5932 Just above there red flowers on the hillside you can see the barrel of a WWII canon, one of several still around the island.
6209 This is Vaitape on Bora Bora. Now you’ve seen as much of it, Vaitape that is, as I have.
6243 Your intrepid travelers sailing out of Bora Bora.
6252 The sunset as reflected on the clouds and behind the outer reef of the island. Looks a bit like an oil slick on the surface of the lagoon but I assure you it’s just the sun. The water here is so clean and clear it’s hard to believe.
Bora Bora Map – The reef in the last picture is right at the Tapu Dive Site on the center left of the map. We’re sailing through the gap in the reef there. It’s the only way in and out for a ship of any size at all. The other gaps in the barrier reef are all to shallow no matter how wide they look on paper.
5870 This is the lady that was feeding the fish, apparently for the first time. She was really having fun. I forgot to mention that a stray stingray apparently caught the scent of the fish and snuck up on her. It startled her when it flew by and brushed against her. I took the fish from her and led it away from the boat before I opened my hand and gave the fish to it. Win-win all around.
Nov 22 – Bora Bora, French Polynesia. Today we are back on my favorite island anywhere, Bora Bora. Well… I guess that’s technically incorrect. This is our third time here and I have yet to set foot on the island. I transfer from the ship to the pier by tender; they always anchor in the lagoon here, and then walk down the pier to the dive boat or snorkel boat. If Diana’s going with me, it’s snorkeling and she’s going today. It’s a beautiful island
Bora Bora was an independent kingdom until 1888 when its last queen Teriimaevarua III was forced to abdicate by the French who annexed the island as a colony. It remains an overseas collectivity of France as part of French Polynesia. In fact, our last four ports, Bora Bora, Tahiti, Moorea and Nuku Hiva are all French and use the South Pacific Franc as their currency.
During WWII, the US mounted some sea batteries around the island and you can still see the cannons from some of them above the vegetation.
As usual, we are spending the entire day in the water. This morning we’re heading out on a boat with about 14 other people for a wading spot and two snorkel spots. Our first stop is on a giant sand bar in about waist deep water to see some stingrays and sharks. I’ve been in the water with rays quite a bit over the last 50 years but there’s something different about wading in waist deep water with dozens of rays all competing for your attention. They just have a large suction cup for a mouth and no teeth. I suppose if one really latched on to you, you might get the world’s largest hickie (sp?) but that’s about it. The real danger is to the stingray. If it actually sucks your hand into its stomach, you can do a lot of damage getting it out. If you want to feed them, you have to have the food flat on your hand and let them suck it off your palm. They are velvety on top and glide so gracefully that you can get mesmerized watching them. This is the first time I have ever seen numerous sharks mingled in with the rays. Usually the rays have the sandbar totally to themselves.
Maybe it’s the reaction of the people encountering a stingray for the first time that gives you a huge smile. I think it’s more than that because your insides are smiling too. Next to dolphins, these are my favorite sea creatures to greet up close. Because there are sharks mixed with the rays, some people wouldn’t get out of the boat. Black Tips are reef sharks and are not aggressive. In all the time I’ve spent with them in the water, I have never even seen one exhibit the slightest hint of ‘snarky’ behavior. In fact, they show such disinterest in humans it’s hard to get a good picture of one. They are after the chum, not you. However, with safety in mind, it’s not a good idea to get in the middle of where the fish chunks are being thrown. Could be nipped by accident I suppose.
After spending a fun-filled 40 minutes with the sharks and rays we moved from our inner reef location to the outer reef that defines the huge lagoon. You can usually tell where the barrier reef is by the waves breaking out in the ocean for no apparent reason. The reef of the east coast of Australia is the Great Barrier Reef, although it’s not the world’s largest barrier reef, that’s what they named it. There are thousands of barrier reefs around the world.
