Day 19: Bora Bora

It is 9pm as I type these first words and I have much to tell you about a day that began at 4:30am when the alarm went off. Half asleep, I threw on the clothes I had laid out last night and snuck out of the cabin.  I watched from the Promenade Deck as the Pacific Princess pushed away from the Uturoa pier just a minute or two after 5am and then went up to Deck 11 forward. There, both Dr. Rhodri Evans and Douglas Pearson already had an avid following, explaining the stars and planets in the night sky. I listened for a short while, but then decided that the pre-dawn light really was best viewed in solitude.

It was nothing short of spectacular to watch as the Pacific Princess began to navigate Pai Pai Pass between Raiatea and Taha'a, en route to Bora Bora. The shallow water depth of the lagoon required the ship to weave its way, followed by a small freighter making the same gentle curves. By the time the sun rose, it was behind the island of Taha'a, and G had found me on the terrace behind the Panorama Buffet. By 6:30am, the Pacific Princess made its way out of Pai Pai Pass into the open ocean and, while Taha'a remained on our starboard (right) side, Bora Bora began to appear as a shadow on the northern horizon. 

You can see the pass in the reef through which the Pacific Princess had to navigate

Sabatinis wasn't yet open for breakfast, so G and I grabbed coffees and went down to the Promenade Deck to watch the Taha'a shoreline go by.

By 7:30am, we were getting closer to Teavanui Pass into the Bora Bora lagoon but instead of joining the crowd on the upper decks, we chose to watch our entry into the Bora Bora lagoon while having mimosas and breakfast in Sabatinis. We were the only passengers in there and it was the perfectly peaceful place to watch as the view of the Bora Bora motus filled the window next to our table. 

We were not in a huge hurry to go to shore and so waited until most of the passengers tendered over before we did the same.  We spent some time walking around the Vaitape pier and seeing some of the locals we knew from last year. One business we had frequented last year offered us the use of their WiFi, and we gratefully accepted. We were able to check on things at home and with our accounts for the first time since Hawaii, and I was thrilled to receive a few photos of the twins' 12th birthday party, which was held today. Their birthday is actually tomorrow, and it's the first time in their lives I have missed it. It was also the hardest part of leaving home this early, but, judging from the pics, they are not pining for me. ;-)

We returned to the ship around 11:30am to eat an early lunch, and then dressed for a day on the water. When I had asked G months ago what he wanted to do in Bora Bora, top on his list was to jet ski around the island again. You might remember that last year we justified the expense of this excursion by installing a sliding glass door ourselves. This year, our whole Pacific Princess trip was justified by remodeling our deck ourselves, and we finished the installation of 50 feet of railing just before we left home. A big project...but our savings were already earmarked for the cruise, not jet skis. Once again fate stepped in and, just as we were considering the jet skis, our cruise price dropped by exactly $500. With the stronger U.S. dollar, what cost $539 last year was $481 this year. Surely this was proof that we were meant to do the jet skis again...at least my husband saw it that way. 

And so once again I found myself bouncing across the Bora Bora lagoon, hanging on to my jet ski so tightly that it took an hour after I returned to the ship for my hands to uncurl. Our trip with Moana Adventures started out innocuously enough...our guide this year was Vincent, originally from France (of course) but a 17-year resident of Bora Bora. He gave us the option of following him while he went to the Hilton Bora Bora Nui on Motu Toopea behind where the Pacific Princess was at anchor, or waiting for him to return with two people staying there. Well, heck, let's consider this...an extra half hour of jet ski freestyling in that gorgeous lagoon in front of the Hilton Bora Bora Nui or waiting in the Moana Adventures office. 

That half hour of slowly jet skiing while I took lots of photos of the resort and the lagoon and the reef and Raiatea in the distance while waving and yelling "Ia Orana!" (hello!) to all the passing boats was exactly my style. No scary waves, no speed, no being the distant last in a line of jet skis...this was a sport I loved. Then the honeymoon couple from the resort joined us and we were off and roundIng the southern part of Bora Bora around Matira Point. I remember this was the scariest section last year because of the way the wind blows and creates some wavelets in the lagoon that rock the jet ski from side to side. I do NOT like that sensation!  This is also the point where it is so rough that, last year, my iPhone went flying off my wrist and landed, floating on top of that gorgeous blue water and I had to turn around to retrieve it. 

