According to some, Bora Bora has the most beautiful lagoon in the world. Mwaahhh… it’s very beautiful in a number of places, admittedly, but our vote still goes to Aitutaki. Bora Bora’s lagoon is larger, but it is also deeper in many places, making the water look dark blue. And we didn’t cross half the world for that, even the Mediterranean has dark blue water. And Aitutaki itself is more fun because it is less developed: no para sailing, no jet ski tours, no helicopter flights, no obscenely high prices for everything – and no french tourists. Still, the boat ride we took together in the Bora Bora lagoon was great. The view of a light turkoois sea under a blue sky is terrific and I can’t take enough pictures of it. The less land in view, the better.
Something else that guarantees instant happiness, are dolphins. And there are plenty of those on Rangiroa! On our way to our first dive site we already spotted a few, jumping up high from the water. But it got even better: a little later we met a few groups under water, during the dive! That has never happened to us before, usually the dolphins are afraid of divers and they stay away. But these came to play with us!! They came really close and we truly interacted with them. Unfortunately, dolphins appear to have a very short attention span (or they find us boring) because they went away quite quickly. Not to worry: there are many gray and white tip reef sharks here, and you can watch those during every dive.
Rangiroa is a large, almost circular atol, with a huge lagoon in the middle (deep, so dark blue, but never mind, we are here to dive!). The best place for diving is the Tiputa Pass, a passage between two islands, where there is a strong current when the tide is coming in or going out. Therefore, there are many large fish! There should even be hammerhead sharks here, but the season for them hasn’t really started yet, so we may not get to see those. In the mean time however, we’re having a ball in ‘the blue’: just outside of the pass, where the water is a few hundred meters deep and you see nothing but blue around you when you enter it. Brilliant! Especially when you can spot sharks coming up from below every once in a while. It’s something else than watching the little coral fish, and it’s a nice change. You feel so small in that huge pool of water, it’s like watching the stars on a clear night. Except there’s the chance that you might see a hammerhead! Fingers crossed, we still have 2,5 diving days to go…
