French Polynesia 2015
Bora Bora
"With a lagoon resembling an artist's palette of blues and greens, Bora Bora is love at first sight. Romantics from around the world have laid claim to this island where the castle-like Mount Otemanu pierces the sky. Lush tropical slopes and valleys blossom with hibiscus, while palm-covered motu circle the illuminated lagoon like a delicate necklace. Perfect white-sand beaches give way to emerald waters where colored fish animate the coral gardens as they greet the giant manta rays. This could be easily be described as the center of the romantic universe, where luxury resorts and spas dot the island with overwater bungalows, thatched roof villas, and fabled ambience."
As soon as we arrive on Bora Bora we can sense that it is at another level compared to the first 2 islands.
The airport is on one of the islands that make up the outer reef of Bora Bora, so we would have to make our way by boat to our resort. There is no WARFIELD sign here, but our resort has a little booth, and we are quickly checked in, given a flower lei and shown to the boat that will take us to the Pearl Beach Resort. It's also a lot busier here than our other stops, as there is about 20 people on our boat, and at least 6 other boats destined for the other resorts.
Pearl Beach Resort & Spa is truly one of those postcard destinations, the colour of the water, the jagged mountain peaks, and the picturesque bungalows on the water... WOW! Here we arrive in the middle of French Polynesia, loaded onto a small boat and taken to a hotel where about 20 people are randomly sat at little tables of 4, so 2 couples per table. We are seated with a nice couple that are here to get married. When asking where we are all from, it turns out we all live about 1 mile from each other in Coquitlam. Both her and Norine work in Coquitlam schools. Now they are sitting on their balcony watching a sunset, while 100 ft away we are sitting on our balcony watching the sunset. Small world.
Initially we thought our place in Moorea was a 5 star room, but after seeing this room, Moorea was 4 stars, this is a true 5 star place (Huahine is downgraded to 3 stars). The Room is amazing, with fine carved woods, lush bed, huge bathroom, and even a glass coffee table that opens up to feed the fish in the coral that is below.
Throughout the bungalow there is glass inserts that allow you to look down into the aqua blue waters. It's the deck that seals the deal, To the left is the bungalows on the white sand beaches, to the right is the jagged mountain peaks of Mt. Otemanu & Pahia.
Straight ahead is a view of the lagoon that instantly puts you in vacation mode.
Outside our room is the Do Not Disturb sign, just rotate for Do Not Disturb or Clean The Room.
We knew we couldn't just spend the whole trip in our room, so we went out for some lunch and to explore the grounds of the resort.
The white sand beach is like powder, and virtually empty, the large winding pool is beautiful, and deserted. It makes a nice backdrop as we have our lunch looking across the pool and the beach. Where is everyone?
When the resort was built almost the entire bay was just white sand, but over the years Pearl Beach has been growing coral. They have a coral nursery at the center of the bungalows, allowing small coral polyps to grow, fish to establish themselves, and they have created small coral blocks around the bay. Just a few feet away from our deck is a couple of those coral blocks. They are full of colourful corals, home to a wide variety of fish, and even an octopus has made himself a home in one of the holes.
Get your scroll wheel ready if you don't like fish.
Although the sun sets behind the trees of our resort, it's still pretty nice as the water and sand change colours.
The highlight of the sun going down is sliding the top of our coffee table back to feed the fish. The water is lit below our bungalow, and a large group of needlefish gather below to accept our offerings.
Because we booked our trip early, we were given a free Lagoon Tour and Shark/Stingray snorkeling excursion. We are the first ones picked up from the dock of our resort by our guide for the day, Terre.
His high powered pontoon boat motors its way around the lagoon circling the main island of Bora Bora, passing and stopping at different resorts to pick up 4 more couples; Australia, China, and a couple american pairs make up our party. The trip includes three stops, the first one is supposed to be just stingrays.
Turns out some black tipped reef sharks didn't get the memo, and have turned up to see what is going on. as soon as the boat stops, we are surrounded by stingrays and a lot of Black Tipped Reef sharks. I guess the ice will be broken by swimming with sharks a lot sooner than we expected. They kept their eyes on us while circling around, but never came too close, at least from my perspective.