The rest of the group became dots in the distance but, luckily, pulled up to a beach next to the overwater bungalows of the St.Regis, giving me a chance to catch up. And breathe. And take lots more photos. Once again, I could have been happy doing just that to finish out the tour, but no...after a short break we were speeding across the azure water while I held on for dear life. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted one of Patrick's excursion boats leave his motu and begin its return to the Vaitape pier, and I wondered, if I hadn't married an 'action man' 32 years ago, I might not, at that exact moment, be sated with suckling pig and French champagne and riding safely in that motorized outrigger back to the ship while listening to Maretto play the ukulele while he steered the boat with his feet.

But then, I wouldn't have learned two things today. First, only 1/100th of a second separates exhilaration from pure terror. I finally started hitting my stride and catching some air and then in the next moment was forced to cross a wake and was certain I was going to die. And, second, G saying he can't tolerate long, rough boat rides because they bother his back is simply an excuse. There is nothing rougher than riding a jet ski, and his back is fine tonight.  I'm quite suspicious...

By the time we were skiing past the Pacific Princess and waving at the passengers watching us from the open decks, I actually was flying and passed G for the first time. I'm not certain if I had finally conquered my fear or simply spotted the 'barn' and knew this venture was almost over. But I survived. Go me!

We were given a 10-minute ride back to the ship where we quickly boarded a tender. How familiar is Bora Bora to us when we actually recognize the paddlers in outrigger canoes attempting to surf the tender's wake?  Pretty darn familiar. 

After a quick clean up (no snorkel gear to rinse out) we made it to the Elite Lounge for the first time in days, and then to dinner in the Club Restaurant. It was Italian night, and penne arrabiata topped with chicken strips really hit the spot after an afternoon on the water. We made it to the 7pm performance of production show Motor City and thank God we did...the upbeat show energized me enough to get this post typed. It is after 10pm now, and I'll attempt to get it published, WiFi permitting. The alarm is set for 5:30am for our arrival in Moorea tomorrow. I'm so glad that cruising is such a wonderfully relaxing vacation!!  ;-) 

Day 28: Bora Bora One

We have another overnight stay in Bora Bora tonight, so I'm differentiating today from tomorrow the same way the crew does:  Bora Bora One vs. Bora Bora Two.

Our weather this cruise is becoming quite the topic of conversation on the ship. We have had consistently perfect weather, and most passengers are looking brown and/or red (mostly red) as a result. Honestly, this has been almost too good to be true, and this morning was no different. The sun was streaming in our cabin early, before 6am today. It's true that we do have draperies- a sheer and a room darkening one- that can be pulled over our porthole, but when we rearranged the beds in our cabin, we pushed them against the porthole wall and specifically against the pulled back draperies. Instead, if we feel privacy will be an issue (as it was yesterday in Raiatea) we simply stack the two decorative pillows (that are supposed to be on our beds during the day but which we keep in the little porthole cubby area) up against the porthole. And a quick word about that...

We've been in Raiatea three times now, and we have been docked differently each time. The first time, the Windstar Wind Spirit was in the first berth, and we were docked with our starboard (right) side cabin against the pier. This places our porthole right at pier level, so if we're not careful, we could be putting on quite a show, particularly when it is dark out and we have a light on in the cabin. So we use the pillows to loosely cover the porthole. The second time, we were the only ship in port and docked in the first berth with the port side to the water and a view of the reef outside our porthole. Then, yesterday, the Pacific Princess was the only ship in port and we docked somewhere between berth one and berth two with the starboard side to the pier. It's common for people to ask which side of the ship they should book on, but on this itinerary it really doesn't matter. Most of the ports are tender ports, so the ship is at anchor and actually turns a bit throughout the day. In Raiatea it clearly changes from cruise to cruise. And in Papeete, I think the Pacific Princess is always docked aft first, so it's really just a matter of which view you want from your cabin: pier and mountains or water and the Moorea ferry. 

