AdventuresAboardAvatar: Tahanea West Pass

The closer we got to the island, the more inviting it looked.

Close enough to enter the pass, we see what looks to be sandy beaches with palm forests.

Anchor set inside the main pass behind a motu at Tahanea. A boobie bird is flying past our bow, and the paint job is getting worse (oh well, just looks bad, but still safe).

Our friends Steve and Lili from “Liward”, come get us to go for a snorkel in the West pass.

While drift snorkeling the pass, Mike hangs on to the dingy line as it trails behind us.

The live coral here is quite amazing and these brilliant blue fish love having a home to dart into when danger comes.

This Camouflage Grouper hides in a rock crevasse waiting for some unsuspecting little fish to swim by and become lunch.

The Spotted Grouper has blue and pink scales under florescent blue dots all over his body.

One of the bigger fish we have seen is this Humphead Wrasse (also called the Napoleon fish).

Napoleon Wrass from above.

Here he was heading for some rocks.

Swimming along quickly, but you can really see his markings on this shot. Note the stripes on his back and the maze on his nose.

There is really nothing to give you any perspective on how big he is, but he is about 3 to 4 feet long and about 2 feet vertical. Big boy!

One of the many species of Parrot Fish eating the coral.

I had to search my Reef Fish book for this guy! He is a Scrawled Filefish with iridescent blue and black spots. Over a foot long!

The Silver Tip Shark can be recognized to Not be just a white tip, because he has white tips on all of his fins and tails. The white tip only has a white tip on his dorsal fin.

We watched this Dog Tooth Tuna zoom through a school of fish trying to catch his lunch. Also about 2 to 3 feet long.

To celebrate our awesome day and final arrival in the Tuamotus, we had a beach party at sunset. That is Christian and Birgit of “Patufa” and a surprise for us, a French guy named Eric and his wife, that we had met a year ago in the Marquesas! And of course Lili and Steve.

Mike and the boys got our bon fire going before sunset.

While Steve is burning some plastic trash he found, Eric is pouring fresh coconut water into Mike's rum and mango drink.

The hermit crabs are like giant ants here.

They heard we were having a party and smelled the food, so out they came in droves.

We decided to have hermit crab races. So someone drew a big circle in the sand and we all picked a crab and set them in the middle. The winner was whoever's crab exited the circle first. This kept us entertained for quite a while.