Day 54 The white taxi

Plus a little surfing
We were about ready to leave Rangiroa but needed a few provisions to make the 3 day trip to Tahiti. Our anchorage is near the town of Tiputa near Tiputa pass where were we entered the lagoon. We took our dinghy to Tiputa and hailed a taxi to take us the 8 miles to the town of Avatoru. In the 100 mile circle of the atoll, this is the only road and 8 miles is it’s entire length.
Prices were steep but the vegetables looked good and the French bread is great so we got what we needed and asked the taxi driver to take us to the Avatoru pass so we could see if there was any surf. Sure enough there was so we taxied back to Tiputa, dropped off the groceries, picked up the surfboards and taxied back to Avatoru.
A small lunch and 2 hours of surfing later, we taxied back to Tiputa and the boat.
Does this day seem a bit like yesterday - lots of back and forth and not much accomplished?
In a way it was except that Kurt now has a well needed injection of surfing so he is “good to go” for a while longer.
One additional benefit of the trip was we got to see the other pass. When we entered the lagoon, Tiputa pass was pretty hairy. There were standing waves and one scary shallow part. We did not look forward to negotiating that in reverse. Besides, we have heard from the dive shops that the tides into and out of the lagoon are currently not normal. There is a large weather system south of us that has brought a strong south swell. Because the southern part of the Rangiroa atoll is very low, the swells wash into the lagoon causing it to fill above the surface of the surrounding ocean. At the passes, there is currently no incoming tide - only a slower or faster outgoing. The standing waves we saw at Tiputa pass were where the outgoing water meets the ocean. Because Avatoru pass is deeper, this effect is minimized. Now we had an alternative if Tiputa is still rough.