Scuba pics are finally done! Here's our first trip report for our August/September vacation in French Polynesia. All of our FP trip photos can be seen
here.
Manihi was the 1st stop of our 3 island trip to French Polynesia. The other 2 islands on this trip were Fakarava (
trip report here) and Bora Bora. We've been to FP before, but this was our first time to Manihi.
We were looking forward to diving here for the manta rays. We dove with Blue Nui, which is located at the Manihi Pearl Beach Resort. Serge runs the shop and is a great guy.
There were only 4 dive sites, so we repeated some of them 2-3 times. Our favorite site was Le Cirque, which was the 8am dive each day. This is where the manta rays come to get cleaned. The dive was really easy – you drop down and swim a little bit, but once the mantas come you just stay on the ground and watch them do their thing. It was awesome to get so close to them!
Our next favorite site was Le Tombant – apparently for 2 days after a full moon, thousands of yellow margined perch come to this site. We were lucky enough to be there to see them!
The other 2 sites were La Travasiere, where you can see whitetip sharks hanging out in a cave, and La Faille, where we saw several grey sharks. The sharks here don't compare to Fakarava though.
Overall we had a great time in Manihi. Topside it was much windier than I expected, but it was a blessing since the wind kept the mosquitoes away. Manihi felt like one of the sparsest FP islands we've been to, other than Tikehau. Aside from the resort, the only things nearby (that you don't need a boat to get to) are the airport, a small snack shop across from the airport where you can get sandwiches/burgers, and a few shops. Next stop: Fakarava!
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