The Tuamotu Atolls
The Tuamotus are a vast scatter of low coral atolls strung across the ocean east of Tahiti, rings of white sand and leaning palm enclosing immense, glassy lagoons. There is little here but reef, sky and water, and that is exactly the appeal. These remote islands also happen to offer some of the most exhilarating diving on the planet, a place divers dream about for years before they finally slip beneath the surface.
The action centers on the passes, the narrow channels where the tide pours between the open ocean and the lagoon. As the water surges through, you ride it as a drift dive, swept along past walls of hundreds of gray reef sharks, dense schools of fish and the occasional gliding manta or curious dolphin. Fakarava, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, is famed worldwide for its "wall of sharks" at the Tumakohua Pass in the south, one of the great spectacles of the underwater world.
Above the water the atolls are pure castaway dream: pink-sand beaches, water in a dozen shades of blue and a slow, end-of-the-world calm that settles over you within a day. We love the Tuamotus as the wild, adventurous counterpoint to a Bora Bora or Tahiti stay, a few days of big diving and deep quiet that travelers tell us about for years afterward.
