At the end of the web page it says: "The only link from Rapa to the outside world is the cargo boat Tuhaa Pae III which drops anchor in Haurei Bay every two to three weeks.
Then I Googled for "Tuhaa Pae III" and got this link:
The sharks stay out of the lagoons during the day and enter in the evening. So snorkling during the day is safe. I think I recall there was a fish that looked like the puffer with spines on it that were were advised to stay away from.
Here are my notes form our visit to Ducie:
We’re currently anchored off Ducie Island. It is a coral atoll and it looks a lot like the kinds of desert islands you see in various cartoons where the fellow is sitting in a beach chair waiting for his case of Chivas Regal to wash up. Zodiacs are going in at 1600 and we’ll be back off again about 1800. Tomorrow, we’ll have pretty much the entire day until we sail at 1600. I’ve got all my gear packed and ready to go including my snorkel stuff. This will be my first time to try it out.
4/10/99 1912
Back on board after our first excursion to Ducie Island. This was my first time on a coral atoll. It was interesting to say the least from the first moment we set foot on the island. The Zodiacs dropped us on a coral reef (the coral was dead so it wasn’t as sharp as it could have been) which was just at water level as the small breakers rolled in. To get to shore, you had to walk along the reef top, which slanted towards the beach. On the landward side, there was deeper water and in it were completely tame tropical fish of various sizes and colors including spectacular green parrotfish.
Once ashore, you attention was immediately drawn to the material the beach was made of. It was thousands of pieces of coral of all sizes and shapes. Most of it was white near the water but it got darker as you went away from the beach and the ground rose. Mixed in among the white were pieces with red and or orange on them. Every few feet were tame birds setting on their nests (Masked Boobies, Jeff called them). There were shells mixed it as well and it didn’t take long until it was discovered that hermit crabs lived in some of these shells.
We landed on the north side of the island. After awhile, Theresa led us west down the beach to a place where a path to the interior lagoon had been hacked through the underbrush. Jeff had warned us to be very careful as we walked through the underbrush because pelagic (meaning they live virtually their entire lives flying over the open ocean) birds nest here. Because they are so tame, they simply lay in the path until you are almost on them. If you don’t go very slowly, they will leap up and try to run (since the brush is so thick, they can’t fly here) and they can very easily break their legs on the irregular coral debris. Because they are pelagic, their legs are very stick-like and under-developed and, hence, easily breakable.
Scattered everywhere is the flotsam and jetsam thrown up by the sea on a place like this. Many round floats of the kind use on nets, bottles, plastic, and stuff of every description. I asked Jeff today how many ships visit Ducie per year and he said there are two and we’re one of them. The rest of the time, the place just sits out here alone with the birds cawing and swooping and the surf breaking endlessly on the reef. It seems strange to look at a place and think that it sits here for so many months every year without a soul on it.
A five-minute walk took us through the brush (with a few delays for slow birds) to the interior lagoon. It is the classic enclosed coral lagoon. Towards the south, it is enclosed by water level reef with high surf breaking on it (the weather and the swells are currently (and perhaps always) driven in from the south) and three tiny mounds of land while the northwest to northeast quadrants are enclosed by the largest island, which we were on. The water in the lagoon was beautiful shades of blue near the sand and changed to a deeper blue further out.
I arrived at the inner lagoon to find that some of my trip-mates were already donning their snorkel gear and going in. I pulled my pack off my shoulder to get my flippers, snorkel and mask out and promptly discovered that in my excitement looking at things as I walked here from the Zodiac, I hadn’t noticed that my flippers and snorkel had fallen out of my pack somewhere along the way. I retraced my steps (with some slow bird delays again) and I found the errant items lying on the coral beach nearly where I started at the landing site.
After a trek to the outer beach and back to recover my lost gear, I arrived again at the inner lagoon. This time, I got my gear on and went in to try it out. It sounds easy but there were some logistics involved. First the coral is very hard to deal with to walk on without shoes or to sit on without butt protection so changing into snorkel gear is something that must be carefully thought out. Hopefully, the solution you come up with is close to the actual water because walking a long distance in the flippers is both frustrating, comical and tiring. Once, I’d worked all this out, I waded in.
