Rurutu

Rurutu hides at the very southern end of French Polynesia in the remote Austral Islands chain.

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Isolated beach on the northwest coast of the island near the Rurutu Village Hotel, my home base for the week.

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A truly misleading picture.
Rurutu is actually a raised ancient coral reef and is not surrounded by a large colorful barrier reef of its own.

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Whalewatching/fishing boats wait in the harbor.

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Using the callsign FO0FLA, I made nearly 2,000 QSOs in only four full days on the air using minimal power and wire dipole antennas strung up in papaya trees. Getting them up was a simple matter of tying the end of a rope to a rock and throwing it up into the trees as high as I could.

click here to see my FO0FLA license

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I specifically chose the fall to visit Rurutu because September & October are the peak whale watching months. Southern humpback whales breed offshore and are easily approached in small motorboats. I spent nearly every day on the ocean trying to capture the magic of these gentle giants on film.

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Rurutu is one of the only areas of the world where it is possible to get into the water with the whales. Armed with only a compact underwater camera, I managed to snap a few photographs of the whales under the surface. Humpbacks glide through the water very quickly, and getting pictures of them underwater proved to be much more difficult than I had thought it would be.

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Not surprisingly, I used whales as the subject of the QSL card I made to commemorate my visit to the island.