Bora Bora

Hi Guys,

Bora Bora – Pacific Ocean 18 February 2011

(Longitude: 16 32’West   Longitude: 151 34’East)

(Time -10 GMT)

I have made two entries today 

Following the last island that we visited, I reported that it was the “most beautiful island”. Whoops, I spoke too soon as I need to re-calibrate,   Bora Bora is even more beautiful than the nearby Tahiti because it is so unspoiled.

Hotels at the Beach

The excursion today is a snorkeling trip in the lagoons surrounding this 6 mile long island. We get off the Aurora and onto a catamaran to sail out with 30 other wrinklies, Quite staid to begin with but once they get their clothes off become quite uninhibited, stroking sharks, kissing manta rays, feeding fish and generally having a good time in perhaps 3 feet of water. The location attracts other boats and a canoe turns up with a local guy with wild hair and a loin cloth.We are warned, “Here comes the local cannibals” It is a great morning.

We make our way completely around Bora Bora to a small island on the reef in a shallow bay. Our meal is served in a woven banana leaf piled high with filet of beef, tuna, barbecued chicken, taro, tapioca, poi, salad and if you did not care for the local foods there was rice and a baked potato. A particular specialty was a raw fish dish of which we were a little nervous but it was delicious. We sat at benches set out in the water so that the fishes swim around your feet. Any morsel that is dropped is immediately snapped up by a shoal of beautiful tropical fish.  After lunch we swim with our snorkels in the bay and we are quickly surrounded by 3 and 4 ft manta rays and 6ft black tipped sharks. We go over to an enclosure where there are turtles and a 9 ft nurse shark which seem quite happy to have their photos taken.

The boat seems driven by ukulele power, every time that the ukulele played then the boat moved forwards. We passed around the island in great wonderment at the beauty of the place. The hotels (Four Seasons, Meridien etc) do not have great buildings as one might expect but each room is a thatched hut connected to the next and supported on stilts out in the bay. The room rate is huge but the frequent hurricanes, tsunami that come through the area have wrecked many of these projects and there are many empty thatched huts.

Lunch at the Beach

Susan and Roy going Snorkeling

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Susan on the Beach

We amble along the shore passing many of these thatched huts that are privately owned, one belonged to Marlon Brando and another belonging to Donna Reed, it has been a thoroughly delightful “day at the beach”

 

Bora Bora is spelt Pora-Pora in Tahitian and means “first Born”, It is the Pearl of the South Seas, the most famous of the Leeward Islands in the Society Islands group of French Polynesia. Bora Bora with a population of about 8,800 people is a mountainous volcanic island surrounded by coral reefs and lagoons which has a shape that looks like an elephant.

The Dutch explorer Jacob Rggeveen discovered Bora Bora in 1722. Captain Cook visited the Island in 1777 during his third and final expedition, it was on this voyage that Cook was killed by the Polynesian natives on an Hawaiian beach. In 1820, the first missionaries landed on Bora Bora and built a church at Vaitape two years later, France annexed the island in the late 19^th century.

After the attack on Pearl harbor in 1941 the Americans realized the necessity to have bases in the South Pacific. 4,500 troops descended on Bora Bora to build a landing strip, curiously not connected to the mainland but approached by a water taxi.

James Michener was particularly impressed by Bora Bora. His book Tales of the South Pacific inspired the musical South Pacific and the island of Bali Hai all of which was filmed here.  The spinoff from the movie also spawned the restaurant and bar “Bloody Mary’s”