77% humidity, 27 C (82 F), 45% chance of rain in form of thunderstorms.

Somehow I lost what I had written for the 5th so will be going on memory.  We travelled by vehicle for 20-25 minutes and then a 5 minute boat ride out to a little hut out in the lagoon to the Anaipu Pearl Farm.  We noticed upon coming into port, that the homes were almost sitting in the water.  Our guide told us that although they do have tides, that the low to high is maximum 40 centimetres.  That explains why they can away with being so close….and of course with such reef, they wouldn’t get much wave action.

Of the people there, the woman that spoke pretty good English (French is the official language of all of the islands), explained what the process they used for creating these black pearls.  One of the others, a Polynesian fellow was the “surgeon”.  He would cut the membrane away to get to the gonad. He would pierce the gonad and insert a small nucleus that they purchase from Mississippi, as well as a chip of the clam shell that they wish colour of the Pearl to be.  Each day the surgeon will do about 300 processes. In 2 years they reopen the gonad to find the Pearl.  They then put another  nucleus of the same size of the Pearl removed, into that same gonad.  In another year they remove another larger Pearl and repeat the process.  Eventually they will have farmed 4 pearls from each mollusk (they look like clams or scallops).  

After hearing all about the farming of pearls, we were treated to snorkelling just off the hut. The coral was really plentiful and so were the fish…..none of which were aggressive this time. It was amazing. Sorry but no underwater photos 🙁.

On the return from the Pearl farm, we stopped briefly to see a vanilla farm. The natural pollinators cannot pry into the vanilla bean so they have to be hand pollinated by humans. It can only be done in the first couple hours of the day doing about 300 in that period.

We had so few miles to go from Raiatea to Bora Bora ( we can see it from where we were), the ship could not stay beyond about 5:30. I am not sure but suspect that they have to be able to see exactly where the ship is going. There is only a small break/passage in the coral reef. The ship must have going at less than 5 knots….so slow! It look about an hour to get through to that spot.