Okay, back to today. No, wait...one more comment about yesterday. When I was writing the blog post last night, it seemed to me that I was leaving out what we did during the afternoon, but I couldn't, for the life of me, remember what it was (it's sad when the brain starts to go...I mean, we're talking about just a few hours later, but the half bottle of Veuve Cliquot champagne I'd had to drink might have played a bit of a role, too). Anyway, we did get back off the ship in the afternoon because there were a few events and activities taking place right in the visitors information center on the pier:  a pareo tying demonstration and a lei stringing demonstration, and we walked back off the ship to see those. And then we explored the stores right on the maritime wharf a bit more, and we went into one on the second level called a papeterie. I'm not sure what a papeterie is, but they did have a lot of stationery and pens and the such (Suzan, I thought of Greg immediately), but, for some reason, they also had NAIL POLISH and nail polish remover (which isn't called that, of course, it's called 'dissolvant' or something like that, but, again, four years of French here, so I didn't even need the telltale bottle shape nor the fact that it was located right next to the nail polish to tell me what's what). And I was so happy, thrilled, really, to see it because I have not, in all our searching, seen nail polish anywhere except in one pharmacie, which, as I've told you, seems to add an extra 0 to the end of every price, and then those were the mini bottles of nail polish that we'd pay $.99 or maybe $1.99 for at home, and they were over US$ 10 which was just ridiculous, and they had maybe five colors. So, to find nail polish was a huge deal, because I'd come here with two sets of Sally Hansen nail strips which aren't going to last until January 23rd. The papeterie also had mascara and blush and eyeliner pencils and other things I probably won't need, but, oh, to see all that variety in one place made my heart beat faster. Shopping in French Polynesia is very, very different. 

I guess that explains why, on every flight from Los Angeles to Papeete, the locals bring back multiple coffin-sized containers of things they buy in the US, and gladly pay Air Tahiti Nui's baggage fees and French Polynesian duties to get items into the country, because these items are simply not available for purchase down here. I mean we've crossed Papeete and Uturoa looking for contact lens solutions for rigid gas permeable contact lenses and they simply do not exist. In fact, we've seen only one bottle of solution for soft contact lenses in one store one time. I simply don't know what people do. But, at this point, I think the only issue I'm going to have is with the denture tablets I use to clean my nightguard and retainer, and, ever since I've known we are extending our stay on the Pacific Princess, I've been breaking the (exactly) 60 tablets I brought from home in half to make them last. Do you see how I suffer to live the dream?  ;-)

After we'd returned to the ship, G gave me a haircut because the ship was docked and steady and, I must say, he's gotten pretty good at that over our cruising winters. I did check with the Lotus Spa and it was $59 for a haircut and $79 for a hair color and, honestly, my hair is about two to three inches long and extremely curly so it's pretty forgiving when it comes to haircuts. And by that I mean it won't look good regardless of how much I pay for a haircut. :-( And I brought one package of hair color with me from home, so I'm good on that for awhile longer. I have been looking at hair color in Champion Supermarché, where they (surprisingly) have some, but most of the colors are predictably darker than my Dark Blonde (Golden) locks. There is one package of something lighter, but the photo on the box looks a little reddish and the color is in French so I need to translate that before I'm willing to buy it. But I'll cross that bridge later.  One issue 'du jour, s'il vous plait', and yesterday it was needing a haircut. 

Okay, back to sunlight streaming in our porthole this morning. We got up and dressed and got our coffees from Tyler in the Panorama Bar (inside the buffet) and went out to Deck 11 forward because...well, because it's what we do on these cruises. We joined the FODs (fans of Douglas), listening to him tell us about the US ships that arrived in Bora Bora exactly two months and 10 days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor because the deep water port on Bora Bora is even larger than the deep water port in Papeete, and, over the next several years the Americans built the first airstrip in French Polynesia, and gun stations on the mountainsides for defense and the road around the island and participated in extracurricular activities that left nearly 200 Polynesian-American babies behind. But Bora Bora (and none of French Polynesia) saw any warfare in WWII (but did in WWI, but I'm saving that topic for another post). The Pacific Princess carefully made its way through Teavanui Pass and into the Bora Bora lagoon and at that point G and I made our way down to the Club Restaurant for breakfast. 

