Rangiroa
I spent a week diving in Rangiroa, a coral atoll about 300 miles North of Tahiti.  Rangiroa is the largest island in the Tuamotos.  Only a few sections of the atoll are inhabited.  The largest inhabited section is about 6 miles long and 100 yards wide. The atoll is so large that, from the ground, you can't see the other side of the atoll.  Things were really quiet, as the whole atoll shut down by about six o'clock. The Tahitians were very friendly.  People on motor scooters would stop and offer me rides, even at night.  That doesn't happen when I'm in LA.  Very few of them spoke English, which made life interesting at times.

 The major hotel on the island is called the Kia Ora Village.  I've been told it's very nice, and the food is supposed to be very good. There are a few other hotels and several Pensions as well.  I stayed at Chez Henriette, which is near Avatoru  village.  I had my own little hut, complete with a private shower, right on the beach.  It was inexpensive and quite functional.  Henriette is nice, but she does not speak English.  She offers family style meals at a reasonable price, though I didn't eat there.  She also provides rides to and from the airport.  A few hundred meters down the road in Avatoru are a couple of grocery stores, a post office and a bank.  There is a good restaurant about halfway between Avatoru and the airport.  It's run by an American, and the chinese food is terrific. 

 The scuba diving was quite different from anywhere else I've dove.  The visibility was outstanding, at 200 ft.on good days and 100 ft. on bad ones. It is incredibly clear.  Almost all of the dive sites center around the Tiputa and Avatoru Passes, which are at the ends of the main island.   I did a total of seven dives, six at the Tiputa Pass.

Coral life is relatively poor.  Several cyclones went through the area within a few months in the winter of 1982-83 and tore up large sections of the reef.  Some of it is in okay shape, with new corals forming, but there are large sections made up of little more than coral debris.  As a consequence the number of reef fish is limited, with only a quarter to a third the densities you find in Fiji, for example.  There's still a nice variety, it's just not very dense.  Among the reef fish are surgeons, butterflys, angelfish, and a few puffers.  I even saw an octopus, the first one I'd seen in the wild.  I didn't see any soft corals at all.

There is a good variety of large fish.  Large schools of 5 ft. barracuda were encountered on most of the dives, as were 4-6 ft. White Tip, Black Tip and Grey reef sharks. There were quite a few large Napolean Wrasses as well, and the occasional school of Jacks.  I never saw a Manta Ray, but am told they are fairly common.  I've heard that Dolphins can be seen from time to time as well, though I didn't have the pleasure.

I dove the Raie Manta Club, the largest operator in Rangiroa.  The dive guides are mostly French (there is one Japanese guide) and they all speak at least some English.  Unfortunately, they don't provide much in the way of a pre-dive brief.  At most they say a couple of sentences, and sometimes not even that.  The dives were conducted from large Zodiac inflatables holding 8-10 divers and two guides and the boatman.  Most of the time they were full.  Getting into the water is easy, but getting back in requires the diver to remove the BC and hand it up.  The diver then boosts himself into the boat using the rope attached to the outer edge of the boat.  This can be a challenge after a long swim.  Unfortunately, there's no protected place to store cameras.  The dive guides insist that you stay with the group, though this was generally interpreted to mean within a 3-4 meter tether of the guide.  There is no leeway on this policy.

I would strongly encourage everyone to bring their own equipment.  The rental gear is free, but tends to be very limited. The government imposes 100% tariffs on imported goods, making dive equipment very expensive.  As a consequence, the dive operations tend to hold on to gear for a very long time.  Many of the BCs are well worn, while the regulators typically don't have an octopus or a depth gauge.  I brought my own and was very glad to have it. 

The dives are quite deep, with just about all of them starting out with a descent to 110 ft., followed by a fairly long swim at 60-70 ft., and then a long decompression stop at 15 ft.  Rangiroa is known for big things, so often the guide will have you leave the reef and swim out into deeper water in search of larger fish. 

Dives tend to be hit or miss, with some where you've seen some great things and others where you don't see much at all.  For reasons I don't fully understand, we would often turn and swim against the current about midway through the dive. All of the dives ended with a decompression stop of 5-10 minutes, depending on the depth and time, and most lasted about 35 minutes.

Despite some of the shortcomings, Rangiroa most certainly is worth diving.  I saw more large animals in any given dive than I did in two weeks of diving in Fiji. Two highlights were the shark feeding dive and a swift current drift dive where you shoot through the pass. Watching six foot sharks cruise by a few feet away from you was incredible.  Flying through the water at 6-7 mph with absolutely nothing within 70 ft. of you was unbelievable.  Both just have to be experienced.