know if I have enough shades of blue in my paintbox for my journal page yesterday. The waters here are incredibly blue, ranging from a deep rich ultramarine to the palest aquamarine imaginable.
Sitting at our favourite breakfast table was a good place to try to work out our location. We knew we were in Fakarava, an atoll in the Tuamotu group, French Polynesia, but were we inside the atoll, or outside? There was one way to find out!
In the Marine Traffic app, Mariner is represented by a blue icon, somewhere beneath the pink ones in the NW corner, inside the atoll. The pink dots represented the private yachts of varying size moored around us.
The atoll appears as a thin line of sand and palm trees on the horizon.
We wasted no time in grabbing swimming things, sun lotion, towels, phones and my camera to take the tender across to the jetty.
Here we were greeted by music, the gift of a flower and a warm welcome.
The small tourist office in a bungalow opposite the landing stage was well prepared for what I imagine, is the question most asked: what should I see and where can I swim? The answer was, this is the main street - the only street - and there are several beaches immediately off to the right.
It's good swimming and if there are too many people there, just go a little further, was the gentleman's advice. “You can't get lost”.
“If there are too many people” ? There were indeed one or two people around, but really, we had this stretch of the water to ourselves. The sharp coral made my water shoes a blessing but the gentle slope was easily negotiable and the warm, clear turquoise water so very inviting.
What a blissful way to spend the morning!
Whilst I swam, or rather, bobbed about, avoiding the dark shapes of the coral beneath me, Mariner was within sight the whole time. Now and again, I remembered reading that the atoll is home to a rich variety of sea life, including 700 reef sharks. Hmm…I had better watch those dark shapes beneath me more carefully!
After a while, a look at our watches told us we ought to be getting back to the ship, so following a local lady cycling at a leisurely pace with her small son, we returned to the jetty and the tender back to the ship. Later, at the afternoon Trivia session, we watch a video on one of our friend's phone. He'd encountered a shark being fed by a local man and the sound of the shark's jaw snapping closed was pretty chilling. I was glad I hadn't seen that before stepping into the water!
Perhaps there are advantages to the turquoise water in Cirencester where I usually swim 🤔