The area immediately inside the barrier reef is dotted with smaller reefs; most are growing on rocky outcroppings that can hardly be seen for the life covering it. Here there’s a large percentage of live coral. In some areas, the coral is continuous; in others there are smaller isolated rocks that are supporting colonies of coral with a flat sandy bottom in-between. Some of the areas are only about 5 feet deep which has a dual benefit. Those people who are not strong swimmers can walk on the sandy areas, put their heads underwater, and clearly see actual live coral and the life it supports. All they need is a mask and snorkel. Actually, we’re in a ‘no fins’ zone and that’s a good thing. First, inside the barrier reef there’s no surge and very little current. With nothing to fight, there’s no reason to have fins. Secondly, unskilled snorkelers and divers do a lot of damage to the fragile live coral with their fins. All around it’s better not to have them.
Parts of the small reefs in the area are deeper and to see them you need to swim a bit, actually side-paddle is the best way to get around. It’s almost like flying an airplane to weave your way deeper into the larger reefs, lots of fun and that’s where the most animal life is because it’s more protected by the outcroppings. At this spot, a few sharks were patrolling the area but they were all in the sandy areas between the outcroppings. Being larger fish, they like to have more water around them than you find deep in the reef structure. Another reason the smaller fish like it there, they don’t need as much water and they are surrounded by their own buffet. I was able to get some good pictures for a change; the sun was bright so light penetrated the water pretty well. In most places, the reef was no deeper than 8-10 feet and sometimes I had to swim very carefully to avoid touching the coral. Not that the corals here are dangerous, but the coral is only alive on the surface and the live part is easily damaged by even the slightest touch. You ‘fly’ between the ‘mountain peaks’ like an Alaskan bush pilot.
The variety of fish was good. There were several species of triggerfish including the aptly named Picasso and the all black, Black. There was a third species with a black body, slightly purplish tinted head, yellow with black stripe pectoral fine, white with black edge dorsal and abdominal fins and white and pink tail. (I looked it up, they’re Pinktail Triggerfish.) It looks like a fish that Pablo would have painted but it’s not the Picasso. An assortment of butterfly fish, including the Saddled and Threadfin, quite a few fish I couldn’t identify, one had a beautiful bright royal blue body and a lemon yellow tail, several species with vertical black stripes on bodies ranging from white to blue.
When time was up, I swam back to the boat and found a lady, about rib deep in water, trying to get a good picture of the tropical fish that showed up. Our guide had a bucket of small fish so I asked if I could take one. He said I could so I took one, tore the head off and dropped it in the water about four feet in front of her. Then I started rubbing the fish to put some small particles in the water. Soon a mixed group of fish gathered around my hand, the proverbial ‘ball of fish”. I could stop rubbing at that point because they were darting in to grab a tiny bite of the fish. I held it near the surface of the water and she got a bunch of pictures of them. She was grinning and laughing so I asked if she wanted to hold the fish to feed them. She seemed doubtful, so I told her that if she makes sure at least half an inch of the fish sticks out of her fingers. She took the fish and soon all my friends transferred their allegiance to her. The imperative with fish is, “He who holds the food rules!”
I still had my mask and snorkel so, after she got comfortable with the little beggars dodging in and ripping off tiny hunks of fish, I dropped below the surface and took some pictures of her hand feeding the fish. She was laughing and making little exclamations like ‘They’re tearing the fish up!” and “I think one nipped my finger! It tickles!” All doubt was gone, she was having a great time and so was I, just watching her. Probably her first encounter, up close, with a wild animal of any sort from the look of it.
This was supposed to be our last stop of the day but our guide asked if we wanted to make a short stop to see a moray eel. He said the water was a little deep but we’d be able to see the eel. We said ok and off we went.
On the way, we passed the Hotel Bora Bora. When we were here in 1991, it was the only large hotel on the island. It was the prototype for the South Pacific style, over the water rooms. Sadly, it was badly damaged by a typhoon seven years ago and never reopened. All that’s left of some of the over the water rooms are the piles on which they stood. Most of the buildings spared by the storm are starting to deteriorate. During the 80s and early 90s large hotels proliferated and all had over the water rooms. Perhaps the market became saturated and it was not economical to reopen. The newer hotels were mostly owned by chains, Hilton, Sofitel, etc. and the newer construction took lessons learned at the Bora Bora and improved the rooms for convenience and luxury. Now there are even large hotels with these rooms on the motus (Islets, most are small but some are not. The island’s airport is on Motu Mute) around the lagoon.
