Bonne Année

We celebrated the first week of the new year and the first week of family sabbatical (nicknamed the Sabubu by Anson) on the French Polynesia Atoll of Rangiroa. We have been working on developing our routines, our homeschool curriculum, and like everyone else at the new year, setting up habits that will support us this year and into the next phase of our lives.  A one road island is the perfect place to do that. 

Goodbye 2023!

We stayed in this little bungalow. It was like a forest service cabin with non-potable water and air conditioning.

This atoll is totally flat with only one straight road going from one end to the other. Tre and I loved biking to the grocery store in the morning to get French pastries. It seem so strange to us to find French food in the middle of the South Pacific. There are road side stands selling Roquefort and other French cheeses. 

In this photo the kids are joining some locals their age watching black tip reef sharks in the shallows of the Blue Lagoon. We took a boat tour around the inside of the atoll (which is about 20 miles x 50 miles) with an extended family of locals. With our non-existent French language skills we had no idea what anyone was talking about the whole time. But the attitude was apparent: happiness and pride. We got thrashed by three hours of boating around the huge lagoon in rough seas, baking in the sun, and getting whipped by the wind and salty waves. But we learned the vastness of this place, we saw our first lemon shark, and had an amazing time exploring Rangiroa Lagoon. 

Produce is hard to come by here. Baguette, French cheese, and sweets are not. We did find these huge and delicious local Grapefruit (Pamplemousse). 

I will add more Rangiroa photos later if we have wifi at our next destination: Fakarava, a neighboring atoll in the Tuamoto archipelago.