After seeing some sharks in the water, we decided to take things more seriously and we booked ourselves a lagoon trip with ray and shark feeding.
We were picked up at 8 AM (!) to be driven to a resort full of honeymooners. That was even more scarier than the sharks later on. The tour also involved Dolphin watching. As we found out later, it was in a sanctuary, so no wild dolphins for us.
After an hour boot ride, we were forced into the water in the middle of the lagoon. There was already a boat and the hungry sharks were swimming around (about 100 sharks everywhere). So, as brave as I am, I went in the water first, after the guide off course. I was putting my mask on when something grabbed me from behind!!!....it was a sting ray swimming against me. That’s what the sting rays give you in return that you feed them. They start to cuddle with you. Before you know it, they were harassing you! There was a lady on the boat that was very scared of the rays, because of what happened to Steve Erwin. Luckily, I could take her fear away by introducing another bigger fear. I told her: “look underwater”…and her beautiful honeymoon face turned from nicely tanned to white..hundreds of sharks were swimming in between us!
Off course, my husband was gone from the group before everybody literally had hit the water. He started to swim away from the group immediately to start filming the rays and shark in clear water and not in our self-made, foot kicking blur water. Wonderful for him but I felt a little bit vulnerable between the sharks with no husband. They always go after the less strongest prey…but I came up with a solution. I was going to stand in the middle of all the couples! Hundred meters away Guido started laughing! It was a wonderful solution but didn’t work when all the couples were snorkeling away to a coral garden a few meters away. I had to face the sharks. They even came so close I accidentally touched one. But, hey, after swimming with so many sharks, I do feel less frightened and when we see one during snorkeling I always think ‘thank god, it is only one’, so in some way I have lost my fear.
After seeing all the danger in the water, we decided it was time to feel some fear on land. We found a rental company who rents scooters without needing a driving license. So it was time for me to feel what Guido feels whenever he is sitting next to me in the car. A few exceptions: it was a scooter, not a car and the road is not of such a good quality (read big holes everywhere). And to make it a bit more scary, we had a scooter that was so aggressive on the gas that you could fly with it if you had a runway.
After a couple of kilometers, Guido felt 16 again and I was still thinking about our travel insurance. Do they cover road accidents? But luckily, I had no more time to think about it as were we approaching every bump in the road with more that 50km/hour! We have seen all the nice beaches and viewpoints etc at the island and we were around the island in no time.
The main goal to rent the scooter was for me to go out for dinner and have a drink and Guido could drive me home. So just before sunset we went to the other side of the island with little gas in the scooter but we would fill it up over there. When we arrived at the gas station it was closed….as all the gas stations on the island. There was nothing left than to drive back to our hotel with the hope the scooter did not run out of gas. As this could be a long night with a lot of walking, we decided to skip dinner in Cooks bay and to head back. After a few kilometers the out-of-gas sign started to blink and I started to worry. After a nerve-wracking 45 minutes, we arrived safely back in our village! The reserve tank was big enough! To celebrate we did not had to walk we went out to dinner at the restaurant near our bungalow and allowed us to drink and not drive!
I think we have seen everything on this Island and we have had a lot of fun but we are also happy to change surroundings and we are taking the ferry back to Papeete tomorrow.
I want to note one thing about the controversial shark and ray feeding. Feeding the wild animals is, what I think, the worse thing to do. You make them independent and it is not as nature has designed. Here on Moorea the feeding is also a part of their culture. It is something they have always done. Off course, it is now only being done because of the tourists and it is still wrong but it was nice to hear shark feeding can also be cultural. And maybe these black-tips don’t know better for many decades that human feed them….
Cheers Anna
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