We rented a car and went on a tour of the island. Our first stop was an early lunch at the ice cream store adjoining the yacht club. They also sell hamburgers, steak sandwiches, chicken paninis, ham paninis, and toasties. We suspect a toastie is a grilled cheese sandwich. We got chicken paninis, which had cream cheese and bell pepper and were quite good.

We headed north. Our first stop was the cave at Palahu. You walk down a scary and steep flight of stairs towards the water.

At the bottom of the stairs is a large cave that you have to walk through to get to the water. The cave is well lit and you could see most of it from the mouth, but we still carefully checked the corners for the monsters from the movie “The Descent”. The cave has lots of neat stalactites and stalagmites formations.

The water beneath the mouth of the cave looked rocky and dangerous, so we decided getting in was a bad idea. We saw people several hundred yards away walking in the shallow water along the shore and we wondered how they got there. Certainly not through the mouth of this cave. The “shore” here is a narrow shelf along the edge of the cliff. The shelf suddenly ends and drops to deep water. There is no sand and no gradual decline from shallow to deep.

We realized that we had missed a cave, and we backtracked to see the cave at Avaiki. In the beginning it seemed similar to the first cave. You walk down the steps and walk through the cave to get to the water. But here the cave let out onto the “shoreline”, which is mostly flat, solid rock covered in water. The water depth varies from ankle deep to knee deep. We walked around for a couple minutes, and then noticed another cave a little bit up the shore.

The cave had a shallow pool in it. The water is an amazing shade of blue, with little bright blue demoiselle fish swimming inside. We debated about getting in for a quick swim, but decided to move on instead.

After Avatiki, we continued north. There were several staircases that led down to the water. We stopped at a couple of them to check out the shoreline. In each spot the shoreline was the same solid rock ledge.

Walking around here was really neat because you could see small coral formations in the water and a few species of animal, such as sea cucumbers. Here are a few shots:

Are these sea urchins? Or are sea urchins only black?

This plant was everywhere in Moorea and we saw a lot of it in Tahaa.

Purple coral and Sea Slugs. Sea slugs cover all the shallow water areas in the Tumotus.

This is the kind of coral the tiny fish hover like to hide in.

From there we continued north to Limu, which the map said was a snorkeling spot. We grabbed our gear and walked down the staircase. The staircase led all the way down to the water.

A few steps before the staircase ended, a path veered off to the right. We were getting ready to get in the water at the bottom of the stairs when some tourists on their way out told us there was a better spot down the path. We followed the path and came to a pool. It was surrounded on all sides by the cliff walls, with an arch in the middle of the wall we were facing. From what we could see, it looked like you went through this arch out into the open ocean.

This pool had fresh water coming down through the rock above. It turns out that when you go through the arch, there is also a pool on the other side made of coral, with ocean water filling it from the waves crashing over the pool wall. The water was cold near where the fresh water came out and got warmer the closer to the ocean you got. From outside, the water was crystal clear and you could see everything in the water. In the water, visibility wasn’t so good. You know the coating they put on shower doors that makes everything blurry, so you can still clearly see the shape of the person in the shower, but can’t quite make out the details of the body parts? That is what it looks like in this water. It was caused by the mixing of the cold fresh water with the warm ocean water. There were a few varieties of fish, but it was hard to tell what they were since it was blurry. We definitely saw some sweetlips.

Our last stop for the day was Matapa. There are three things to see there, a swimming hole, a chasm and a cave. We went to the swimming hole first. We walked down the stairs and out onto the solid rock covered with a few inches of water that lines the shore.

We could see people snorkeling, so we went over to them. There was a large hole in the ground that was about thirty feet deep. You could get into the hole and snorkel around. This was a unique spot for us because the ground was covered in a green plant, and there were some purple plants on the ground, too.

On the sides of the hole were a different plant that came in green and white. There were a few fish, including a large parrotfish. There was a sea snake swimming around that got disconcertingly close to Christi. She didn’t freak out, though. Sea snakes are deadly, but their mouth is too small to bite a human.

Once we got out of the pool, we wandered the shore a ways, looking to see if there were any more pools. We didn’t find anymore. At one point, the water became a bit deeper, going above the knees. We stuck our masks in the water to see if maybe this was the beginning of some sort of hole. It wasn’t, but to our amazement we saw a large school of black fish. The fish varied in size, but most were very large. We were surprised at the number of large fish in such a shallow area.

It was an hour before dark, and we decided it was too late to see the other two sites in Matapa. We would keep the car for another day and go back. We headed back to the yacht club, where computer guru Eric helped everyone solve their computer problems, then back to the boat for the night.