Tahanea SE Corner part 2

We spent two weeks in this lovely spot, while twice the wind blew 25-30. More Miramu winds. Early August is the heart of winter down here and we had to put on sweat shirts! The breeze felt like it came all the way from Antarctica, but I think our blood is just way thinned out by now! But On the days it was sunny and nice, we walked more motus, because each one is a little different.  We landed on a beach and walked clockwise around. The sea and the sky make such incredible shades of blue together.

The sand here is a mix of pink and white.

Those may look like Miguel's foot prints, but they are really crab houses. Each hole has a pile of sand cleaned out of it next to their hole.

There is a large passage of water between these two motus, from the middle to inner lagoon. Mike goes off to check out the red box?!? It was just plastic washed up. :-(

The wind blows over the sand here and makes interesting patterns in the sand.  This piece of coral looks like it has a sand tail with the sand blown away on both sides of it.

Trails of someone in the sand. Perhaps a snail?

It is hard to believe how clear the water is here. Easy to see deep into it.

This sea crab was watching me carefully, as well as the waves coming in with the tide.

The back side of this motu is like solid coral in thick sheets.

This coral had a red algae growing on it. And don't fall on that sharp part pointing up!!

This live tree, clings to the cracks in the rocks just above tide line.

Miguel's shirt matches the water color perfectly!!

This tree is growing out of solid coral!

A different type of coral, this one has a heart shaped center. Awww. And it was alive at one time.

Rain is falling from those clouds to the North of us, but not bad for a rainy day photo.

We saw a few more of the large hermit crabs. This guy is the size of your fist.

I wanted to take these shells, but all three of them had little bitty hermit crabs living in them. Our rule is we don't take anything that some one is living in. It is their home!

Another similar shell and what I thought was drift wood, but it was not coming out of the ground!

The wind makes the most interesting patterns in the sand.

The crab crossroads.

That is a rather large bird print in the middle of those snail and crab tracks. Wonder if he got lunch when he landed?!?

Mike checks out a shack completely hidden in the trees.

On the South side of the motu was another sand swirl in the water created by the eddies formed by the fast moving current. The waves breaking over the outer edge of the reef fill up the lagoon, causing a current to run to the inside of the lagoon and out one of the deep passes.

The sand patterns are not as interesting as the last motu, but what a cute little pool of water!

Not a foot print in the sand!! The clouds are thickening and it is raining pretty hard off in the distance.

One of the critters we have been hoping to see is a coconut crab. These guys are legendary with a claw big enough to open up a coconut!! And let me just say, a machete has a hard time opening them! One afternoon we set out ashore and cracked open some and left them for bait, hoping to see one of these crabs. We came back ashore with flashlights around 8pm. The first night was a horrible disaster as we found out later another boat had done the same, but they took the big crabs and killed and froze them to eat later. I just wanted a photo of one:-( The adults have blue skin (or shell) and the younger ones have black and red. On the second try waiting a few days after the other boat left, we tried again. Most of our coconuts had fist size hermit crabs munching away. And when they saw our light, many skidaddled out of there.

Finally we see one. It is a young one but he is much larger than the other hermit crabs. He is covering the whole coconut!

His arms make him look like a giant hermit crab, except for that large pincer on the left side of his head, and he has his own shell, too big to fit in a borrowed one anymore.

He was fairly busy munching away when Mike put his hand down next to him so you could see how big he is.

That scared him enough that he jumped down and ran away. I guess he was wondering what happened to the rest of his family and hoped we were not going to take him as well. We find out now that these guys are so popular as food for both locals and some cruisers, that they are now hard to find and may become endangered. The meat we are told has a coconut flavor, but I would just assume eat the coconut meat from the coconut itself with out killing these beautiful creatures.

Several more hermit crabs run when they see our lights.