This was only my third time to snorkel. Last times were 1994 and 1986. All my equipment was new and untested so, needless to say, I didn’t just plunge in. The good news was that my facemask sealed the first time I applied negative pressure. I walked out to about waist high level water and then tried it. It worked like a champ. Even the mechanism, which deals with water coming down the tube, worked great. It was windy and there was some chop so water did come down several times but all I had to do was blow and it was all expelled easily.
Underwater was beautiful. Sand and coral and a few fish greeted me as I went under. I leaned forwards and began to use my flippers lightly to advance. At first, I stayed parallel to the shore where the depth isn’t more that what I could stand up in. Once I’d spent a few minutes doing this and had some confidence, I turned away from the shore and moved out. It was amazing. One second there would be sand and coral just below you and then the bottom would suddenly drop down to 30 or 40 feet. It was all very three dimensionally sculpted in wild and weird forms. Coral heads, I guess you’d call them. The water was totally clear and the bottom was clearly visible at any depth I saw.
I discovered that when you are looking down, it is hard to see if someone is crossing your path snorkeling just ahead or beside you. More than once, I discovered someone immediately beside or in front of me. I swam around for 10 or 15 minutes and then came out. I wanted to see how my back felt. It is better but I’m still watching it carefully. Also, the sun was low and the sky was partially overcast so the light penetrating the water was less than it will be tomorrow when it is at the zenith. Then, I want to swim out quite a ways into the lagoon. You can see from how the water colors change that there are areas out in the center of the lagoon when the bottom comes up again quite close to the surface.
Also, tomorrow, I want to talk a long walk around the entire large island. When else will I ever in the life be on such an isolated spot on this earth. I want to savor it.
The Zodiac return to the ship was exciting. I’m always a bit amazed that some of these people, elderly as they are and as physically frail as they can seem, make it in and out of the Zodiacs again and again without mishap. The skill of the Marine Expedition staff in managing these entries and exits is impressive. On shore, we’re always confronted with surf and at ship-side, the Zodiacs are always rising and falling precipitously with the swells as the ship sits at anchor. The transfer to or from the Zodiac from the gangway of the ship is, I think, the most dangerous part.
4/11/99 0829
Getting ready to go ashore for a full day on Ducie Island. I’ve got all my snorkeling gear again.
Had a good conversation this AM with Alex over coffee and then breakfast. He likes to talk about the world and its ills and what can be done about it. The two doctors, Ann and Paul, joined in also. It was great fun.
Gertraude says she’s going to stay aboard for today’s outing. She wants to make sure her foot’s OK to go ashore at Henderson.
We set our clocks back another hour last night so now we’re past PST and into the next one west of the US West Coast. Windows calls it Alaska Time zone.
4/11/99 2021
A long day with major fun. I’d say it was a 10 out of 10 day. It had so many things - a desert island, incredible beach combing, adventure and a pristine inner lagoon to snorkel in. Even the ending was really fine as we sat up topside and sailed away from Ducie, the evening sky was so pretty and the breeze and the temperature were just perfect. To top it all off, as we were sitting around in the bar discussing the day and waiting for dinner, Sergei, the Russian radio operator came in and gave me my second e-mail from Sharon.
We began running Zodiacs to shore about 0830 and by 0915 or so everyone one was transferred that wanted to go. Gertraude and some others stayed aboard. Once ashore, we established a sort of base-camp to which everyone would return and at which we could leave what ever we didn’t want to carry like our life jackets (required on every Zodiac transfer). Theresa was going to lead a walk around the East End of the island.
To get the perspective, you have to know that Ducie consists of four islands, which rise from a basically circular coral reef surrounding a lagoon. We landed on the northern side of the northern-most island, which is also the largest by far. As an aside, Ducie is the furthest east and the furthest south coral lagoon island in the Pacific.
Theresa’s group, which I’d joined, was going to go east and work their way all the way around the eastern end of the northern island until they’d come around to the inner lagoon and then they were going to continue until the reached the snorkeling site which is basically directly inland from the landing base-camp site. There were so many things to see while walking. Jeff, Theresa’s husband, who is a naturalist and an avid birder, was constantly scanning and pointing out birds. If you are a birder, the islands we are visiting are extremely interesting because of the bird species which live here and no where else. On the beach, as we walked, were every sort of wild coral shapes and pieces you could imagine. There was a lot of man-made stuff as well such as fishing net floats and odd debris including materials left over from ship wreaks of which these small island have quite a few recorded. It was hot and very bright. I was wearing long pants and a tee shirt and I’d applied sun block to my arms and neck. The breeze helped but whenever it lapsed, it was a cooker. It was during this walk that I ran out of film in my camera and went to change to another roll and discovered that in my inattention, I’d brought two used rolls rather than two new ones so, other than for underwater photograph, my photos for the day were over since all my film supplies were back on the ship.
