Bora Bora - Day 1
The morning was a bit cloudy but quickly cleared off and turned into the most beautiful day we've had all trip. When we dismebarked the ship's tender on the dock on Bora Bora, there was a local celebration going on. There were hundreds of children from many schools all competing in a dance ceremony of sorts. We took a few pictures before our excursion had to depart.
Our first excursion at 9 am was through the ship, called the "Snorkel, shark and ray feeding". About 20 people got on a power boat and they took us all out to the spot in the lagoon where sharks are often seen. The water was only about 3 to 4 feet deep where we anchored and was about 10 feet deep over where they began chumming the water to attract the small black-tipped reef sharks. They tie a rope between two coral heads, and we all stay on one side of the rope. They claim the sharks won't go past the rope. There was a very strong current pushing all of us towards the area where the sharks would come in, and soon we saw three of them circling in front of us eating the fish the divers had brought out. We were all pushing hard against the rope, and Sandy was on the far left end hanging on. Suddenly the rope came loose on her end and all of us began to drift towards the sharks, pushed along by the strong current. The guides were all yelling "Get back, get back!" when Sandy held the loose end of the rope up in the air and said "The rope broke!" Everyone panicked and began swimming back towards the boat as fast as possible, but the strong current made it hard to make any headway. Fortunately I had good swim fins on and made it back over with no trouble. Two of the guides grabbed Sandy and the rope, retied it and then helped Sandy back to to boat. Talk about an adrenaline rush! Sandy claims she'll never get back in the water with sharks again, no matter how safe they say it is! Unfortunately none of the underwater shark pictures came out well enough to be worth publishing here.
Next stop was a much calmer area to see the sting rays. We got in the water and almost immediately there were about 20 sting rays swimming around our feet and legs. When they brush up against you their skin feels like wet, slippery velvet. The guides would pull them up out of the water by their gills and hand-feed them or even kiss them.
The guides found a small octopus that they brought over to the boat, and were putting on the chest or head of some of the willing passengers of our boat. Three times the octopus squirted its black ink in the air or the water. We got the whole thing on video. One of the guides took Sandy and one of the other ladies about 50 feet from the boat and showed them a moray eel in its lair. It had 3 babies hiding in the coral about the size of a pencil. He fed it to try and get it to come out. When it came out about a foot he had them pet it.
We got back at the dock at 11:45 am and had only 15 minutes until we left on our next excursion, a private snorkeling and island tour with Olivier Huc. There were only Sandy and I and Danny and Debby from California on our tour. Olivier took us out to a beautiful coral garden area where we went snorkeling for about 45 minutes. Saw lots of beautiful fish and took quite a few underwater pictures. The water was beautifully clear and warm.
Our next spot was to try to see manta rays at a channel area around the island. The water was about 60 feet deep and very cloudy with plankton, the main feeding area of mantas in Bora Bora. We were unlucky, though, and didn't see any mantas. There was a good current again in the water that made it hard to swim back to the boat. We noticed that Olivier was wearing a full wet suit when diving, and all of us were just wearing simple swimsuits. When asked about this, Olivier said "This is our winter. This water is cold!". To all of us it was wonderfully warm, like a soothing bath back home. If this water was "cold", I can't imagine what summertime "hot" water must feel like! He went on to kid us a bit, saying in the summer you can cook pasta in the water!
The final part of our excursion was going over to a private motu that Olivier lives on part time. We anchored the boat in 2 feet deep water, and hopped out to swim in the crystal clear blue water. Olivier said to give him 10 minutes and he'd have a surprise for us. After swimming a few minutes, when we looked up we saw that he had set up 5 plastic patio chairs and a table with an umbrella in the water about 15 feet from shore! He even had a tablecloth on it. He picked a fresh palm leaf and wove it into a simple basket shape, and then cut up fresh melon, papaya and Tahitian grapefruit.
He brought out his guitar and played some songs and sang for us as we sat in the water in our chairs, hearing only the sound of the surf lapping at our feet, with the mountain in the background to our left.
We had dinner in the Cub restaurant again - that one quickly became our favorite place to eat on board ship.