Though few left, today was another wonderful and beautiful day on Moorea. The morning kicked off with a hearty breakfast of eggs, bread, ham, and off-brand cereal. With delicious food in our stomachs, we were ready to start the day. The whole class hopped in the Mercedez van (I didn't know they made vans) and rental car to go on a drive around the entire island for pictures and to go on a short hike to see the Afareaitu waterfall. On our way to the waterfall, we saw parts of the island that we had not seen yet. It was all beautiful. Almost to the hiking spot, we made an unexpected stop at a statue of a tribal-esque man kneeling. Of course, we needed to get pictures in front of him. A nice man offered to take a picture of the whole class, and it turn out that he was the owner of some nice beach front huts called Pineapple Beach right next to the statue. It also turned out that the statue was of him when he was eighteen (he must've shrunk with age because that was a big statue). Pineapple Beach was amazing. He told us tales of the Tahitian god of creation and gave us a little history about the beach. His stories were very interesting. He has owned the beach for around twenty years and he showed us views from a spot on the beach he found left us speechless at how nice it was.
After the short stop, we arrived at our hiking destination and began the hike. The hike was shorter than the previous hike, but still just as beautiful. It took around fifteen minutes to arrive at the waterfall. The waterfall went up very high and the view was great. Everyone pulled out their cameras and enjoyed the sights. The water below the falls caught the eye of some of the students. It was full of life and some students tried to photograph the eels, while others just went in for a cold dip.
After the hike, everyone got back in the cars to continue the island tour. Our next stop was a Tahitian supermarket called Champion. We all went in and browsed around for a short while. People bought everything from tropical juice to pizza bagel bites. With some much needed snacks after the hike, we left the supermarket and continued the island tour. Our final stop was an amazing lookout called Temae beach. We all got our cameras out and took in this amazing spectacle. It was clear blue water with a white sand beach and on-water hotel huts. It was an amazing view.
As soon as we got back, we had a delicious lunch and the groups continued to work towards finishing the projects. The UV group continued to run protien assays and test the absorbance of the dissected fish eyes to test for UV pressense. All the dissections were completed and the parts separated for comtinued processing. The pair bond observations group finished the data collection part of the experiment and began to write the first draft of the final paper. The lizard group finished their data collections as well and are working on their research paper.
With time winding down on beautiful and amazing Moorea, we are all savourng our last few days and working very hard to make our projects come out great!
-David Paternite
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