The Stingrays are amazing creatures, gliding so gracefully through the water, brushing against you with their skin that feels like velvet. We could probably float all day and watch them if there wasn't sharks circling around us.
One of the more interesting things for me to see was the Remora fish, those long fish you always see clinging to the underside of large sharks. It was really cool to see the runner like tread surface where they attach themselves to the sharks.
Having spent some quality time with the sharks and rays, it was back in the boat to our 2nd stop, a prime coral garden for snorkeling with smaller fish. As soon as we stop, there is hundreds of fish coming in to check out the buns Terre has tossed in.
While we were checking out some butterflyfish, the guide took others to go see a Moray Eel, so we missed it. So many fish, such an amazing spot on a huge coral garden area. Although the water is 12-15 feet deep, the coral is large so you are never far from the fish.
Regal angelfish 
Lemonpeel angelfish
Once again we load back into the boat for our final spot, just on the outside of the reef, the big shark stop. The waters here are much deeper, about 45 feet, but they are crystal clear and you can see all the way to the bottom.
As soon as we stop, a couple boats tie up together and anchor, some fish is thrown into the water, and we are encircled by black tip reef sharks, a lot of black tipped reef sharks, a lot! At this stage Norine and 2 other girls are deciding not to go in the water.
Terre says "OK, you can go in whenever you want", and immediately there is a splash as one of the americans jumps in. Terre goes in too. There is still a lot of sharks circling our boat, but I notice they aren't between our boat and the pontoon, so I decide to go in there. As soon as I go in and look down through my mask, I see Terre riding the back of a giant Lemon shark. Gurgling water I came up and tell everyone that he is riding a shark, and more people jump in the water. Since I was already in, and there were no sharks near me, Norine came into the water in the same spot. Eventually everyone is in the water.
As soon as you go in the water, you notice the black tip reef sharks at the surface, they are about 4-5 feet long and stay fairly close to the surface. They loop around the outer edge of where we are in the water, and come by to check us out, then turn away. Below us are the big sharks, two or three Lemon sharks, maybe four, they are 10-12 feet long, and definitely are initimidating. They are staying low, and come up to about 10 feet from the surface, so that makes it a little easier.
Our guides are pulling a few people down to ride the Lemon Sharks by holding onto their fins. At first I was thinking that might be interesting, until our brave american dove down to try it himself. Instead of grabbing the back fin, he grabbed the tail, and I saw a rather large shark turn 180 around in a fraction of a second. The guy let go quickly and came back up, but any idea I had of riding a shark ended that second, now he has pissed off the shark, I don't want to add to that anger in their territory.
I was busy watching the Lemon sharks, and I turned around to see three of the black tips right behind me. When I started breathing again, I made it a point to keep my head on a swivel. If I could see them, it was awesome, If I didn't know where they were, it was scary. For about 30 minutes we observed these dangerous and magnificent creatures.
Our excursion over, it was back to the resort, first in - first out. We are dropped off first, and I'm a little surprised to find out that the area where we were watching sharks was less than 5 minutes away from our resort.
After the excitement of the morning tour, some quiet time on the beach was warranted.
To finish off this crazy day the other complimentary part of booking early was a Romantic Dinner at St. James restaurant. We didn't know much about it, other than we had to take a boat to get there, and that it was located on a dock over the water.
It was a spectacular meal, from the view, to the service, to the presentation, and the food was absolutely delicious.
The weirdest aspect of the dinner, was the taxi driver that picked us up at the dock and took us to and from the retaurant. She was a local Boran Boran (is that right?), She would tell us little facts about the island, some weren't quite right, some were made a little more exciting with local lore. Did you know Bora Bora is sinking into the ocean, that's why the roads are bad? Every little story is punctuated by a laugh, a laugh that made us wonder whether she had been drinking. She drove a nice SUV, but drove it so slowly that even the rustbucket Toyota Corrola's were passing us on the 1 lane road. But we made it back safely and were ferried back to our resort.
The next morning started off a day that would be a little more grounded. We would spend the day at the resort.
It would be a day with a little relaxing, a little eating, a little swimming and a little snorkeling.