As we walked, the group became more and more spread out and finally, at one point, Jeff and several of us came to a place where Jeff wanted to cut across the island directly to the lagoon rather than continue all the way around the end. Everyone went that way except for Alex and myself and we elected to make the entire circumnavigation of the eastern end of the island. Each of the four islands has a name but I don’t know them. I do know that the small ones are generically called Motus.
Alex and I walked and continued a discussion we’d begun over dinner the night before and had touched on this morning over coffee again. It was wide ranging over history, sociology, philosophy and a lot of other “ologies”. It was great fun. He asked what my deepest goals were and after I told him mine, he shared his. He wants to own and develop an island into a resort. He said he’s become a millionaire through stock market investments and he doesn’t care about making more money but, for some reason, he’s really focused on locating and developing an island.
When we reached the extreme end of the northern island (which was due east of the center point in the lagoon, bare reef stretched between ¼ and ½ a mile from where we were to the first of the three Motu islets. We decided to see if we could walk over and visit the Motu. It was a long hike across reef surface. It was very wide and flat. Flat, at least in the large sense. Once you were actually walking on it, it was fairly irregular, as were all the reef tops. At one point we stopped and looked at some water on the reef. We could see that it appeared to be slowly moving onto the reef as if the tide was beginning to come in. We considered that it might be coming in but then we looked around and found another place were it looked like the water was ebbing out. We shrugged our shoulders and pressed on. Soon we reached the Motu itself. It was indistinguishable from the larger island in all respects other than size. It had coral beach all the way around and low and fairly impenetrable bushes in the interior. We walked around it to the farther side to see if we could go to the second Motu but when we got there, there was a fairly narrow but deep passage between the islets so we continued on around the islet we were on.
When we arrived back at our original arrival point, we could se that the tide was indeed coming in and that large sections of the reef we’d crossed were now under moving water. It became obvious at this point that keeping our shoes dry was not an option and that there was nothing to be gained by waiting so we started across. I didn’t feel worried. I recalled how essentially level the entire reef surface was and that meant two things. One, the water would not be rushing with very much force in any particular place and, two, the water would not be significantly deeper than the amount the tide had risen at any given point either. In fact, both of these suppositions were born out on our crossing and we never stepped into water more than 12 inches deep the entire way and it was always moving fairly slowly.
Once back on the northern island, we continued on around on the lagoon side. Theresa had told us about some holes in the lagoon bottom where you could see whirlpools setup when the tide was exiting the lagoon. The entire island at this point in its evolutionary history is limestone-based and these holes probably led directly or indirectly to the island’s exterior, hence the whirlpools. Alex and I parted company because he wanted to see if some more material from an old shipwreck we’d found had washed up further into the bushes beyond the coral and I wanted to press on around the inner lagoon (towards lunch). It was then that I found two of the holes in the lagoon bottom. Both were only 15 feet or so off the beach and with the water crystal clear, finding them was not hard. I think a Volkswagen bug could have fit into each of them. When I saw them, the tide was waxing so there were no whirlpools but people, later in the day, said they saw the water whirlpooling (counterclockwise).
After seeing the whirlpool holes, I blazed a new trail through the brush to the outside of the island and then worked my way back to the base-camp for lunch.
After lunch (sandwiches we made the night before and then carried over in a Zodiac by the Marine Expeditions people, I grabbed my snorkel gear from where I’d left it on the beach and headed for the lagoon again to do some swimming and underwater sightseeing.
At the lagoon, I could see that most of the people who wanted to snorkel had done so in the morning so there were only three or fours of us in the afternoon. A lot of people had gone back to the ship on the noon Zodiac run (didn’t like the heat I guess). I put my gear on and waded it.