We arrived at the last stop of the day. The water was about 20 feet deep and at that distance visibility was not great but you could see pretty well, not colors so much but shapes in shades of green and grey. Our guide when down to the rocks with some fish and started throwing it at the spot where the moray lives. In a very short time, the moray stuck his head out and grabbed the fish. Now that he had his attention, the guide went close to the rocks with a fish in his hand and when the moray came out he pulled it back about 18 inches and let it drop. That forced the moray to come about 4.5 feet out in the open to grab it. I didn’t catch it at its most exposed but I did manage to get it about 2.5-3 feet out. The photo doesn’t have enough color to tell exactly which one it is but you can see the mottled pattern and it has a bit of a green tint to it. Not a great picture but it’s visible.
After that, it was back to the tender pier. It was too late to take the tender to the ship, eat and tender back in time for our afternoon snorkel trip so we ate some granola bars and trail mix. We found a small stand on the edge of the pier’s parking lot and Diana had a Hawaiian style shave-ice with mango, coconut and apricot flavorings. I got a hot dog. It was about the size of a Costco Hebrew National dog but not as good. It was too soft, but still tasty. We found partly shady place and sat down to watch the people coming and going while we ate.
Our trip this afternoon is to the other side of the island on a motu that’s in the circle of the barrier reef but is not ever submerged by tide. The ring of motus and barrier reef is actually the outline of a huge ancient volcano’s caldera about six miles across. The large island at the center is the central cone of the volcano. They have a small bay in the motu that has been isolated from the lagoon with a large net so they can keep sea life inside it. The entire motu is private property but for a fee you can use the beach that borders the bay and also swim or snorkel there. The have several fenced off pens in the bay where they keep some species that might disrupt the general bay or be damaged by other life there.
One pen in the lagoon has sea turtles inside. They seemed happy to see us. I’m sure that’s because they associate lots of people with feeding time and they weren’t disappointed. Our host gave the quite a generous scattering of food. From there we moved to a separate area where we could snorkel with black-tip, lemon and nurse sharks. They had lots of mullet in that area too. I think they were food for the black-tips and lemons. The nurse sharks are seine feeders like baleen whales. They strain plankton, krill and whatever micro animals they can out of the water to feed. We swam in there about 25 minutes before moving to the main bay of the island where there were several fairly small coral beds and many types of tropical fish, including a few black-tip and lemon sharks.
I saw redfin butterflyfish, blue-green chromis, yellow damsels, yellowtail damsels, one puffer, Picasso, pink-tail and black triggerfish, green wrasse, scissortail sergeant, humbug dascylus and blue spotted trevally. There were others but I don’t know their names. There were several groups of coral in the bay and each had a colony of fish around it. One had blue-green chromis and humbug dascyllus, the other mainly yellowtail damsel and a few butterflyfish. It was a great dive spot and I’ll bet they work hard to keep it that way.
Since the lagoon was about half way around the island, our guide continued around to give us a chance to see the whole coastline. He pointed out historical sites and gave us the names of the major hotels we passed. He sang and played the ukulele while his partner kept the beat on a drum. It was a fun ride back. Almost any day is a good day if you’re on a boat especially a small one.
Shortly after taking the tender back to the ship the sail-away party started. It was a great sail-away. The sun was right on time, or rather we were. Often when we sail the sun is already down or behind a mountain so it creates difficult lighting. This time is was just about perfect. By the time we reached the outer reef the sun was setting but I got a nice picture of the reef through the dining room window. Yikes!
We had a Big Screen Movie night and they selected ‘Life of Pi’ to screen. I can stand quite a bit of nonsense in a film but this was way over the top. I don’t mind metaphorical scenes in film but they are difficult to direct and film so most of the time they are so heavy handed in the way it’s presented that it’s tedious, maudlin and therefore boring in extremis. This movie would be one to show film students to illustrate how not to do it. There, now I feel better.
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