After a quiet night at anchor, we awoke to see what we had missed arriving after dark yesterday.
Vaitape is a relatively small community located on the eastern side of the island at the base of an extinct volcano. The main island is ringed by a series of small islands.
There are a number of upscale resorts.
Having heard that there was relatively little to do in the town and being signed up for an afternoon tour, we dawdled on the ship a while before going ashore, including having a nice breakfast on the stern of the ship just enjoying the view.
We took a tender ashore about two hours before our tour was scheduled to begin.
There is a reason Fodors allocates only half a page to Vaitape. Based on today's experience we would counsel that two hours is sufficient time to see everything twice unless a trip to famous(?) Bloody Mary's is on your punch list. We did find a church with an interesting stained glass window that used Mt. Pahia as its natural background.
The time to start our tour arrived. We boarded a twin-hulled powerboat and headed out around on of the outer islands. The weather looked a bit less than optimal. Yes, the sky in the picture of the catamaran is completely black.
We had time to drop anchor, have a swim with some stingrays and a couple of curious, uncomfortably large sharks and get back in the boat before the squall hit. It is an interesting human peculiarity that people who have just been in the ocean scampered around the boat looking for a place to stay "dry" in their wet swimming suits.
After about ten minutes the squall ended and we approached a islet where we would spend an hour snorkeling before returning to Vaitape and ROTTERDAM.
We weighed anchor and with night approaching passed out through the barrier reef on route to Papeete, Tahiti.
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