Yesterday Mike and I were lying in the shade of coconut palms on a beach of broken white coral overlooking the stunning Blue Lagoon (a remote lagoon located within a lagoon and famous for the myriad of blue hues), a few moments earlier Mike had been cracking fallen coconuts and now we were munching on the tasty flesh while watching the little black tipped fins of reef sharks (small and harmless) cruise by in the warm shallow waters. It was one of those moments where you realise you wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world doing anything else with anyone else.

I know to our friends and family back home it might seam like we're always this positive and certainly we're excited about most every place we've visited but if we're honest not everywhere is this good, apart from a couple stops the last few months has been more trying than terrific. Not since the BVI's in February have we had such a wonderful combination of breath taking beauty, fair weather and accessibility to the cruising yacht. We knew very little about the Tuamotus 14 months ago, We'd read about it in one blog and it seamed it was just another of those places you stop to break up the passage to Tahiti, from what we know now, every cruiser with Pacific dreams should add this amazing archipelago to their list of must see's.

We've done a lot here in Rangiroa over the past week but we want to share three stories in particular, first, the day we danced with dolphins. One dive shop was recommended to us here in Rangiroa (Six Passenger Dive Shop) and we met with Pitou, a very friendly young Frenchman who once a cruiser in the area himself has never left. Pitou arranged a sunset dive for us in the hope of seeing some dolphins just outside the pass. Six Passenger Dive is certainly the most professional of all the dive companies we've used over the last year, we even had a pre-dive briefing! The briefing included the instruction that if we're lucky and see dolphins we should 'dance' in the water so as to capture their attention. Well we did see dolphins, one pod of six and another of three just amazing and yes if you 'dance' in the water they look on with amusement, I'm sure they're thinking OMG look at these silly humans but whether we felt silly of not looking a dolphin in the eye and giving it a good tummy rub is something we'll never forget. We had hoped to see dolphins but never imagined it would have been as up close and personal as this!

Our second story happened yesterday down at Blue Lagoon. We knew the local day tripper boats fed sharks there but there were no tripper boats (we had the place to ourselves) and by chance we happened across the spot where they fed them, well we guessed we'd found the spot because suddenly there were 20 or 30 black tip reef sharks circling our little dinghy expectantly. Reef sharks are not dangerous to humans and few would have been much more than a metre but we didn't feel like swimming with them regardless. We decided to go and spear a fish and come back to feed them ourselves. We don't spear reef fish normally because of the threat of Ciguatera poisoning in some species but we managed a sizeable grouper looking thing to give them. Just like we'd seen on TV we cut the fish up and then tied some larger pieces on cord so the sharks had to fight a little to free the food. It was great though we underestimated how sharp their teeth were, they made very short work of the cord we'd used but it was very exciting.

Our final story happened this morning, while dinghing ashore in Blue Lagoon we came across a group of huge manta rays feeding off a massive swarm of krill. We donned our snorkels and jumped in, what a sight!!! about 8-10 manta rays were swooping around us totally unfazed by our presence. Their wingspan was about 2-3M and they have huge mouths into which they scoop up the krill in the water. Their mouths look just about big enough to swallow a human and when they're coming right at you it's more than a little concerning, we stayed close to the dinghy until we learnt though that they always turn away last minute. We watched them for almost half an hour as they continued to scoop up the krill. They looked so playful as they banked and turned like airplanes in a dogfight. Can't believe we've had such luck with the sea life here!