After breakfast, we returned to the cabin for some hand washing and laundry gathering activities and to trade out some items from our minibar. We are being overrun with minibar things; we may skip getting soda stickers next cruise, simply to catch up. And, another aside, the 15 cabins on Deck 3 are nearly half empty this cruise, so, no, Princess does not always sail full.  Mostly, yes, but not always. It's very quiet down here; we love it!  I was smart enough to check the charge on my iPhone 4S and it was nearly 0% because I'd forgotten to shut it down after I'd last used it, so I got that charged and we packed some towels in ziploc bags to get ready for our afternoon activity. 

A few weeks before we'd left home, we finally began talking about excursions in French Polynesia and there were two we knew we had to do:  Bora Bora Patrick (done!) and jet ski around the island of Bora Bora. I did not have a contact for the latter, and so turned to Trip Advisor. Moana Adventure Tours was on the top of the list, and so I contacted them, as we'd done with Patrick, with a list of the dates we'd be in Bora Bora, and they replied back with the only one (!) date that they had availability for an afternoon tour (so book early!!). The price was crazy expensive...US$ 289 for the first jet ski, but I am way too independent for that, and it was US$250 for the second jet ski. $539 for a two hour excursion, and it didn't even involve a helicopter or a float plane. Like I said...crazy. 

We thought about it for a few days. Coincidentally, at the exact same time we were thinking about it, a 28-year old sliding patio door in our basement went bad. That's a story, too, involving the two of us trying to lift one panel to adjust the rollers and G telling me to pull harder on the handle and I said if I did it would break the handle and he said to just do it and I did and it did and then we had a sliding glass door that wouldn't slide and no handle to pull it with anyway which sent us over to Home Depot. Actually, first it had us calling Renewal by Andersen (they had replaced our windows and we love them) to get a quote for French doors, and after we recovered from that (north of $6000!) we went to Home Depot and found a very nice sliding glass door that we would be happy with for far less. Installation was $600 and that's where we hit a predictable snag. G thought we could install it ourselves and I thought we couldn't, so, of course, one morning at 8am, Home Depot left a sliding glass door on our driveway and G told me that, if we just got it down to the back yard, he had a handyman lined up that would install it for $500. So before I'd even had my morning coffee, we were getting this sliding glass door down a hill to the backyard and it involved an eintsy-tinesy bit of moaning (on my part) and a clearly unacceptable lack of patience (on G's part) and all I remember is him saying "1-2-3-LIFT," and we'd move it six inches at a time but the problem was that by the time he got to "LIFT" I was still getting a handhold on the side of this door where there was none, so we reached a new agreement where he would say "Ready?" before he said "1-2-3", and that worked a bit better but to say that moving that door to where it needed to be was anything less than grueling would be an understatement. 

So...there we were with this door sitting in the backyard and a broken sliding glass door a few feet away and G next said that he thought we could take out the old door, so, of course, we did, neatly and carefully enough to give it away on Craig's List for a guy to use in his greenhouse. And once the old door was out, we had this huge opening and no choice but to start to install the new one, and every step of the way it was just as it always is in these circumstances..."Well, I think we can do just this next bit" and we do but there's always a next bit and a next bit and before you know it, the door is installed and framed in and we're calling the handyman to tell him he doesn't need to fit us in his schedule. But here's where Bora Bora jet skis come in (you knew I'd get there eventually)...all the time we were doing these various steps, G kept saying, "With the money we're saving, we'll do the jet skis in Bora Bora!" to keep me pacified and motivated. And when we were finished, I texted a photo of the installed door to all my friends saying "This is what jet skis in Bora Bora look like!"

Actually, THIS is what jet skis in Bora Bora look like!

