One of the best parts of the trip was our excursion of shark and sting ray feeding while staying on the island of Moorea. Let me just start by saying that I could never have gone through with this if I hadn’t first seen the amazing documentary, Sharkwater. (It’s a MUST SEE!)
That’s a pic of me underwater looking at real sharks swimming around us in the ocean. I’m not gonna lie, my heart was pounding and my breathing was heavily labored, but it was so amazing. The beauty and elegance of these massive creatures (did you know they’ve been around for 450 million years?) is mind blowing when you see them up-close in their natural environment. The excursion boat threw out a long rope which we all grabbed hold of in the ocean and watched while the crew threw out chunks of fish for the black-tipped reef sharks to eat. (We also went to a spot where we stood in waist deep ocean water with sting ray swimming around, bumping into us, and we actually got to pet them… talk about intense!).
Here is a picture of a couple of the sharks swimming around us. There were many and they averaged 4-6 feet in length. It was amazing. I text messaged my mom that I was doing it and she freaked out – poor thing – haha. I’m sure someday that karma will get me back for torturing my mom that way, when I have my own children.
My husband (giggle, I love writing that!) took another excursion while on Bora Bora where he went scuba diving out past the reef and was up close with gray sharks that were 6-7 ft. I think snorkeling with the sharks was a needed warm up for actually swimming around deep into the ocean with them. What was I doing while he did this? I was enjoying a hot volcanic rock, detoxifying massage without a worry in the world because I knew he was safe with the sharks (after all, I saw Sharkwater).
Experiencing nature in this perspective was humbling. I proudly call myself a Mother Earth Warrior, and seeing these beautiful creatures in their environment made me want to protect the earth (our, and their, home) that much more. I don’t think we pay enough attention to the waters taking up the majority (71%) of the earth’s surface, and how important it is to protect and care for them.
I have many more things to share about our epic vacation so I’ll stop here and save those for future posts.
On another note, Raw related… I’m sipping a quart of delicious plant blood (a recipe I’m featuring in my upcoming class, Breakfast in Bed. One thing is for sure… I missed my fresh green juice while on our trip, although I DID enjoy fresh pineapple juice. So, to ensure I was getting adequate greens I brought along my Vitamineral Green powder (this is a diet-saver when on vacation!) and chugged it down with bottled water daily. We also brought along some Whole Food Energy Bars from Vega. I wasn’t sure exactly how my food situation would be so I came prepared.