Yes, we are still out here in the
South Pacific. We have been enjoying Bora Bora
for the past week. The small island with its large mountain (2400 ft) & its
turquoise lagoon is beautiful, though there are more visitors here than any
place we’ve visited thus far. Most cruise ships in the area make this a
port of call & there are a lot of luxury over-the-water bungalows. (the
latest rich & famous siting was Pierce Brosnan of 007 fame) We have spent
our time here diving & swimming, picking up a few mail packages, keeping up
with endless boat projects & doing a bit of laundry onshore (we found a
full size washer to use at the yacht club & it ‘only’ cost us
$12 a load – no dryer!). We have also spent time hanging out with other
cruisers from Scoots, Street Legal, Catspaw, Waking Dream, & Windrose
– always interesting to hear about the origins of such yacht names.
We are now preparing for our next
passage to the island of Suvarov (aka Suwarrow) in the Cook
Islands. The passage will be about 5 days so we plan to get some
more exercise before we leave as you can only burn so many calories on a small
boat while under passage. I have enjoyed swimming but tend to do less of it in
places where we have seen the reef sharks. Although they are considered
harmless, I am not as enamored with them as those divers who travel from afar
just to come see the sharks here. As one local dive company says, a dive
without sharks is free. From the Cook Islands, we will head to Western Samoa & Tonga
or Fiji before going south
to New Zealand.
On the island of Raiatea
we enjoyed a nice trip down a tropical river with friends Ben & Lisa of
Waking Dream. It turns out that it is the only inland river in French Polynesia. We took our dinghys a few miles up the
river that was covered in tropical foliage. We stopped at the only dock we saw
& came to find a large botanical garden which had every kind of tropical
flower & fruit you could imagine. Back at anchor, we enjoyed a sunset view
of the locals’ pirogue race around the little motu (island). The pirogues
are like long narrow kayaks with an outrigger on one side; the locals are
passionate about their pirogues.
Our latest source of fun has been
diving. Most of our dive gear came with the boat, so it was only natural that
we would take advantage of the crystal clear waters & abundant sea life.
While we are not certified, we have thoroughly read the NAUI dive instruction
book & Bob had done some short dives starting back in the Tuamotus. Our 1st
dive together was with an instructor off the island of Huahine.
We were in a pass that had lots of coral & beautiful small fish that
completely surrounded us as the dive master fed them bread. We did see some
reef sharks (about 5' long) but kept our distance. Before we went down, we were
in the dive dinghy & spotted a huge humpback whale just about 70' from the
boat; it surfaced & showed most of its topside & then its tail. We
actually saw lots of whales coming in to Huahine including one that fully
breached out of the water, clearing about 8' of air! I caught the enormous splash
& a bit of the tail on camera. Bob guessed that he weighed as much as the
boat - about 22,000 lbs! We have been diving now 3 times
together. The last 2 dives were with our friend Ben on Waking Dream who is very
experienced (2500 dives!) & who used to do search & rescue dives in California. The latest
dive had lots of nice coral & pretty small fish. Ben was nice enough to get
some underwater shots of us.
We also had a nice hike in Huahine
that gave a birdseye view of the bay. We tromped over a mountain ridge that was
covered with more ferns than I have ever seen – the trail for some part
was literally on top of a cushion of ferns. We saw wild verbena, orchids,
hydrangea & birds of paradise. The trail kind of ended so we had to
bushwack our way down through some serious tropical growth. Back at the bottom,
Bob cut a big group of bananas from a tree only to be told later that they were
too small to ever ripen & mature – so much for that freebie.
The adventure
continues…Courtney & Bob
