It’s all in your mind.

Is this Raitea?

“We can walk on and off the ship. Those tenders get annoying if they aren’t moving. This is so much better.”

We will take a trip to something called “Coral Garden” after lunch. The morning we are just going to lay on a beach towel on the grass there. 

“It’s all tropical island isn’t it. Just relax anywhere.”

The boat ride takes us past the locals. These are the really real locals. There’s smoke coming from one of the areas and I ask the tour boat driver about it. He’s one half the tour team. It’s a husband and wife from this island and another. Two families joined by marriage and two islands connected through the tourism economy. He says the smoke is coming from a fire they are cooking dinner over.

“I’ll guess dinner is fish?”

I think it is. The boutique type grocery store is on the island we just came from.

It’s pretty rugged everywhere you look. Many of the islands have very few people living on them. It takes a community to survive.

This area is called the “Coral Garden” because there is so much coral growing on the rocks between two small islands. The water between them is protected like a lagoon that is open on two sides.

These colored clamshell looking things are alive. The locals will rip them out of the rocks and eat them like oysters.

“They are very colorful.”

The huts on the water are common. It’s the style. There are no high rise buildings anywhere.

You can see we are pretty far from any continents. Hawaii above, Australia on the left, New Zealand lower left, and Antarctica below. It’s been fun.

It would be a postcard picture if the guy with the wheelbarrow wasn’t there.

“Is that Shirley?”

There’s always somebody working.

There’s the water highway around the south end of the island. Very busy!

I wish I could have ridden around the islands on a Jet Ski. It will be on the list ‘to do’.

“That doesn’t even look real.”