The water was cool to the skin but just barely. The surface of the lagoon was covered with little wavlets not more than 2 inches high which was perfect (don’t want water constantly washing over the upper end of the snorkel and ending up mixed with the air you are trying to breath). The view under water was much as it was yesterday except the sun was higher and so things were much more illuminated. Also, I was more comfortable and confident of my equipment and myself today. Yesterday, I found it unnerving to be swimming over bottom that was only three or four feet below me and then to have the bottom drop into a huge depth 50 or 60 feet down. It was sort of like an underwater version of fear of heights. Today, this feeling waned the longer I swam. In the end, my big fear was that my back, which has been quite sensitive, might seize up on me while I was swimming. I knew, if it did, I would have to have a lot of presence of mind to just relax and let the spasm clear even if it meant holding my breath for a few moments while it did.
In the end, I could feel that it was tired and complaining a bit but it never seized and so I just kept on while watching it closely.
Some people who have snorkeled in a lot of places said that the Ducie Lagoon was really quite special because of the huge coral heads and the strong three dimensionality of the underwater landscape. I didn’t have much to compare against it but I was certainly impressed. It was like a wonderland underwater the way the bottom dropped out and then rose in piles and pillars of coral. Swimming through all of it were various fish including the brilliant green Parrotfish that eat coral. At one point, I was about four or five feet from one munching on the reef and I just stopped swimming and breathing and became quiet and I could hear the small crunch each time the fish took a bite of the coral. I took several photos with my REI underwater camera. It is a very strange experience using a camera underwater. We’ll just have to see how the photos turn out..
So, about 1430, I wrapped up the snorkeling and grabbed my gear and went back to the base-camp and waited for the 1530 Zodiac back to the Academic Shuleykin. It was hot sitting there waiting so I just went into the water and found a flat piece of reef to sit on and let the small waves batter me and keep me cool while I watched the fish swim right up to me feet.
We climbed up high on a hill to see one of the old forts. From up there, you could see the entire central harbor of the caldera. Rapa is the southern-most inhabited island of French Polynesia. Beautiful and isolated.
Loading…
galron's conversations
i love it , this island like a paradise
more »
Looks very cool! lucky you could see that place.
more »
How is it possible to get to Pitcairn from Europe ?
Andrew
more »
Good morning, amazing, look and wonder, so far away))
more »
thanxs
more »
thank you very much.. i really wonder this island and i will do like you, i will go for adventure. if it can be, please send me the DOC file.
more »
Marcus,
I googled "Rapa Iti Travel" and came up with this link:
http://www.thetahititraveler.com/islandguide/rapaintro.asp
At the end of the web page it says: "The only link from Rapa to the outside world is the cargo boat Tuhaa Pae III which drops anchor in Haurei Bay every two to three weeks.
Then I Googled for "Tuhaa Pae III" and got this link:
http://tahiti-tourisme.com/doclinks/austral_boat_transportation.pdf
Which is the ship's schedule. So, you can get you guy to Tahiti and then from there he can catch international flights to the world.
I hope that's of help.
Cheers!
Dennis Gallagher / Galron
more »
wow that so cool!!
more »
The sharks stay out of the lagoons during the day and enter in the evening. So snorkling during the day is safe. I think I recall there was a fish that looked like the puffer with spines on it that were were advised to stay away from.
Here are my notes form our visit to Ducie:
We’re currently anchored off Ducie Island. It is a coral atoll and it looks a lot like the kinds of desert islands you see in various cartoons where the fellow is sitting in a beach chair waiting for his case of Chivas Regal to wash up. Zodiacs are going in at 1600 and we’ll be back off again about 1800. Tomorrow, we’ll have pretty much the entire day until we sail at 1600. I’ve got all my gear packed and ready to go including my snorkel stuff. This will be my first time to try it out. 4/10/99 1912Back on board after our first excursion to Ducie Island. This was my first time on a coral atoll. It was interesting to say the least from the first moment we set foot on the island. The Zodiacs dropped us on a coral reef (the coral was dead so it wasn’t as sharp as it could have been) which was just at water level as the small breakers rolled in. To get to shore, you had to walk along the reef top, which slanted towards the beach. On the landward side, there was deeper water and in it were completely tame tropical fish of various sizes and colors including spectacular green parrotfish.
Once ashore, you attention was immediately drawn to the material the beach was made of. It was thousands of pieces of coral of all sizes and shapes. Most of it was white near the water but it got darker as you went away from the beach and the ground rose. Mixed in among the white were pieces with red and or orange on them. Every few feet were tame birds setting on their nests (Masked Boobies, Jeff called them). There were shells mixed it as well and it didn’t take long until it was discovered that hermit crabs lived in some of these shells.
