At the 2018 Long Beach SCUBA show we always enter in most drawings for giveaways. This time one hit and I won a week long dive trip on the French Polynesia Master live aboard courtesy of the Bluewater Dive Travel booth. Given we had a week on the boat but it was a long journey we added a few days at a land based resort in Papeete. It was nice to get a flavor of the local life. The weather on the trip went from lovely and sunny to ‘oh my’ torrential rain and winds. One dive we surfaced into 3m waves, 40 knot winds and driving rain. I still don’t know how the zodiac found us and what a ride back to the boat!
French Polynesia is mostly atolls, hard coral walls, and drift diving in the inflows/outflows of the lagoons of the atolls. It’s not for beginners and the diving restrictions the government puts on the operators dictates more advanced divers. The recommendation is Rescue Certification plus Nitrox and I concur. That being said during slack times Red was able to get some good snorkeling in including the dolphins leaving the divers below to shoot up to play with her the dive master she was with!
We had good shark action in the currents and dolphins came to play as well. I had some camera issues with a flood of my strobe adapter on the first dive so these are all ambient light but the new Nikon D850 is a pretty awesome low light camera so I’m happy with the results.
Check out the gallery here!
