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Pink Sands and the Blue Lagoon
Haunting highlights of Rangiroa
The Pink Sands, a strip of coral-colored sand in the middle of the water, and the Blue Lagoon, a deep blue lagoon known for its sharks — and now, shark feedings — are the Eiffel Tower and Montmartre of Rangiroa. If you're staying at the Kia Ora and not coming on the Haumana, you'll have to make visits to these two most popular sights day trips.
The Pink Sands are on the extreme east side near Tevaro. It's really a pink sandbar that shifts year to year by a dozen feet or so, but it's devastatingly pretty and you cannot take a bad picture there. Like much of Rangiroa, however, once you get there, you have to make your own fun. On the Haumana, we were always provided with a floating bar for cocktails, as well as towels and whatever Skipper Porio could drum up in terms of flora and fauna. But basically, you lie around, maybe walk in the water to the nearby motu (islets), and really soak up the fact that there is NOTHING and NO ONE else there.
Nothing, that is, except Mama's house. "Mama" is the matriarch of Rangiroa's most eccentric family. They are just four people who live on the east end of the atoll (the 1,800 other residents live in the villages at Vantoru or Tiputa). Mama, Papa, one daughter, and her husband make a cottage industry out of collecting and selling little tangerine-colored shells they ship all over the world. They also allow people who come by boat to visit their homestead (it's near Rahuiatu, if you look at a map of Rangiroa).
Mama's house is one room, painted yellow on the outside with very intimate and very cute decorations as Mama has an artistic side and likes to make shell towers. She also makes shell leis and other primitive Polynesian jewelry she sells at very first-world prices — $50 U.S. per piece, but they are lovely.
The family also have a small over-water bungalow about 100 yards offshore, where they sleep during mosquito season. Their toilet is an open seat with everything just falling into the lagoon, not so far from where they also fish for supper. I guess with just four people, that isn't so bad?
They go once a year to Papeete to buy their supplies, but otherwise, they never leave and the only people they see are the dozen or so tourists who stop by weekly on the Haumana. When I asked why they chose to live so far from the village and other people, Mama just shrugged and said in French, "This is my home."
The Blue Lagoon is at the opposite end of Rangiroa from Pink Sands, on the west side. Apparently, the water conditions sometimes get very rough there, so be sure to take motion sickness pills if that's an issue for you. The day we went, it was calm as a lake. The only shocker was the four or five boatloads of other people. The Haumana had spent four whole days on the east side, so we hadn't seen another soul except Mama and her family all week.
The Blue Lagoon (no relation to the movie, that was shot in Fiji) is a beautiful spot as well, with a wide, sandy, shallow lagoon and two motus you can swim to, but people go to the Blue Lagoon for the shark feeding. I have done shark feeding in French Polynesia before and though they are mostly reef sharks, it's not exactly a fool-proof excursion.
The Pink Sands are on the extreme east side near Tevaro. It's really a pink sandbar that shifts year to year by a dozen feet or so, but it's devastatingly pretty and you cannot take a bad picture there. Like much of Rangiroa, however, once you get there, you have to make your own fun. On the Haumana, we were always provided with a floating bar for cocktails, as well as towels and whatever Skipper Porio could drum up in terms of flora and fauna. But basically, you lie around, maybe walk in the water to the nearby motu (islets), and really soak up the fact that there is NOTHING and NO ONE else there.
Nothing, that is, except Mama's house. "Mama" is the matriarch of Rangiroa's most eccentric family. They are just four people who live on the east end of the atoll (the 1,800 other residents live in the villages at Vantoru or Tiputa). Mama, Papa, one daughter, and her husband make a cottage industry out of collecting and selling little tangerine-colored shells they ship all over the world. They also allow people who come by boat to visit their homestead (it's near Rahuiatu, if you look at a map of Rangiroa).
Mama's house is one room, painted yellow on the outside with very intimate and very cute decorations as Mama has an artistic side and likes to make shell towers. She also makes shell leis and other primitive Polynesian jewelry she sells at very first-world prices — $50 U.S. per piece, but they are lovely.
The family also have a small over-water bungalow about 100 yards offshore, where they sleep during mosquito season. Their toilet is an open seat with everything just falling into the lagoon, not so far from where they also fish for supper. I guess with just four people, that isn't so bad?
They go once a year to Papeete to buy their supplies, but otherwise, they never leave and the only people they see are the dozen or so tourists who stop by weekly on the Haumana. When I asked why they chose to live so far from the village and other people, Mama just shrugged and said in French, "This is my home."
The Blue Lagoon is at the opposite end of Rangiroa from Pink Sands, on the west side. Apparently, the water conditions sometimes get very rough there, so be sure to take motion sickness pills if that's an issue for you. The day we went, it was calm as a lake. The only shocker was the four or five boatloads of other people. The Haumana had spent four whole days on the east side, so we hadn't seen another soul except Mama and her family all week.
The Blue Lagoon (no relation to the movie, that was shot in Fiji) is a beautiful spot as well, with a wide, sandy, shallow lagoon and two motus you can swim to, but people go to the Blue Lagoon for the shark feeding. I have done shark feeding in French Polynesia before and though they are mostly reef sharks, it's not exactly a fool-proof excursion.
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