Next up, Bora Bora, the stuff of legends. Once upon a time perhaps the most beautiful place on earth, that is before the big international hotel chains filled the sweetest parts of the lagoon with their straw huts on the water, the island stands inside a turquoise lagoon so perfectly pristine it makes your eyes water. Just hearing the name has one thinking of a magical, exotic spot, and walking out of the airpor, catching the first glimpse of it really was just that. After collecting my jaw from the floor we hopped on the complementary catamaran (the airport is located on a motu on the rim of the reef instead of the main island) to the islands capitol Vaitape and from there on were forced to pay for a taxi to get us to Matira Point, the best beach on the island and the area where most of the "reasonably" priced pensions are located.
Some 45 minutes by an ATR-72 plane and 270 km from Mo'orea, the tourism scene here is quite a different world. Groceries cost some 30-40% more and the best accommodation deal we could wrestle is a garden view room from Pension Roberto & Tina, of LP fame, sitting at the optimal spot at the tip of the point, surrounded on 3 sides by the hypnotic waters of the lagoon. No hot water in the shared showers though, but in the tropics that's not that important. The next door neighbor is an Intercontinental hotel with room rates starting from 1000$ a night. Hallelujah! Again we have a nice communal kitchen, shaving a nice cut off the food / drinks costs. All the whine about costs aside, finally being on Bora Bora feels like a wet (I often dream about diving..) dream come true.
Getting dives sorted out wasn't that straightforward. Bora Bora is a bit difficult in many senses: there's no public transportation to speak of, ATMs only in the port town Vaitepe, dive shops etc. scattered along the 15km stretch of road, and finding a WLAN is even more difficult than on Mo'orea. Duh. So in order to get to a dive shop we wanted, we hiked to the town and back, in flip flops of course. That's a nice 20km walk in the hot sun right there. Afterwards we rewarded ourselves with cold beers and a dip in the lagoon though..
The dives cost almost 80$ each (ouch) but oh boy can they be worth it here! The first dive site is Tapu, famous its lemon / black tip reef shark populations. The reef is nothing here thanks to crown of thorns and large swells shaking things up, but not to worry, people come here to see the sharks. And did we ever! Some 10-20 sharks would be swimming right next to and around us for the good 50 minutes under water. Talk about adrenaline rush! The largest lemons get to be about 3m long, so we're not talking about aquarium fish here. The second dive we did was to a place known as Manta Point, with murky waters where manta rays come to feed and get cleaned up. Bad luck for us though and no mantas around.
Our three days on Bora Bora are soon up though and it's time to move on to the Tuamotu islands, where waters are clear and more big things lurk beneath the surface.. according to many divers, that's where the best diving in French Polynesia is found. In other words, next stop: Rangiroa atoll.
See all the Bora Bora pictures here!
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Some 45 minutes by an ATR-72 plane and 270 km from Mo'orea, the tourism scene here is quite a different world. Groceries cost some 30-40% more and the best accommodation deal we could wrestle is a garden view room from Pension Roberto & Tina, of LP fame, sitting at the optimal spot at the tip of the point, surrounded on 3 sides by the hypnotic waters of the lagoon. No hot water in the shared showers though, but in the tropics that's not that important. The next door neighbor is an Intercontinental hotel with room rates starting from 1000$ a night. Hallelujah! Again we have a nice communal kitchen, shaving a nice cut off the food / drinks costs. All the whine about costs aside, finally being on Bora Bora feels like a wet (I often dream about diving..) dream come true.
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