Our last excursion of the trip was a 4x4 Sunset tour. We would get picked up from the ferry dock and taken on a 4x4 trail to a lookout for the sunset and have some champagne. Going with us was a super nice couple from Washington, DC, John and Paul, they were here on a cruise ship in celebration of their wedding. We all climbed in the Range Rover and headed off with our guide Hiro.
Apparently we had an "unscheduled stop" to a local artisan, here comes the sales pitch.
As we are being given the spiel on the Pareo's that they make, Norine is shocked by a pail full of crabs. The local thinks it's really funny to sneak behind her and pinch her ankle... she wasn't impressed.
The comedy show now over, we are now being shown how they make the local clothing known as Pareos. Their technique is a combination of Tie-Dye and sun bleaching, Norine picks the colours to dip in, and then the most important part...
Oh look a puppy, he's so cute!... and then the Pareo is done.
Since I missed the most important part petting the puppy, I was now included in the fashion show portion of the evening. We are shown five or six of the hundreds of ways to tie a Pareo.
Norine bought one, and we got another for Sharai, who was taking care of Silva while we were gone. Then it was back into the 4x4 for our sunset viewing. Back down the road we turn off onto a super steep trail and head up the mountainside.
Our viewing point is beside a World War 2 gun that was installed after the Pearl Harbor attack, to protect the South Pacific. The United States chose Bora Bora as a strategic South Pacific defense location and military supply base. Roads were built and an oil depot, airstrip, seaplane base, and defensive fortifications were constructed. It maintained a supply force of nine ships, 20,000 tons of equipment and nearly 7,000 men. Seven artillery guns were set up around the island to protect it against potential military attack.
The location is great, it looks out onto the lagoon, and right down over our Pearl Beach resort.
While we are watching the sun go down, our guide Hiro serenades us with a Ukelele before we pop a couple bottles of champagne to enjoy as the sun sets. John and Paul's cork fires off into the sky, mine drops straight to the ground before I pick it up and throw it.
Back down the steep trail in the pitch black, we say our goodbyes to John and Paul and Hiro, and are dropped at the dock to wait for our resorts boat. The shuttle arrives and returns us to Pearl Beach for our Last Supper in French Polynesia.
After an amazing dinner we headed back to our bungalow where we could feed the fishes and watch the stars one more time.
After checking with the front desk, our last day was made a little special by the fact that we were able to stay in our room past the checkout time of 11am. Our flight didn't leave until 5:45, we just had to call them at 4:30 to come get our bags and checkout then.
It only made sense when we went for lunch that I have a cheeseburger in paradise.
As we are counting down the minutes of our last day, I start to think about the areas of the resort we didn't use. We never used the tennis courts, or the mini-golf, we never hung out in the bar or the pool. Apparently there was another restaurant we never used. We never used the fitness center or the spa, and we certainly didn't use the hot tub. We just didn't need to.
Having waited the required 30 minutes after lunch, I donned my gear for our last day of snorkeling.
I promise, it's the last batch of fish photos in this travel diary.
Yellowmargin triggerfish Day Octopus
Titan triggerfish Black durgon
Spotted boxfish Little spinefoot
Flat needlefish More needlefish
Longfin spadefish Scrawled cowfish
I'm about to head back to our deck for the last time when I spot a dark shadow moving in the distance. My heart starts beating again when I realize it's a Spotted Leopard Ray, and it's going right past me. From the time I bought the Stingray wood carving in Moorea, our whole trip was highlighted by Rays, and this was the perfect ending to our vacation.
The last day in Bora Bora was cloudy, so it made it a little easier to leave, but not that easy.
It's finally check out time, they come and take our bags, and we hop on the boat to the airport. The last thing I see out the window of the airplane as we take off from Bora Bora is this small island... about sums it up.
24 hours later, we are back in Vancouver
When we arrive back in Vancouver, I check my email, and there is a message from the Pearl Beach Resort.
When we started thinking about a way to celebrate our 50th year on this planet, staying in a hut on stilts over the water was what I was hoping to do. I don't think I could have come up with a better way to celebrate and wind down, than this trip to paradise.