Louwphotography
Registered
- Messages
- 40
- Reaction score
- 1
- # of dives
- 50 - 99
Fakarava was the 2nd stop of our 3 island trip to French Polynesia. The other 2 islands on this trip were Manihi (trip report here) and Bora Bora.
We had an awesome time in Fakarava and it was our best diving of the trip (mainly for all the sharks)!
We dove with Te Ava Nui. Their prices were great and so was their location (near the village). They offer pickup and dropoff but often you have to specifically request it. They use heavy steel tanks (which we had to load/offload onto the boat ourselves), but on the plus side you don’t need too much extra weight. They offered 2 dives a day, one around 8am and one around 2pm. During our stay we rotated around 3 dive sites, all on the northern side of the island.
Ohotu – Easy dive site where we saw several sharks (whitetips and greys) and other cool fish, including this helmet gurnard.
Also one of my favorites, a guineafowl puffer:
Maiuru – Another easy dive site. Saw huge schools of fish and schools of barracuda too.
Garuae Pass – Best diving of the trip! You start in the big blue. Drop down to 30-40 meters, where you hang on to dead coral and watch for sharks. On our last dive, we saw about 40 gray sharks!
Here's a silvertip we got pretty close to:
Then, depending on the current, you can go for a fun drift dive! The dive ends at “Ali Baba’s Cave”, where there is little to no current and plenty of fish hanging out. Here's a checkerboard wrasse:
We would have liked to dive the South Pass too but unfortunately, the conditions weren't right when we were there.
We stayed at Pension Havaiki which was nicely located near the dive shop (about 15 minute walk), plus the food here (breakfast and dinner included) was very tasty. Unfortunately there were lots of mosquitoes around, but the pension is a beautiful spot for sunset pics after diving.
We had an awesome time in Fakarava and it was our best diving of the trip (mainly for all the sharks)!
We dove with Te Ava Nui. Their prices were great and so was their location (near the village). They offer pickup and dropoff but often you have to specifically request it. They use heavy steel tanks (which we had to load/offload onto the boat ourselves), but on the plus side you don’t need too much extra weight. They offered 2 dives a day, one around 8am and one around 2pm. During our stay we rotated around 3 dive sites, all on the northern side of the island.
Ohotu – Easy dive site where we saw several sharks (whitetips and greys) and other cool fish, including this helmet gurnard.
Also one of my favorites, a guineafowl puffer:
Maiuru – Another easy dive site. Saw huge schools of fish and schools of barracuda too.
Garuae Pass – Best diving of the trip! You start in the big blue. Drop down to 30-40 meters, where you hang on to dead coral and watch for sharks. On our last dive, we saw about 40 gray sharks!
Here's a silvertip we got pretty close to:
Then, depending on the current, you can go for a fun drift dive! The dive ends at “Ali Baba’s Cave”, where there is little to no current and plenty of fish hanging out. Here's a checkerboard wrasse:
We would have liked to dive the South Pass too but unfortunately, the conditions weren't right when we were there.
We stayed at Pension Havaiki which was nicely located near the dive shop (about 15 minute walk), plus the food here (breakfast and dinner included) was very tasty. Unfortunately there were lots of mosquitoes around, but the pension is a beautiful spot for sunset pics after diving.
