The Blue Lagoon
18 July 2008 | Blue Lagoon, Rangiroa
Casey
Blue Lagoon We decided to go to the Blue lagoon with Astra, one of the boats we met on the way to the Marquesas. We were brave enough to go because they had better charts than us. We pulled up anchor and followed them out. My mom and dad are really paranoid, so Tara laid down on the dinghy and I sat on the little bars on the bow to look for reefs. But that was nothing compaired to Astra, who had Ashley climb the mast without anything attached to him. He climbed it just with one rope, wrapping his feet around the mast and then pulling himself up with the rope.
We got to the Anchorage four hours later, gathered our snorkel gear and went snorkeling. I saw a black tipped reef shark, a bunch of cool fish, blue coral, and a couple of clams. After a little bit of snorkeling we went back to the boat to cook some dinner for the nine of us.
"Hello, Hello," yelled Sally. "Come on aboard," my mom yelled to the rest of the Astra crew. Since there were nine of us we all had to squish together around our little table. We were having Spanish rice, beans, and fajitas. The food was still cooking so we sat down and talked.
When the food was ready, no one seemed to talk at all, either the food was really good or everyone was really hungry. The only talk that was going on though was, "could you dish me up some rice," or "could you pass the napkins." Since the meal was so messy and the table was so crowded, lots of things were spilled. Jeremy dropped some beans on the floor and said, "oh, I'm going to have to sweep aren't I? George dropped some rice on the chair and started to look for it, couldn't find it, and tapped Charlie who was sitting next to him and they were both looking. Tara knocked her glass of juice over and I drooped a bean on the ground and an onion on the seat. Luckily this is a boat so there are no rugs to spill on and the table is use to water.
When everyone was finished eating, we broke out the books. They wanted to see all our fish and shell books. My mom got all of them out and handed them around the table. The last to be handed out was the Dangerous Animals of the Sea. It is a book basically that has gruesome pictures of people's wounds when they touch stuff they shouldn't. "Don't open that!" I said to Jeremy, who had the book in his hand."It's really gross," Tara added. He opened it anyway. "Whoa, how does something like that happen?!?!" he exclaimed. George, Ashley, and Charlie were looking over his shoulder. I saw all of their faces, "Ah! OOOh! Oh! disgusting!" Were all exclamations we heard, which sounded funny with English accents. I told them of a story I read in that book, about a man who's face was swollen, because he tried to touch a little fish. The fish attacked him, and ejected some sort of poison in him. They flipped to the picture of the guy with the swollen face. They looked at that for a while, and then asked if they could borrow the book. We gave Sally, Jeremy and George some books to read.
The next day we went to the Blue Lagoon. It rained all day. The boat was pitching like crazy, and the dinghy ride over was a nightmare, but we got inside the one foot water with our dinghy. Astra came a couple minutes later. Tara and I had already swam around in the lagoon, and it wasn't that exciting. We all had a picnic on the picnic table once it stopped raining. It was fun but the weather was bad.
We went back to the boat and attempted to put the dinghy and it's engine back on the boat. Dad fell in the dinghy while trying to hand the engine to my mom. He nearly dropped the engine in the water but saved it thanks to his reflexes. They finnaly got the engine, dinghy and anchor up and we were off.
Astra was faster than us so when they were at the anchorage we were still three miles away. We had to take a short cut through clam beds marked with bouys, so we could make it before night fall. It was pretty stressful. My mom and I sat on the dinghy and called to my dad, who was driving, "Five degrees to Port," or "Ten degrees Starboard". Just when we thought we were done, more buoys appeared. After careful navigating, yelling and rain we made it to the nice calm anchorage.