Location: Baie Apu, Tahaa, French Polynesia
The day started off with pulling up the anchor in the early morning, 6:30 AM, to be precise. I was the lucky one who got to flake the anchor while we were raising it. It was my first time doing so, and it is a decent workout for those who are right-handed, as you have to use your left arm to flake the starboard anchor. Most of the other students were already awake before breakfast at 7:30 AM, which made my job easy. We had pancakes for breakfast. Then the day started to pick up with the Open Water divers going for a morning dive class and the advanced divers getting some shore leave in what I was told downtown Tahaa. It was a convenience store, a gas station, an art shop, and a pizza place, so not exactly the bustling downtown atmosphere I would picture when hearing the word. I, however, stayed on board until after lunch, which was Sloppy Joe’s. Sloppy Joe’s, as you can imagine, are extra sloppy when eating on a boat. After lunch, a few of us went ashore to get some time off the ship.
Eric and I went to get pizza at the local pizzeria. Eric discovered Carbanera pizza on our first day (it has eggs on it) and decided to get another one. Not exactly my cup of tea or a cup of pizza; no, that’s not right either. Anyway, while we were waiting for our pizza, some of the others told us they were heading to the convenience store and gave us directions on how to get there. Eric heard stay to the left, so that is what we did. After walking for about forty-five minutes, we started to think they may have meant it was on the left side of the road, not staying to the left. We kept hiking up the hill because why not? It was a beautiful day, and we were strapping young men, as they say. We kept going until around 3:00 PM, then turned around. We finally found the convenience store on our way back to the dock to be picked up. A refreshing bottle of lemonade later, we were on our way back to Argo. Dinner was at 6:00 PM, curry chicken. Then we got a treat; it was RJ’s birthday (happy birthday,y RJ), which means cake. It was lemon cake, and we actually had frosting this time, not chocolate frosting, turning into a sauce. It was a good way to ease my palette off the spicy dinner. That’s pretty much it for the day, at least as far as I experienced it. To all my loyal followers, I’ll see you tomorrow.