Today was payback time. :-) !!!!!! We were supposed to meet on the pier at 1pm, and so I had the morning to start this GPS-worthy post, and G went off to do...something (I'm not sure what he did, to be honest), but he returned to the ship with what is truly the most amazing video of outrigger canoes surfing in the wake of a tender. I wish so much that I could upload it to YouTube while we are still down here in French Polynesia but I just don't think we've seen Undernet anywhere with enough oomph to allow that to happen. But I'll keep searching...

At 1pm we were on the pier meeting Phil from Moana Adventure Tours for a shuttle ride to their office, very close to Bloody Mary's restaurant. We were joined by fellow passengers Heather and Bill and a honeymoon couple who are staying at the Bora Bora Pearl Resort. Our tour guide was Jo (short for Johan), and, after a brief safety briefing we were off and running. 

Now, I am not a fearful person; in fact; I'm fairly adventurous. I ride a Harley (and by that I mean I drive a Harley), I have my advanced scuba diver certification and have done night dives and cave dives. I'm a bit of a tomboy. But I was Scared. To. Death. for the first 20 minutes on my jet ski, and was last in our line of five jet skis, which was a good thing, because my 37000 "Holy Sh$&'s!!!" were lost on the wind. I was holding on to that jet ski with everything I had. Jo had told me that if it started to get rocky to speed up, and that ran counter to every ounce of preservation in my body. I did fine if the water was flat which, luckily in that gorgeous blue lagoon it mostly was, but every so often I'd have to cross a wake or a slightly wavy place and I was shaking in my Teva sandals. Then, just when I hit some bumps and was bouncing up and down in the seat, my iPhone 4S, which was hanging around my wrist on its lanyard, flew off and landed in the lagoon. Who else has that kind of luck??  I had to circle around, get close to it (luckily it was bobbing on the water in that bright orange life jacket) and lean far, far over on the jet ski without falling off of it to reach the phone. And by then the rest of the group was a dot on the horizon, but, luckily, they chose that moment to pull over by a motu for a break, so I was able to catch up. 

I will never get enough of that water color!

After that, I got more confident and it all got easier and much more fun. We jet skied close to the beautiful over water bungalows at the resorts on the motus, and over mile after mile of iridescent blue water (G claims we were reaching speeds of 35mph; I was too scared to look).  Every so often we'd see a sting ray or eagle ray swim under us, and the water was so clear we could see the coral heads 25 feet below. We finally made a stop on a motu where we disembarked and were treated to Jo climbing up a coconut palm and collecting three coconuts. He showed us how to strip the outer husk from them and crack them open, and we enjoyed the fresh coconut water they held and the coconut meat. 

Look really closely and you'll see the Pacific Princess in the distance

We left the motu and dropped off the honeymoon couple at the Bora Bora Pearl Resort and continued on to Teavanui Pass, where we went to within feet of the huge waves crashing on the reef. They are absolutely thunderous and very high when seen from water level. And, finally, we skied past the anchored Pacific Princess where we waved to the waiters we knew on the terrace behind the buffet. By then we'd been jet skiing for two hours, and I was hitting my stride, doing circles and racing so fast I was actually catching some air. If I did this again, I'd be so much more comfortable. 

We were driven back to the Vaitape tender pier, and we returned to the Pacific Princess right away. Of course, our first task was to wash and rinse and hang up to dry everything we'd worn today. We were so lucky; between our Tilley hats and rash guards and frequent SPF 50 applications, we managed to get not a bit of sunburn, because two hours on the water in that sun could have been brutal. 

The paddlers were still there when we returned to the ship after jet skiing

A late day view with the sun on the mountain peaks as seen from the Pacific Princess 

We were hungry for dinner, then almost immediately afterward very tired. We did spend a few minutes listening to duo Great Escape in the Pacific Lounge, but then returned to our cabin. The tropical deck party is tonight; and the weather will be perfect, but our active day has taken a toll, and we are tucked into bed. We have plans (not nearly as active) for tomorrow in Bora Bora and need our rest.