Day 7- Raiatea

Isaac is expressing my feelings too here with his little dance, whew! happy to be off the ship. Friday was stopped in Raiatea (r-eye-e-tay-uh) and it was gorgeous! There were 30-40 native dancers as you got of the boat and it was just the perfect start to the day. I love Taylor's family. Not only did we get to tag along with them for this trip, but they were even thoughtful enough to plan some days where they took the kids so we could have adult experiences. So Friday I got to go on another snorkel outing with all of Taylor's sibling and significant others while he went scuba diving and our kids all stayed on the boat with grams and grandpa.
Sadly, Taylor took the underwater camera with him so no shots of my excursion. But it was amazing. We all took a boat out to where there's a 30 foot break in one of the islands. It's basically a 5 foot river running through but it's really the ocean current flowing instead of freshwater. So you get off your boat at one side, walk 5 minutes along the beach to the other side of the island, and jump in. Then the current literally pulls you all the way back to your boat. Of course, it's ocean water and shallow so as you float for the 20 minutes it takes you to get back you pass amazing coral and more fish than I have ever seen. I didn't bring Ethan along because they said you needed to be a very competent swimmer and they were right. All though you really can just float the whole way, you do have to steer yourself around some of the larger coral reefs that stick up- several people in our group cut it too close and came away with some nasty gashes. Totally amazing though and definitely on my list of things to do again in my life.
Taylor's scuba diving pics got stuck at the bottom of the post somehow.
So after my snorkeling adventure I went back and got Isaac and Miles from grams and grandpa. Ethan stayed with them to go on their excursion. We got lunch and found Taylor and then ventured back to the island to check out downtown.
We ran into Barb and Clint and of course couldn't pass up taking pictures of the amazing architecture.
Seriously need to live in a place where things just grow like this.

Of course while I'm enjoying the beauty, my boys are just happy to run... and chase birds. Anywhere in the world they're happy to chase birds!
Taylor and I both passed this statue as we were riding our boats our that morning so we walked out to see what it was. Still have no idea. Any guesses? After that we walked back, did our first round of souvenir shopping, and finished up our Christmas shopping since Santa didn't bring along anything :)
So this was Taylor's first scuba diving on this trip. He had been in the past but had never been certified. He found and place here in Utah where you can get certified and now he can go on his own anywhere in the world. Of course I prefer he goes with a guide so he did. Barbara's fiance Clint got certified along with him so they did all the dives together- which is conveniently how he got someone to take pictures of him to prove he was there. Taylor would like me to mention that he was still figuring out his camera's setting which is why sometimes the whole shot is pink and sometimes too blue. He'd also like me to mention in BOLD that there is NO zoom on his camera- so when you see a fish (or shark) up close- that's because it was THAT close to him.
So apparently Tahiti is THE place for scuba diving in the world. And wasn't I happy to have Taylor and Clint come back that afternoon and tell tales of all the black tip reef sharks that were circling them and swimming at them. Yep, if you know your history- those are the sharks that ate all the Navy sailors in WWII in the Pacific Ocean. Fun! So glad you got to swim with them. Apparently scuba guides used to (until just recently) actually bring fish and chum along to actually attract sharks to their paying customers. They're since stopped since they've discovered that feeding the sharks with humans in the water somehow makes the sharks think they'll get food EVERY time a human is in the water. Which is fine if they're not hungry, or you have enough to make them happy, but when you don't...
I'm supposed to remind you again... NO ZOOM!
Yep, NO ZOOM! Taylor says this one literally swam straight at him and then swerved at the last second. My question: why was he taking a picture instead of backing up???
And that, my friends, is Clint actually "petting" the shark as it goes past. The man is CRAZY!!!
Okay so these are the pictures I like better.
Okay maybe not the poisonous lion fish.
And this one is a favorite!
Not so favorite.
And probably my least favorite of all. All of the rules to scuba diving are really just safety rules. And one of those is that you stay back while the person in front of you is climbing the ladder to get on the boat. The reason for this is that the air tanks are VERY heavy and if you were waiting close behind or under them while they climbed the ladder, if they happened to slip, you'd get clobbered by the person falling AND by their heavy tank hitting you. So not good. Of course Taylor was LOVING this scuba diving (and his new camera) so he was the last one to climb aboard. This picture is of Clint starting to climb up. Again NO ZOOM!!! Taylor really enjoyed telling everyone at dinner how he was taking pictures of Clint getting on the ladder and watching the sharks circling him and realizing that he would be the only one in the water... with all the circling sharks... who no one had bothered to feed :)
Don't know why this picture ended up last- fish eggs, just floating in the water.