Thursday June 7, 2007 — We began the day with chores, as usual. Christi scrubbed the waterline and down about 3 feet below the waterline. The port side (left side when facing front) wasn’t too bad. To our surprise the starboard side (right side when facing front) had a lawn growing. And we aren’t talking thin, short grass. We’re talking a full, thick lawn that you could mow with a lawnmower. We have to work really hard to get the yard at home to look half as good as the starboard side of the boat did. Needless to say, it took quite a bit of scrubbing to get it off. Why didn’t anyone tell us we needed a weed whacker???

Then we went snorkeling around the coral near where the boat is anchored. The coral is not very colorful, mostly off white and a little bit of lime green. There were some neat shaped coral rocks out there. There were a lot of electric-blue lipped oysters in the coral. We saw a good number of interesting fish.

Then we took the dinghy to the shore closest to our boat, called Tatate. We suspected this area is primarily a coconut farm (this island, along with most of the Tuomotu islands, has two industries, raising black pearls and harvesting coconut). We walked over to the low land that separates Paeua from Tatate. The water was ankle deep over the land. Over there, the land is a solid coral rock and the coral is pink. There are lots of birds hanging out there. It is really pretty. We walked over to the ocean side, and then headed north along the shore. The shore along the ocean is super rocky, but it is not rocks like we are used to. The “rocks” are huge chunks of coral. It is kind of crazy to be walking along on it, knowing that each chunk was made by millions of living coral over many years maybe even hundreds or thousands of years for the really big ones. It’s almost irreverent to step on them.

Like Paeua, Tatate is a couple miles long and about a quarter mile wide. Like the area around the hotel, there was quite a bit of litter. Not as much as by the hotel, but still a surprising amount. There was even a pair of sneakers and curlers. When we had come to the next low lying land that separates Tatate from the next portion of island, we turned around and headed down the lagoon side.

At the north tip on the lagoon side were 10 little bungalows, a dock with a small building, and a new looking solar powered generator and satellite communication system. They appeared to be abandoned. Maybe they are only used during harvest? A few hundred yards down the beach were two more little bungalows, and one of the two was for sure inhabited.

Well after we had passed the bungalows, three mean dogs came running at us full speed, barking wildly and snarling. Christi is terrified of dogs, so she freaked out. We retreated right to the shore and they stopped their chase. We had seen a dog a few minutes before, it appears it got its buddies to come along for a game of frighten the tourists. On a side note, we have mostly seen dogs around, unlike the Marquesas, which has all kinds of animals running around. The animals in the Marquesas are always really nice. They don’t bother you and they like to be petted. Not here. All the dogs bark at you and try to intimidate you from coming any where near them or their territory.

Anyway, back to our walk. We passed by several piles of old rope that had tons of seashells stuck to them and a big pile of new looking buoys. This made us suspect this area is also used for pearl farming. But we also saw the burned remnants of coconuts and fronds, as well as several stacks of coconuts around, so they may do both. In addition to coconut trees, there were a lot of those shrubs that you see around here everywhere. We have no idea what they are called.

We saw zillions of crabs on the lagoon side. It seemed that if you looked at any shell long enough, it would move, meaning there was a crab inside. There were teeny, tiny crabs and really big crabs. There we funky looking crabs that were about two and a half inches long with a single bright red claw that is as big as their little bodies. We had noticed on our hotel walk that there were lots of holes in the sand and wondered what made the holes. We now knew, without a doubt, that the crabs live in the holes, and the hole size is proportional to the crab’s size. We also saw a small octopus and a few dragonflies, and were harassed by a swarm of regular flies.

We had another unusual sunset. The whole sky was socked in with clouds. Here, you get a mix of white and gray clouds. There was a small sliver of sky visible right on the horizon line where the sun goes down. Where the sun was visible, it was bright red. All the clouds in the sky turned various shades of purple depending on the color of the cloud. The wispy white clouds were violet, and the very dark clouds that looked like they were about to drop rain turned a blue-gray-purple, and there was every shade in between. It was really neat. No stars tonight due to the cloud cover.