We landed on the north side of the island. After awhile, Theresa led us west down the beach to a place where a path to the interior lagoon had been hacked through the underbrush. Jeff had warned us to be very careful as we walked through the underbrush because pelagic (meaning they live virtually their entire lives flying over the open ocean) birds nest here. Because they are so tame, they simply lay in the path until you are almost on them. If you don’t go very slowly, they will leap up and try to run (since the brush is so thick, they can’t fly here) and they can very easily break their legs on the irregular coral debris. Because they are pelagic, their legs are very stick-like and under-developed and, hence, easily breakable.
Scattered everywhere is the flotsam and jetsam thrown up by the sea on a place like this. Many round floats of the kind use on nets, bottles, plastic, and stuff of every description. I asked Jeff today how many ships visit Ducie per year and he said there are two and we’re one of them. The rest of the time, the place just sits out here alone with the birds cawing and swooping and the surf breaking endlessly on the reef. It seems strange to look at a place and think that it sits here for so many months every year without a soul on it.
A five-minute walk took us through the brush (with a few delays for slow birds) to the interior lagoon. It is the classic enclosed coral lagoon. Towards the south, it is enclosed by water level reef with high surf breaking on it (the weather and the swells are currently (and perhaps always) driven in from the south) and three tiny mounds of land while the northwest to northeast quadrants are enclosed by the largest island, which we were on. The water in the lagoon was beautiful shades of blue near the sand and changed to a deeper blue further out.
I arrived at the inner lagoon to find that some of my trip-mates were already donning their snorkel gear and going in. I pulled my pack off my shoulder to get my flippers, snorkel and mask out and promptly discovered that in my excitement looking at things as I walked here from the Zodiac, I hadn’t noticed that my flippers and snorkel had fallen out of my pack somewhere along the way. I retraced my steps (with some slow bird delays again) and I found the errant items lying on the coral beach nearly where I started at the landing site.
After a trek to the outer beach and back to recover my lost gear, I arrived again at the inner lagoon. This time, I got my gear on and went in to try it out. It sounds easy but there were some logistics involved. First the coral is very hard to deal with to walk on without shoes or to sit on without butt protection so changing into snorkel gear is something that must be carefully thought out. Hopefully, the solution you come up with is close to the actual water because walking a long distance in the flippers is both frustrating, comical and tiring. Once, I’d worked all this out, I waded in.
This was only my third time to snorkel. Last times were 1994 and 1986. All my equipment was new and untested so, needless to say, I didn’t just plunge in. The good news was that my facemask sealed the first time I applied negative pressure. I walked out to about waist high level water and then tried it. It worked like a champ. Even the mechanism, which deals with water coming down the tube, worked great. It was windy and there was some chop so water did come down several times but all I had to do was blow and it was all expelled easily.
Underwater was beautiful. Sand and coral and a few fish greeted me as I went under. I leaned forwards and began to use my flippers lightly to advance. At first, I stayed parallel to the shore where the depth isn’t more that what I could stand up in. Once I’d spent a few minutes doing this and had some confidence, I turned away from the shore and moved out. It was amazing. One second there would be sand and coral just below you and then the bottom would suddenly drop down to 30 or 40 feet. It was all very three dimensionally sculpted in wild and weird forms. Coral heads, I guess you’d call them. The water was totally clear and the bottom was clearly visible at any depth I saw.
I discovered that when you are looking down, it is hard to see if someone is crossing your path snorkeling just ahead or beside you. More than once, I discovered someone immediately beside or in front of me. I swam around for 10 or 15 minutes and then came out. I wanted to see how my back felt. It is better but I’m still watching it carefully. Also, the sun was low and the sky was partially overcast so the light penetrating the water was less than it will be tomorrow when it is at the zenith. Then, I want to swim out quite a ways into the lagoon. You can see from how the water colors change that there are areas out in the center of the lagoon when the bottom comes up again quite close to the surface.
Also, tomorrow, I want to talk a long walk around the entire large island. When else will I ever in the life be on such an isolated spot on this earth. I want to savor it.
The Zodiac return to the ship was exciting. I’m always a bit amazed that some of these people, elderly as they are and as physically frail as they can seem, make it in and out of the Zodiacs again and again without mishap. The skill of the Marine Expedition staff in managing these entries and exits is impressive. On shore, we’re always confronted with surf and at ship-side, the Zodiacs are always rising and falling precipitously with the swells as the ship sits at anchor. The transfer to or from the Zodiac from the gangway of the ship is, I think, the most dangerous part.
