Wednesday, September 5^th, 2001.  5:44am
Sitting on the deck of our bungalow.

The only sounds are those of birds chirping, water lapping at the shore a few feet away, and the waves crashing at the reef in the distance.  The morning is beautiful.  A few people walk around silently.  I can now see the first flight arriving in from Tahiti.  This island is a honeymoon island.  It seems that every couple we run into are on their honeymoon… we fit right in.  The sun has just broken through the clouds in the distance… it looks like a postcard.  I have been surprised at how cloudy it is here at times.  I am not sure if I wrote about it above, but our first night on Moorea, we heard something outside.  I asked Tam if it was rain – and we ran to the door to check it out.  It was!  It started raining SO hard that it wasn’t funny.  By the time I got my camera to snap a photo of it, it had stopped!  Just like that!  It rained on and off again that evening… but not a drop yesterday.  We were on our island tour, so I am thankful for the lack of a downpour.  It probably would have tripled the mud factor for our hike to the waterfall.  During our first dinner here on Monday, Tami was bitten like 15 times by mosquitoes – our first run in with them.  Yesterday, her leg was swollen like bee stings where she had been bitten.  It looked quite painful, and not much like a mosquito bite should.  The people we were with on the tour said that the pests were worse on Bora Bora, but the island was much more beautiful.  I can’t really even imagine that being true after seeing this one. 

            We leave for our next SCUBA dive in less than an hour.  We are much more prepared for this one, and I am not sure where we are going yet for the dive.  After returning, we are renting motor scooters for the day.  It is a strange feeling to be trapped at a hotel without any real way to get to the rest of the island without paying – but we are dealing with it.

8:30 PM – Lying in bed, listening to Tahitian music on the TV.

               The dive was pretty uneventful – no sharks or anything outrageous.  We went out the same pass this time, but instead went to the right.  It was very rough, and we were pretty soaked before even getting out to the site.  Once again, it was gorgeous and clear – we dove at 8am… pretty early to be diving in the ocean.  This time we went down to a depth of 85 feet!  Our max is probably 100, but I am not sure if we are going to hit that here.  I actually have a had a pretty sore left ear after our first dive – not sure what I did, but it hasn’t stopped hurting and I can’t hear as well out of it right now.  I am hoping that it is just temporary.  I really blew this dive.  Nothing major, but I forgot to tell the dive master when I was at half a tank.  Last time he asked ME – this time he didn’t.  I just figured that he was heading back, and knew when we would be low.  When he found out that I was at 500psi he looked kind of ticked, and then forced me to share his air for the next ten minutes… meaning that we both were breathing off of his tank.  I got to practice the emergency air sharing technique… and had to change respirators at 75 feet or so.  I was a little nervous about it, but it went ok.  Tami did fine.  Women naturally use less air underwater. 

            We later rented two scooters to roam the island with.  We figured that this would be the only way to actually get away from the hotel to eat, etc.  TAMI WAS SO FUNNY!!!  She was completely nervous about riding one and looked pretty unstable.  Even the hotel workers were a little scared at first.  After coaxing on my part, and bravery on hers, she finally got it down pretty good.  It was so much fun to experience the island like this.  I really felt part of the surroundings by driving the island on these scooters.  We could pull over whenever we wanted, check out the gorgeous water, and try a snack shop on the way.  Which we did.  There are several little shacks, trucks, etc. that line the road in places.  They serve food at far more reasonable prices than the restaurants.  We pulled into one that looked safe and ordered.  I ordered a steak and “frites” (potatoes), and Tam ordered “chao” mein.  (It was listed under “Chenese” food)  Dang that was a good steak!  I am totally serious when I say that it is one of the best.  (Not as good as Wanda’s!)  Tam said the Chow Mein was better than a lot of places in the states.  Next, we stopped at several places up the road to look for pareo’s.  Tam found a couple that she liked and we bought them.  I can’t wait to see her in them!  We tried a couple Tahitian lottery tickets, but lost on both.  Oh, well… just my lottery luck.  We then found a place – a corner of a place really, that was called “@ Internet”.  It cost 25cfp a minute to use the Internet… but we wanted to send our parents a quick email.  We received email from both sets of parents, printed them, and read them later in the night.  (They were great!  It was nice to hear from family – kind of like a survivor thing, I guess!)   We stopped at the Beachcomber hotel next, where we signed up to scuba dive with the sharks during feeding time the next morning, and then to go to a site called “Stingray World” that same afternoon.  Two dives in one day.  Should be a good time.  Nice hotel!

We drove around taking pictures, then headed back to the hotel.  We made a quick stop at a local grocery stop to stock up on food supplies… cheese, the most delicious bread you can imagine, chips, and cookies.  The food is good here.  We spent only $17 on snack foods – and we got a LOT of stuff!  It was a great day and we are looking forward to Thursday’s events.  We are planning on going to the Tiki Village show on Friday night and renting a car tomorrow.  Why not scooters again?  Well, we tried to take the scooters out at night, but flying insects SWARMED us.  It was so bad that we only made it to the main street and then turned around SO quick – spitting them out of our mouths and wiping away our uncovered eyes.  For the next half hour we were pulling them out of our clothes!  No joking!  I have never seen so many flying things in the air – it made our renting the scooters for 24 hours pointless… there was no way we were going to leave the hotel on these at night again.  Once again, we went to bed with Tahitian music playing outside – seems like they are always playing and celebrating.  We are going to watch one of the shows tonight.