Here we are again.  I’m 15 meters under water, I’m almost out of breath and my hand is stuck between two shell halves of an immense bivalve (that’s a giant oyster if you are not feeling like hitting google right now).  The things you will do for a great drink!

You see, I had heard about this fabulous lost Tiki Drink known as the Polynesian Pearl Diver and it can be found only in Polynesia (of course).  My mission was to find this lost drink so that it would no longer be lost and could be enjoyed by all.  I wasn’t sure if the native peoples on this island would be willing to share it with the world  and was prepared for the worst.  As luck would have it, though, the people of the island were kind and sharing and more than willing to give up the recipe for the drink.  The only problem was they were missing a key ingredient. Now you might think that since I’m in the bottom of lagoon with my hand shoved into an oyster and the drink is called the Polynesian Pearl Diver that the secret ingredient would be a pearl.  Logical … but wrong.  They had plenty of pearls.  They were literally in all of the oysters in their bay and they could get them anytime they wanted.  The problem was that they had lost the glass that a Polynesian Pearl Diver must be served in.  Without it there was no point to even making the drink. The natives were having one of their epic raft parties and, as was their tradition, passing the Pearl Diver Glass around to all of the participants to take a drink when one of the less experienced partiers who was too close to the side of the raft did not take a firm grip on it and let it slip into the sea.  To make matters even worse, it fell into the mouth of the oldest and largest oyster in the entire area. This oyster was particularly unwilling to give up the glass since it had seen more Polynesians than could be counted come down and take pearls from it’s mouth and it wanted to take something back.  That’s where I came in … since I wasn’t from around here the thought was that I could negotiate the much needed Pearl Diver Glass back from the clutches of the oyster and the party could resume.  In return I would be allowed to take the drink recipe with me and share it with the world. So there I was, hand in the mouth of the oyster, firmly grasping the glass but not quite able to pull it back and return to the surface.  What was I going to do?  The oyster did not seem willing to open its mouth anymore and I was running out of breath.  Then it hit me … oysters love a really great joke.  With my last bit of breath I regaled the mollusk with a tale of a diminutive prisoner scaling down the wall of his jail and that my witnessing of such an event caused me to blurt out “We’ll look there, that’s a little con descending”.  It worked!  The oyster let out a great laugh and I was able to rise to the surface and present my prize to the tribe.