4/11/99 0829Getting ready to go ashore for a full day on Ducie Island. I’ve got all my snorkeling gear again.
Had a good conversation this AM with Alex over coffee and then breakfast. He likes to talk about the world and its ills and what can be done about it. The two doctors, Ann and Paul, joined in also. It was great fun.
Gertraude says she’s going to stay aboard for today’s outing. She wants to make sure her foot’s OK to go ashore at Henderson.
We set our clocks back another hour last night so now we’re past PST and into the next one west of the US West Coast. Windows calls it Alaska Time zone. 4/11/99 2021A long day with major fun. I’d say it was a 10 out of 10 day. It had so many things - a desert island, incredible beach combing, adventure and a pristine inner lagoon to snorkel in. Even the ending was really fine as we sat up topside and sailed away from Ducie, the evening sky was so pretty and the breeze and the temperature were just perfect. To top it all off, as we were sitting around in the bar discussing the day and waiting for dinner, Sergei, the Russian radio operator came in and gave me my second e-mail from Sharon.
We began running Zodiacs to shore about 0830 and by 0915 or so everyone one was transferred that wanted to go. Gertraude and some others stayed aboard. Once ashore, we established a sort of base-camp to which everyone would return and at which we could leave what ever we didn’t want to carry like our life jackets (required on every Zodiac transfer). Theresa was going to lead a walk around the East End of the island.
To get the perspective, you have to know that Ducie consists of four islands, which rise from a basically circular coral reef surrounding a lagoon. We landed on the northern side of the northern-most island, which is also the largest by far. As an aside, Ducie is the furthest east and the furthest south coral lagoon island in the Pacific.
Theresa’s group, which I’d joined, was going to go east and work their way all the way around the eastern end of the northern island until they’d come around to the inner lagoon and then they were going to continue until the reached the snorkeling site which is basically directly inland from the landing base-camp site. There were so many things to see while walking. Jeff, Theresa’s husband, who is a naturalist and an avid birder, was constantly scanning and pointing out birds. If you are a birder, the islands we are visiting are extremely interesting because of the bird species which live here and no where else. On the beach, as we walked, were every sort of wild coral shapes and pieces you could imagine. There was a lot of man-made stuff as well such as fishing net floats and odd debris including materials left over from ship wreaks of which these small island have quite a few recorded. It was hot and very bright. I was wearing long pants and a tee shirt and I’d applied sun block to my arms and neck. The breeze helped but whenever it lapsed, it was a cooker. It was during this walk that I ran out of film in my camera and went to change to another roll and discovered that in my inattention, I’d brought two used rolls rather than two new ones so, other than for underwater photograph, my photos for the day were over since all my film supplies were back on the ship.
As we walked, the group became more and more spread out and finally, at one point, Jeff and several of us came to a place where Jeff wanted to cut across the island directly to the lagoon rather than continue all the way around the end. Everyone went that way except for Alex and myself and we elected to make the entire circumnavigation of the eastern end of the island. Each of the four islands has a name but I don’t know them. I do know that the small ones are generically called Motus.
Alex and I walked and continued a discussion we’d begun over dinner the night before and had touched on this morning over coffee again. It was wide ranging over history, sociology, philosophy and a lot of other “ologies”. It was great fun. He asked what my deepest goals were and after I told him mine, he shared his. He wants to own and develop an island into a resort. He said he’s become a millionaire through stock market investments and he doesn’t care about making more money but, for some reason, he’s really focused on locating and developing an island.
When we reached the extreme end of the northern island (which was due east of the center point in the lagoon, bare reef stretched between ¼ and ½ a mile from where we were to the first of the three Motu islets. We decided to see if we could walk over and visit the Motu. It was a long hike across reef surface. It was very wide and flat. Flat, at least in the large sense. Once you were actually walking on it, it was fairly irregular, as were all the reef tops. At one point we stopped and looked at some water on the reef. We could see that it appeared to be slowly moving onto the reef as if the tide was beginning to come in. We considered that it might be coming in but then we looked around and found another place were it looked like the water was ebbing out. We shrugged our shoulders and pressed on. Soon we reached the Motu itself. It was indistinguishable from the larger island in all respects other than size. It had coral beach all the way around and low and fairly impenetrable bushes in the interior. We walked around it to the farther side to see if we could go to the second Motu but when we got there, there was a fairly narrow but deep passage between the islets so we continued on around the islet we were on.
