Tuesday, September 11^th, 2001.  2:15pm
Lying in bed yet again.

           Well, I am now GLAD that we added an extra day here in Tahiti.  For several reasons.  A dark cloud moved in over our honeymoon today… both the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked today by terrorists.  We woke up fairly early today, and Tami was in the bathroom.  I punched the power on the TV and my jaw dropped – I had to make sure that I heard it right.  The U.S. attacked???  I didn’t normally watch TV in the morning… and we were only up because we needed to get ready for our early morning dives.  I called Tami into the room and we watched in disbelief.  Then the news came through that the U.S. has downed all planes and cancelled all incoming and outgoing flights.  The is the first time in our history that this has happened, and this is the first time that Tami and I have been out of the country!  What timing.  We are both concerned what the coming days have to offer – our flight home is supposed to be Friday night.  With the massive cancellations and delays – and the fact that some flights are being re-routed to Tahiti, I am concerned that there will be a backlog of flights to get back into the states.  I am also concerned about where we are going to stay if this happens.  I am going to refuse to leave our hotel room if the airways aren’t flowing again.  I don’t want to have to stay in the airport overnight – I have heard that there are already 500-600 people stranded here at the airport because of this!  I am hoping that our reservations at the hotel will still be good – I know that people will be looking for somewhere to stay during this crisis.  We ran into Oscar, one of the people we met here and that I mentioned in the entries above, and he said they were supposed to fly to Los Angeles tomorrow.  He wasn’t sure what was going to happen now.  Neither do we.  THAT is why I said that I am glad that we changed our return date – at least it is an extra day to hope that things straighten out.  It is strange to be in a place where French is the dominant language and to not be able to understand newscasts about a major occurrence at home.  To just know something is wrong.  On our bus ride home this afternoon it was silent as people were listening to the radio – we were the only two who didn’t understand.  As we ate dinner in the dinning room of the hotel a large group of Americans were huddled around the TV the staff had set up in the center… it is hard to concentrate on anything else right now.  I am angry… and am saddened.  We just watched the president’s speech to the nation.  I wish that we were home right now… I am angry that this has caused a somber umbrella on our honeymoon, but am angrier that they infected our country at all.  Our anniversary is 9/1/01 – and this has happened on 9/11/01.  It will be hard to forget this date.

Well, back to the fun part of this trip.  We were picked up at 7:50am this morning by a dive company called “Top Dive”.  I can now say that we have had a better experience with them than with any other.  They had great gear, an awesome watercraft, professional people, and were very attentive.  Our first dive spot was called “Muri Muri”, or “The White Valley”.  (Sometimes even referred to as Shark Point!)  It is known for it’s shark population.  We did see quite a few.  It is located off the motu that houses the airport.  We saw black-tip and silver-tipped reef sharks.  We ran into a fairly large sea turtle and several other species of larger fish.  It was a nice dive… we went down to around 80 feet or so.  On the way to the site everyone was spotting things from the boat like whales, dolphins, and even flying fish… however, Tami and I weren’t lucky enough to see anything besides water.  LOTS of water.  Next, we went back to an area near where we went diving yesterday.  Toopua Iti.  It was fairly uneventful yesterday, and was pretty close to that today.  In the distance we saw a pair of eagle rays flying gracefully through the water above us. 

            Moray eels.  I actually TOUCHED one this time… I think it angered the thing, but I tempted fate and felt it with my bare fingers.  Tons of colorful giant clams.  When we surfaced, the weather had grayed again.  By the time we reached our hotel, it was raining pretty good on us.

            We decided to go with a night dive tonight!  I mentioned it above, and since it doesn’t appear that we are going to be able to see Manta Rays (weather stuff)… we decided to go for a daring dive unlike anything we had planned.  We’ll be picked up by Top Dive again tonight at 5:15pm.  Scary, but it should be a good dive!

8:49 PM – Sitting in bed watching the news

            The news keeps flowing in slowly… the images are surreal.  The planes crashing into the world trade center – the building collapsing… people screaming.  We are only seeing a fraction of what is out there.  We only get one channel called “Bloomberg”.  It’s pretty poor and repetitive, but it is the only English Channel available.  It mainly just focuses on financial news.  Want to hear how the attack has affected other places in the world?  The Tahitian satellite link was on the World Trade Center!  Their entire television system has been knocked out!  The only thing people can get now are cable channels… nothing local, and no news stations.  Small world.

            Ok, so we went on our night dive tonight.  What a neat dive!  We were both pretty nervous about it, but all of our concerns were unfounded.  We were picked up at 5pm and driven back to Top Dive on the other side of the island.  Our Dive Master was a Frenchmen that looked like a smaller version of Jean Reno.  Very nice guy.  There were only 6 of us diving, and 5 of us were American.  Needless to say, there was a lot of talk about the current events.  They are supposed to fly back to the U.S. on Friday as well… it should be quite an interesting next few days.  Tami and I both added an extra layer of neoprene for warmth.  We also had two lights on us… one hand held, and another backup in our pockets.  We took the boat out to the diving spot and parked for a while until it became dark.  We then jumped into the black waters surrounding us.  If you had asked me a couple a years ago to do this I would have said, “never”!  And yet, here I was… floating in the ocean surrounded by water and the hidden sea life below.  We made our decent.  Our beams pierced the darkness.  Various fish swam around us… another world completely.  A lot of the fish sleep at night and you can almost go right up to them and touch them… On the flip side, a lot of OTHER fish are now out and about that aren’t usually in the open.  Lion fish.  Tiger fish.  Sea urchins (I hate these!).  Strange creatures all over.  My biggest fear were the damn urchins… they are the things with spikes all over their bodies and look like evil pin cushions.  They stay still during the day, but begin moving at night – why are they such a problem?  They are everywhere!  On rocks, around corners… in crevasses.  They can be as small as a quarter or as large as a basketball.  Dangerous?  Extremely.  The spines on these creatures are poisonous and fragile – they easily pierce SCUBA gear and immediately break off upon entering the body.  When trying to remove them, they break into several pieces within the skin.  (The best way to counter the sting is to PEE on the wound!)  I only say this because it was my biggest fear on this dive.  I was constantly looking around worried about touching anything because the only visible area was within the beam of my flashlight.  However, the sights were pretty impressive.  We saw a few moray eels again… they looked shocked by the lights.  We saw lionfish… a cowfish, what we think was a puffer fish, a flounder, and some really colorful animals.  I saw a total of three eels on this dive.  No big animals at all… but then again, we didn’t expect to see any.  It was really neat to see the dance of our lights below the surface.

            Our trip is coming to a rapid close.  Tomorrow is our last full day on Bora Bora.  We leave at 11 the next day (Thursday) for Papeete… and it should be interesting to see how things are there.  It seems like we spent more time on Moorea than here, but it has been fun.  The weather has been a royal pain here – disappointing really, but we have made the best of it.  We are renting a car again tomorrow – this time the shops should all be open!  We may try parasailing… our diving is over for this trip.  We each did 9 dives!  Three today alone!  Wow.  I feel like I need to be rung out!  That’s all for now…