While sitting on the deck one afternoon, I noticed a stretch of beach a distance away and thought we should go check it out. I had decided we could easily wade through the water at the places the beach seemed to disappear.

So off we went, towel and sunscreen in hand and flip flops on. Wading through the water wasn’t bad at first, but then I realized I had brought the wrong flops for the job. I had thought this through, the flip flops I wore yesterday in the water to wade to the motu didn’t dry quickly — they absorbed water (then proceeded to stink, which I will figure out in another day or so). So today I decided to wear the black flippers, the water should shed right off.

And it did! It made them slick and slippery. So I’m trying to wade across the coral and not cut my feet, but my feet keep slipping off the flip flops. So I ended up cutting my foot, but not too bad. At least I was wading in salt water, which would be good for the wound.

We make it to the area above, which was a little over the halfway point to the beach. The image above is a natural pool that had formed right off the lagoon. Basically a big drop-off all the way around. We’re not sure how deep this one was, because both of us were too chicken to jump in. This is the first time I have ever uttered the words, “I can’t see the bottom. I’m scared to get in there…”. Jumping in Boone Lake is one thing — the worst that might happen is a fish nibbles at your toes. The South Pacific has lots of poisonous and sharp-toothed sea life.

So we didn’t get in this pool, and we were sidetracked in our mission to go to the beach. Behind us was a road, which we followed:

(This is a picture looking back at the road and the lagoon after we had traveled on it a little ways.)

There were lots of crabs scuttling across the road, and a few days from now when I rode my bike down through here I almost flattened two or three of them (ironically, I’m making crab salad today for lunch). They would hear my bike and scuttle across in front of me, like they were trying to commit suicide.

Back to the original story — we follow this road only to discover we are back at the airport, just in time to watch the new arrivals step off the plane. The bag boys came flying in on their tractor, and the golf carts were there, ready to shuttle the new inductees down the palm covered road…

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French Polynesia by Courtney