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TopDive in Rangiroa

Posted on January 16, 2009 by: Traveler

$There really was color here, it's just that the light (colors) get refracted from the depth we were at.$

Closest City: Tiputa, Rangiroa
State:
Country: French Polynesia

Top Dive in Rangiroa: When booking our honeymoon to the islands of French Polynesia, Danielle and I picked islands we felt would offer the best scuba diving. Since we met while scuba diving (actually, it was at our NAUI certification course) we naturally decided to cater the honeymoon around the water. Tahiti was a natural selection and after scouring through our Lonely Planet guidebook “Tahiti & French Polynesia”, the island of Rangiroa in the Tuamotu Archipelago became an obvious location. We learned of drift diving where we would be dropped off on the ocean side of the island and ride the incoming high tide into the lagoon. After much scouring in the guidebook, I came across many possible choices for a dive operator but TopDive caught my eye. We eventually would stay on the island of Bora Bora and chose to stay at the TopDive Resort in the town of Vaitape.

Initial Planning Phase: After making the necessary itinerary for our hotels, and figuring how long and in what order we would visit the islands we only knew we were using TopDive to scuba dive on the island of Bora Bora. After contacting the hotel to book the rooms (that was expensive in and of itself calling over to numerous locations half way around the world), I discovered TopDive also had operations set up on Moorea and Rangiroa. Great, because we just so happened to be traveling to Moorea as our last stop. So now we knew who we would dive through on three of the seven islands we planned to visit. Now came the issue of pricing. NOTE: A scuba shop from TopDive Resort has also been established on the island of Fakarava since our having vacationed there.

The cost of Diving: Each dive in French Polynesia, with gear rentals, will run around 5000 to 6000 CFP. At the time, the US exchange rate was roughly 75 CFP to $1, which meant each dive would run roughly $66 to $80. That price was obviously times two meaning Danielle and I would be spending roughly $160 per dive. That adds up on any budget and we wanted to dive multiple times on multiple islands. TopDive offered a ten-dive package to us for 50,000 CFP each (with our credit card exchange rate, I think we got ten dives each for roughly $550 or $55 per dive). That made the cost per dive slightly more expensive that a dive in Southern California, and anyone who has dove both locations knows French Polynesia carried the premium over So. Cal.

Shortly after settling in at our location on Rangiroa at Miki Miki Village, we asked our proprietor, Michael to get a hold of the TopDive shop. We arranged to be picked up the next morning. At the specified time the following morning, the TopDive truck that had a converted truck bed for seating with wooden planked benches came to pick us up. The walls were rolled up canvas that offered passing views of the island as we traveled to pick up some other guests. When all divers were picked up, the driver shot down this palm lined road to the dive shop situated right on the edge of the lagoon. We signed our waivers and boarded a zodiac boat for the quick ride out to our dive location. We learned from the divemasters that Tiputa Pass has better diving than Avatoru Pass. They told us hardly anyone dives Avatoru but that surprised me because from the surface, they both looked similar. All the diving in the pass would be at a depth of around 80 to 100 feet, so we were naturally asked if we had gone down to that depth. No was our reply, there is hardly anything to see at a depth of 10 feet off the California coast (except the Channel Islands) why would we want to go down to 100 feet. So our first dive was a refresher dive. That kinda sucked knowing we were spending $110 just to prove to the dive master that we could handle 80 feet or more, but scuba diving is a dangerous activity if you don’t respect your limitations you wind up with decompression sickness (at best). Even top divers (no pun intended) wind up dead from exceeding their boundaries. So, instead of Tiputa Pass, we dropped down to around twenty feet near Motu Nuhi Nuhi at a dive site called The Aquarium. I gotta tell you, even at twenty feet (practicing flooding our masks and taking the regulator out of our mouths) I could tell there was something about the underwater world of French Polynesia. It felt as if we were swimming inside my father’s 50-gallon saltwater aquarium he had maintained while I was growing up. After properly passing the safety check, Danielle and I got to do some exploring around the Motu Nuhi Nuhi. We came up just beaming from what we had just experienced and couldn’t wait to go in the big boys aquarium of Tiputa Pass. Unfortunately, we had to wait for two days to dive again until January 1^st. Uh oh, I heard you’re not supposed to dive after drinking alcohol. “No,” the dive master said, “You are not supposed to dive after a HEAVY dose of alcoholic binge drinking.” Ok, we’ll be fine then (as it turns out, there wasn’t too much to do on a secluded tropical island in the south pacific, so Danielle and I couldn’t even stay awake for the New Year).

Diving Tiputa Pass, “The Valley”: Again we got ferried to the TopDive location by the open backed pick-up. Sitting in the zodiac for the ride to the far side of Tiputa Pass was an adventure alone. The incoming tide looked like a river flowing underneath us. The zodiac was tossed over the swells. Waves were crashing hard on the outer edge of the motus and the dive master told us we would be assaulted by a strong surge (heading out of the pass) at the beginning of the dive. He told us not to worry because all we had to do was drop down quickly to get sucked into incoming current. For that first part of that first “drift dive” Danielle and I were in the fight of our lives to not get sucked into the outgoing surge while attempting to locate the incoming surge of the high tide. Finally, after a tense moment of realizing I was getting closer to the coral wall, I felt the incoming current grab a hold of me. I began to glide effortlessly now. Crazy, I thought at the difference in such a short window. The rest of the dive was amazing. We had the same aquarium feeling as the shallow dive at Motu Nuhi Nuhi, but on a much grander scale. Looking out toward the center of the pass, we could see numerous black tip reef sharks and grey sharks. They would face into the incoming tidal surge hoping to snag an easy meal. A spotted eagle ray glided effortlessly into the surge as well. I tried to turn around to see how easily moving against the current would be… not happening. We enjoyed the rest of the dive just flowing along. Once through the pass and inside the lagoon, the dive master raised up his inflatable buoy and we hovered at 15 feet for a decompression stop. The driver of the zodiac was right there when we surfaced (he had been following our bubbles the whole time). He scooped us all up and then we headed back to get a new tank for our second dive of the morning. Our final dive began in the center of the pass where we would not have to fight any surge. We were immediately picked up by the incoming tide and swept away. We migrated toward the eastern wall of Tiputa Pass again. Danielle and I saw a green turtle picking food among the coral. This guy had his head stuck inside a band of coral and then his body flailed up from the surge making him vertical. He wasn’t letting go of his prize though. If you can imagine laughing with a regulator in your mouth, we were doing so.

Top Notch Professionalism: The dive masters at Rangiroa set the stage of hospitality for Danielle and I. Every member of the TopDive crew we came in contact with either met or exceeded the professionalism and happy-go-lucky attitude of their counterparts at TopDive Rangiroa.

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