When we arrived back at our original arrival point, we could se that the tide was indeed coming in and that large sections of the reef we’d crossed were now under moving water. It became obvious at this point that keeping our shoes dry was not an option and that there was nothing to be gained by waiting so we started across. I didn’t feel worried. I recalled how essentially level the entire reef surface was and that meant two things. One, the water would not be rushing with very much force in any particular place and, two, the water would not be significantly deeper than the amount the tide had risen at any given point either. In fact, both of these suppositions were born out on our crossing and we never stepped into water more than 12 inches deep the entire way and it was always moving fairly slowly.
Once back on the northern island, we continued on around on the lagoon side. Theresa had told us about some holes in the lagoon bottom where you could see whirlpools setup when the tide was exiting the lagoon. The entire island at this point in its evolutionary history is limestone-based and these holes probably led directly or indirectly to the island’s exterior, hence the whirlpools. Alex and I parted company because he wanted to see if some more material from an old shipwreck we’d found had washed up further into the bushes beyond the coral and I wanted to press on around the inner lagoon (towards lunch). It was then that I found two of the holes in the lagoon bottom. Both were only 15 feet or so off the beach and with the water crystal clear, finding them was not hard. I think a Volkswagen bug could have fit into each of them. When I saw them, the tide was waxing so there were no whirlpools but people, later in the day, said they saw the water whirlpooling (counterclockwise).
After seeing the whirlpool holes, I blazed a new trail through the brush to the outside of the island and then worked my way back to the base-camp for lunch.
After lunch (sandwiches we made the night before and then carried over in a Zodiac by the Marine Expeditions people, I grabbed my snorkel gear from where I’d left it on the beach and headed for the lagoon again to do some swimming and underwater sightseeing.
At the lagoon, I could see that most of the people who wanted to snorkel had done so in the morning so there were only three or fours of us in the afternoon. A lot of people had gone back to the ship on the noon Zodiac run (didn’t like the heat I guess). I put my gear on and waded it.
The water was cool to the skin but just barely. The surface of the lagoon was covered with little wavlets not more than 2 inches high which was perfect (don’t want water constantly washing over the upper end of the snorkel and ending up mixed with the air you are trying to breath). The view under water was much as it was yesterday except the sun was higher and so things were much more illuminated. Also, I was more comfortable and confident of my equipment and myself today. Yesterday, I found it unnerving to be swimming over bottom that was only three or four feet below me and then to have the bottom drop into a huge depth 50 or 60 feet down. It was sort of like an underwater version of fear of heights. Today, this feeling waned the longer I swam. In the end, my big fear was that my back, which has been quite sensitive, might seize up on me while I was swimming. I knew, if it did, I would have to have a lot of presence of mind to just relax and let the spasm clear even if it meant holding my breath for a few moments while it did. In the end, I could feel that it was tired and complaining a bit but it never seized and so I just kept on while watching it closely.
Some people who have snorkeled in a lot of places said that the Ducie Lagoon was really quite special because of the huge coral heads and the strong three dimensionality of the underwater landscape. I didn’t have much to compare against it but I was certainly impressed. It was like a wonderland underwater the way the bottom dropped out and then rose in piles and pillars of coral. Swimming through all of it were various fish including the brilliant green Parrotfish that eat coral. At one point, I was about four or five feet from one munching on the reef and I just stopped swimming and breathing and became quiet and I could hear the small crunch each time the fish took a bite of the coral. I took several photos with my REI underwater camera. It is a very strange experience using a camera underwater. We’ll just have to see how the photos turn out..
So, about 1430, I wrapped up the snorkeling and grabbed my gear and went back to the base-camp and waited for the 1530 Zodiac back to the Academic Shuleykin. It was hot sitting there waiting so I just went into the water and found a flat piece of reef to sit on and let the small waves batter me and keep me cool while I watched the fish swim right up to me feet.
more »
We climbed up high on a hill to see one of the old forts. From up there, you could see the entire central harbor of the caldera. Rapa is the southern-most inhabited island of French Polynesia. Beautiful and isolated.
more »