Rangiroa

 A brief period of panic this morning. After a night of poor sleep, Lynn suggested I do a covid test and it came back positive. This was a slightly old test, but one we carried because the first time we got covid was in the Cooks. So we contacted the doctor and a nurse came up, re-swabbed me and put it through their rapid test machine, which came back negative! Honestly I'm a bit suspicious - he didn't swab us very thoroughly and I think it'd be unusual for our antigen test to be a false positive., But whatever, you have to abide by their rules, or it's anarchy.

During the period we were waiting to hear the results, Lynn cancelled my snorkelling trip today. Which was probably wise, as it'll let me recover properly. But a pity because Rangiroa is another enormous coral lagoon, even bigger than Fakarava, and the water looked stunning. Lynn went ashore late morning and looked around. However the place they were dropping people was a couple of kilometers from the town (small though it is) and with the heatr and humidity today, it wasn't a realistic walk. So she could mostly report that the island was another narrow patch of sand on hardened coral and that the water was as beautiful from close up.

Meanwhile, I continued to rest and do little. I strongly suspect that I do have covid - my positive test with my own kit and my symptoms are more convincing than the nurse's dubious test (which has been charged to our room at about US$140). So I reckon I should quarantine myself to some degree at least. Fortunately, though I missed a beautiful location today, tomorrow is another sea day as we make our way south again from the Tuamotus to the Society Islands and I reckon after that I should be able to resume usual services.

We did go and sit on deck as we sailed out of the lagoon and turned into the setting sun, which was lovely, and we did go to the quiz, but didn't do very well which was very much today's theme.

Fakarava

In our first Tuamotu island, we were approaching anchor by the time we woke and quickly got up for our room service light breakfast, as we both had activities at 7.30am.

Fakarava is essentially a very large lagoon with a thin spit of land along the north and east sides. In the picture below, the west and southern sides look thicker but there are actually just reefs.

Lynn was doing the ‘Fakarava Cultural Tour’. This took a couple of hours, all up, and included a visit to the decommissioned lighthouse, to a church. There were lessons in basket weaving, opening coconuts and throwing spears for sport.

Meanwhile, I went on the ‘Blue Lagoon Tour’. This hustled a dozen of us into a steel boat which headed to the north-western corner of the lagoon where we jumped out, waded ashore, and then snorkelled in a smaller, very sheltered lagoon set within the island. It was relatively shallow (2-8 ft) with a number of coral bommies and the usual array of common fish. Coming back was into a strong wind and oncoming waves, rough and soaking but fun.

We met up in time for lunch, then in the afternoon we slept, sat on deck and eventually watched the lagoon recede. I had thought about going ashore but Lynn assured me there was essentially no village or anything to visit. We then went to the trivia competition before dinner.