Wanderung 26

Walkabout, Sailabout

March - May 2012


 

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Sunday, April 29th, 2012: Bora Bora, French Polynesia

Bob:

Our entrance into Bora Bora just at dawn was quite dramatic as the island is volcanic and juts up out of the sea in a spectacular way.

Monika:

We were up early to watch our arrival into the bay at Bora Bora. We watched the pilot come on board and were happy he was there as we watched us slowly navigating through the coral reef that surrounds the island. And in the background were the mountains reaching up through the mountains. In my mind I was singing "Bali Hai".

Bob:

The port lecturer had mentioned that shuttle buses to a nice public beach a few kilometers down the road from our landing point would cost only $ 5 USD apiece, so we decided to try that for our trip ashore. I was a bit concerned about coping with the French language as we were now in the Society Islands group of French Polynesia, but as it turned out I needn't have worried as people understood what we wanted and US dollars were widely accepted at the tourist venues.

The shuttle buses to Matira Beach turned out to be a variety of small or medium-sized, open-sided cars or pickup trucks with extra seats. They promised us they would run the loop out to Bloody Mary's bar and Matira Beach about every half hour during the day, so we gave them a couple of five dollar bills and set off for the beach, being relatively certain we could get back to the ship by the "All Aboard" time. The curious thing about the pricing is that if you stop at Bloody Mary's, you then have to pay another $5 to continue on to Matira Beach. We elected to skip Bloody Mary's as I am not particularly entranced by bars no matter how famous, but folks who did go there were quite impressed by the ambiance, which included sand floors and a list of famous folks who had been there. To each his or her own.

Instead, we stayed on the bus and disembarked at the beach where we found some trees overhanging the sand at one end of the beach and spread our towels there. Our shady spot plus the fact that the day was cloudy and that we had slathered on SPF 30 sunscreen that morning reduced, but did not prevent, us from getting sunburned in a few places. As we were in the water swimming for over two hours, I think we finally washed off the sunscreen, but since the water was delightfully cool we did not notice we were getting sunburnt until it was too late.

Monika:

This was a tender port. We had planned to take a shuttle bus to a beach the port lecturer had told us about. So I dressed in my swimsuit underneath an easily shedable dress. With towels and snorkeling gear tucked in our backpack, we caught an early shuttle and were on our way.

We got out at the beach, set ourselves up and started snorkeling.

Bob:

In any case, the water temperature was "just right"--easy to get into and yet cool enough that you could put out some effort swimming and not overheat. It was also very, very clear and we could see for quite a ways under water. Matira Beach does not have any coral formations, but we found quite a few fish over near the stone headland at the northwest end of the beach where we had spread our towels. We used the opportunity to test out our new folding snorkels, masks and fins. The new snorkels and fins worked perfectly. The full-sized ones I had purchased on our last day in Sydney (Thank you, Neville!) worked better than Monika's junior-sized version. But Monika is a stronger swimmer overall than I am, so we turned out to have about the same swimming pace and total endurance.

Unfortunately, we found out that Monika's old mask leaked to the extent that she kept having to surface to clear it, which was unacceptable. I had her try my new mask which fortunately did seal watertight on her face. I had brought with my swim goggles, and I was perfectly happy using them plus my snorkel for swimming--I just have to remember NOT to breathe through my nose! We also both had problems with fogging, so I decided I would try rubbing clear shampoo onto the inner surfaces the next time we snorkeled to see if that would prevent fogging (it did!).

Monika:

The water was delightful and we really did have a lot of fun. We swam over to where some ships were tied up, exchanging the underwater camera as we swam along so each of us had a chance of catching some of the underwater fun.

And fun it really was. This was not an actual coral reef, but there were enough fish and other assorted creatures to make it interesting.


 

Bob:

When we returned to shore briefly to adjust our gear, some Japanese passengers from the ship claimed they had spotted two sting rays cruising up and down the shoreline. They didn't have snorkeling gear, so I wasn't sure whether to believe them or not until I saw one of the sting rays myself, just beyond that stone headland. Unlike the "tame" ones I have encountered at the stingray-feeding sites, however, this one was skittish and kept his distance from us. In fact, when I swam toward him with the camera to get his portrait, he edged backward and looked agitated or worried, so I took the picture and backed off again so he could relax and go about his business.

Monika:

going into the water a second time this time around the quay which acted somewhat like a coral reef and attracted the colorful fish and even a rather shy stingray. Again, we kept exchanging the camera, so that by now we could not say who took what pictures, but fun it was indeed.


 


 

Bob:

All in all, it was a very pleasant day at the beach, and when we wanted to return a pickup truck version of the shuttle bus was ready to take us right back to the pier. We had lunch aboard ship and then went ashore once again, but we soon discovered that we were really exhausted from all the swimming. Later that evening we also discovered the latent sunburn that the tropical sun had inflicted despite being a cloudy day, our having applied sunscreen, and all that. My shoulders were hot but not painful enough to prevent me from sleeping that night, so I hoped it would all heal by our next scheduled snorkeling session in Moorea two days hence.

Monika:

We finally did have enough of snorkeling and caught the next "taxi/bus" back to the pier. Going back on the tender we had a bunch of canoes following us trying to ride the waves our boat was making.

Of course, we were back on ship when we left our first "Bali Hai" - mountain peaking out from the cloud.



Copyright 2012 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt


 

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Prolog Map of Drive in Australia Map of Transpacific Cruise Epilog

March 2012
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18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30 31
April 2012
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30
May 2012
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13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
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