Bora Bora the Beautiful

Now I know what Bloody Mary meant when she sang “…most people long for another island, one where they know they will like to be.” For all the beauty that was Moorea, Bora Bora puts it way back in second place.

As we returned back to the ship after our first of two days here on Bora Bora, our friend Jeff (aka “The Tanning Pro”) said that of all the seven Grand and World Voyages he has been on, this was the best day he ever experienced. Ellen, one of our CSI travel agent escorts, said this was the greatest…and she’s been here a few times before. I’ll post more about Jeff and Ellen and some of the other interesting personalities sailing with us in a future journal update.

For the first day we opted for a whole day experience with Patrick. Patrick is a local native and is famous for his all day excursions, his nature tours, his feasts on a private motu (which we found out he owns), and his wedding ceremonies (yes, he does perform those as well). We were with a group of about 35 that had arranged this trip on line via the Cruise Critic Roll Call for our voyage. Again, this is a day that may best be described by the pictures that accompany this journal entry. I’ll just hit some of the highlights and leave the details to the photos.

We met Patrick at the tender pier with his three outrigger (motorized) long boats he brought along. We were 12 to a boat and we headed out into the lagoon near the reef to snorkel with small colorful fish. After that we ventured out closer to the reef to feed the sting rays and the black-tipped reef sharks. I do not have an underwater camera, so I was not able to get a good picture of the sharks, but they are really out there and they are fun to watch…I’ll bring a proper camera next time…yeah, right. The rays are downright obnoxious…they beg! I mean really; they know you bring food and they want it and expect it. Lots of fun but kinda creepy as well. After all that, at about noontime, we then travelled a couple of miles down the reef to Patrick’s private motu. I should explain; a motu is a coral islet inside the lagoon, between the outer reef and the high island. There we were to have lunch. Lunch? We’re talking like, Polynesian Feast! There was lobster, lamb steaks, grilled fish, poisson cru, chicken, a suckling pig, roasted veggies like bananas, taro, breadfruit, fresh fruits, red and white wine, champagne, beer, soft drinks, and on and on (…burp…).

And then we piled back into the outrigger boats, and made for a shallow spot in the lagoon with sugar sand. I know some of my hotelier friends on St. Pete Beach think they have a sugar sand beach. Well, their sand is granulated…this sand was like confectioner’s sugar. Really. The whole lot of us waded into the water and proceeded to reach down in the water and grab fistfuls of this fine pumice-like powdery substance and give ourselves body scrubs. That’s how fine it was. In the meantime while we were cruising along, Patrick and the other boat drivers are all strumming their ukuleles, and singing native songs (and steering the boats with their feet on the steering wheels). It don’t get no better than this! We got back to the ship dock by about 4pm and almost universally declared this as one of the best days of our lives. Rosemary and I like to think of ourselves as being rather blasé, so we didn’t want to overreact; but deep down we have to admit, if it wasn’t the greatest day, it was easily in the top 3.

The downside of all this euphoria is that,here we are only almost three weeks into the trip, and it may be all downhill from here. I know we’ll sleep well tonight. Tomorrow we have no tours scheduled so we intend to spend a leisurely day wandering around the town, browsing for whatever, and maybe stopping for lunch somewhere. Today was so fabulous we can’t take any more excitement. Just another day in paradise. - RBM

Oct 11, 2009

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