Day 95 Turtle preserve

River tour
Turtles plus
So far, Guy's suggestions had been good ones so we decided to sail South to Baie Faaroa where we could use our dinghy to explore the river that flows into the bay.
Along the way, we stopped at a turtle preserve that was in the guide book. Supposedly, they rescue turtles that have become ensnared in fishing nets and return them to the sea after are determined to be healthy. We saw about a dozen green sea turtles in a pen and that was about it. There was also a restaurant and a pension but the turtle rescue part of the site seemed to be more of a come-on than a real environmental effort.
Baie Faaroa is the Ra'iatea headquarters for a sailboat chartering company named Sunsail. They compete with Moorings and rent mostly catamarans that are tied to mooring balls in the bay. There were some empty moorings so Liahona and Southern Star tied up after asking permission from the friendly Sunsail people.
The guide book says it is possible to take a dinghy and explore the river that flows into the bay. When we got to the head of the bay we saw two branches of the river so we took the right branch and Liahona took the left. It was not too long before we realized we had taken the wrong stream so we doubled back and followed Liahona's path. In some places the jungle foliage formed a complete canopy over the river. It looked like something out of a jungle adventure movie. In other places we passed plantations that were growing banana, taro, papaya and mango. The river wound back and forth for a little over a mile before it became so shallow we could not proceed further. The trip was an interesting change from the sailing and hiking we had been doing.
By the time we returned to the boats everyone was hot and sweaty so we jumped into the water and had about an hour of water football. Again we agreed that this was really great exercise - and good "clean" fun.
Following showers and dinner we enjoyed a movie and went to bed early. It is almost the middle of Winter but we are North of the Tropic of Capricorn so each day is about equal length, nonetheless, the sun sets about 6:30 so when anchored offshore our typical activities are reading, playing cards and occasionally watching a movie whenever we have enough battery power.