August 29, 2004

Althea
Sun 29 Aug 2004 19:09

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