Bora Bora
I’m sitting out on the back deck of the ship at the Sea View pool and, as Carter would say, I’m “livin’ the life”. The sun is quite hot so this may be a short blog, much to the relief of a lot of people, I’m sure.
The contest is over for the most beautiful island in French Polynesia. And the winner is…..Moorea! We spent yesterday in Bora Bora and all the hype brought to mind the phrase “over-promised and under-delivered”. Bora Bora, like Tahiti, looks much better from the ship than it does up close. We rode in a windowless, wooden truck/bus and bumped and jiggled our way around the island. Not much to see but crackerbox houses and unfinished reconstruction projects dating from the 1991 hurricane.
There are a couple of points of interest, though. One is that Bora Borans (?) don’t have a public cemetery. They bury their dead in the front yards! So you see the teeny tiny houses with teeny tiny yards filled with graves. Kind of creepy!
The sand crabs are cute to watch. They are fairly large and live in holes. Each seat in the truck had a hibiscus flower hanging above it and we stopped on the side of the road and threw the flowers out the holes where windows should have been and watched the crabs emerge from the holes, grab the hibiscus and drag it down into the hole. Occasionally two crabs would want the same flower and a fight would ensue. It was quite fascinating to watch and I consider it the highlight of the ride.
Our final stop was Bloody Mary’s, an institution on the island and the home of the original Bloody Mary drink. Many many famous people have visited and there is an interesting wall of fame but the place is a tourist trap and the Bloody Mary was way to spicy for my taste.
People really are funny. Last week most passengers were craving the sight of land. Then, last night after the show Bruce, the cruise director, came on stage to wish us a good night and when he said we have two consecutive sea days, the audience applauded as if the 3 port days in a row had been an arduous and exhausting experience. As human beings, will we ever be satisfied?
We have a new speaker series, an anthropologist who lectured today about the origin of the people from Polynesia. He sounded like he thought he was talking to a group of post-doctoral candidates. I think I absorbed about 1/100th of what he said. It looks like we’ll have a new enrichment speaker about every 2 weeks so we’ll really be cultured when we get home, but not to worry, Ed says he has an antibiotic that will clear that right up.
Well, it wasn’t all that short, but it sure was sweet, wasn’t it? More later, from our next port of call, Apia, Samoa.
I’m sitting out on the back deck of the ship at the Sea View pool and, as Carter would say, I’m “livin’ the life”. The sun is quite hot so this may be a short blog, much to the relief of a lot of people, I’m sure.
The contest is over for the most beautiful island in French Polynesia. And the winner is…..Moorea! We spent yesterday in Bora Bora and all the hype brought to mind the phrase “over-promised and under-delivered”. Bora Bora, like Tahiti, looks much better from the ship than it does up close. We rode in a windowless, wooden truck/bus and bumped and jiggled our way around the island. Not much to see but crackerbox houses and unfinished reconstruction projects dating from the 1991 hurricane.
There are a couple of points of interest, though. One is that Bora Borans (?) don’t have a public cemetery. They bury their dead in the front yards! So you see the teeny tiny houses with teeny tiny yards filled with graves. Kind of creepy!
The sand crabs are cute to watch. They are fairly large and live in holes. Each seat in the truck had a hibiscus flower hanging above it and we stopped on the side of the road and threw the flowers out the holes where windows should have been and watched the crabs emerge from the holes, grab the hibiscus and drag it down into the hole. Occasionally two crabs would want the same flower and a fight would ensue. It was quite fascinating to watch and I consider it the highlight of the ride.
Our final stop was Bloody Mary’s, an institution on the island and the home of the original Bloody Mary drink. Many many famous people have visited and there is an interesting wall of fame but the place is a tourist trap and the Bloody Mary was way to spicy for my taste.
People really are funny. Last week most passengers were craving the sight of land. Then, last night after the show Bruce, the cruise director, came on stage to wish us a good night and when he said we have two consecutive sea days, the audience applauded as if the 3 port days in a row had been an arduous and exhausting experience. As human beings, will we ever be satisfied?
We have a new speaker series, an anthropologist who lectured today about the origin of the people from Polynesia. He sounded like he thought he was talking to a group of post-doctoral candidates. I think I absorbed about 1/100th of what he said. It looks like we’ll have a new enrichment speaker about every 2 weeks so we’ll really be cultured when we get home, but not to worry, Ed says he has an antibiotic that will clear that right up.
Well, it wasn’t all that short, but it sure was sweet, wasn’t it? More later, from our next port of call, Apia, Samoa.
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