Now that things have calmed down with our anchor rescued, we can go back to our regularly scheduled program.

Like Manihi and most other atolls, Apataki is a thin ring of land with a huge lagoon in the middle. Apataki is sort of square-ish in shape. In Manihi you could not see all the way north from the south, but you could see all the way west from the east. In Apataki, you can’t see the end in either direction. It just looks like endless ocean beyond the L of land visible and it is hard to believe there is more land so close by.

From the boat, it looks much like Manihi. The shore is covered in coconut trees. The shoreline is glistening white. The water goes from light blue, to light green, to bright green, to turquoise, to sapphire blue as your eyes go from the shore towards the center of the lagoon.

“Lonely Planet” does not mention this atoll at all, so we are pretty sure there is no hotel or restaurant on the island. One of the reasons we picked this place was because we were excited about going to a non-touristy location. The locals are supposedly much friendlier on the less touristy islands.

“Charlie’s Charts” said there is a village near the anchorage on the north side, but it wasn’t marked on the map so we were unsure of its location. We couldn’t see any buildings anywhere from where we sat, so we decided to take the dinghy in to shore to see what all was there. We hiked a couple miles exploring. Like Manihi, the shoreline is rocky, made up of chunks of coral and shell. There was only one evergreen tree and less palm trees around than Manihi. There were a few more types of plants, though, and the foliage was too thick to fight through. There was no trail on the land, so we mostly stayed on the shore as we walked. There was some litter on the ground, but nowhere remotely close to the amount of litter on Manihi.

The litter and a few medium size crabs were the only signs of life in the area. We walked about three miles and there were no people around, no animals, no structures of any kind. And there is good reason why. Along the land were pools of water. Some were small, others were quite large. All the pools were reddish brown in color and shallow. There was usually not a lot of distance between the pools, maybe a few hundred yards at most. This area appears to be unbuild-able. Ahhh”¦. A private island all to ourselves. This is what traveling to the South Pacific is all about!

We watched another beautiful sunset. After dark, Eric sat outside to enjoy the stars. With it being a new moon, the stars are extra bright. He looked carefully for lights to see if he could find the village. There were a couple lights on the west side. We’ll go take a look tomorrow. He wasn’t outside long. Something odd was in the air. A sulfur smell, probably also from the pools of water, drove him back inside.