For our anniversary, Carol arranged with friends of ours to borrow dive gear and go diving with the mantas in Maupiti. Holy crap. There is a cleaning station in Maupiti where the mantas go to have fish eat the parasites living in their mouth, “scoopers”*, and gill slits. They take turns at the cleaning station and when we went down for our dive, we sat on the white sand nearby watching them. They changed their flight pattern so that after cleaning they flew over our heads. So cool. They are huge.

A short quality downgraded clip for a visual:

In other news, Maupiti is my new favorite place. We posted the views from the top of the mountain already on the blog. If I had the bandwidth I would post the aerial footage we took with our GoPro on our kite yesterday. Fan-freaking-tastic. If I could have the diving/snorkeling/water clarity of South Fakarava and add it to this place, I might never leave - hurricanes be damned.

*I can’t remember the name for the thingamajigs on the side of their big mouths.

Reasons 42 and 91 for bringing your boat to the South Pacific:

We took a hike up to the top of the “mountain” on the island of Maupiti and looked down at the pass (above), the lagoon inside the atoll where we are anchored (red arrow). Amazing views of nearly all sides of the island from the summit.

It was a sweaty hike with a bit of unroped scrambling. It felt good to use our legs after being stuck on the boat for a few days of bad weather. Worth the wait as well because we had perfect weather at the summit which we shared with the crew of L’Insousiance (who took the picture of us) and Tereva. There are 5 cruising boats in Maupiti and 3 of them had the same idea for this first sunny day after a few of rain and clouds. The boats gathered that evening for drinks.

The orange arrow in the photo marks the nearby kiting spot which we hope to have the wind to take advantage of soon.