AdventuresAboardAvatar: Bora Bora!!

On August 31, we made the 20 mile daysail across from Tahaa to the legendary Bora Bora. The tourists on this island are 80% honeymooners. It is quite dramatic and has what the guide book calls “pinch me I am dreaming” blue colored water. It is all true.

As we got closer and closer to the island, the dramatic peaks continually change shape. We could see the boats and two cruise ships anchored inside the lagoon as we approached. When ever we enter a new pass, Mike usually goes up to the bow and makes sure I am on the right course and can see the channel markers. Most importantly we avoid the reef! That night the WindStar, which is a cruise ship with sails, was lit up like Christmas.

We tied up to a mooring buoy at the Maikai Yacht Club. We met up with our old friends Jaye and Irwin on Windsome, who we had last seen in Mexico a few years before. We had a great reunion, as they had been waiting for us to arrive. Before making it to French Polynesia, they sailed to Hawaii for a couple of years, from Mexico, but we finally reconnected. We followed them in the channel around to the East side of the island, since they knew the way. This is the windward side and we watched a windsurfer zoom past us enjoying the fresh air.

We anchored about half way down the island near the St. Regis Resort, which is out on one of the motus. They had several boats to take their guests to the main island or pick them up from the airport. And the huts were sprawled out all over the lagoon. Also a very fast looking F40 catamaran was at their docks available for charter. On a later day, we saw it flying through the anchorage with reefed sails on a very windy day. As a matter of fact it was windy on most of the days we were there. We saw windsurfers and kite-boarders too, zooming around the anchorages.

We took a dingy tour of the several motus we anchored behind. There are several slots between them that go out to the reef where the water washes over and into the lagoon. Many of the smaller motus were privately owned by locals. Some houses looked a bit blown away and abandoned, while others were quite nice with several fishing boats in slings right on their front yard, I mean beach. Others just had basic small shacks with boats, but who cares, they live in Bora Bora!!

From out on the motu looking back at the island, the giant rock monolith continually changed shape as our angle to it did. It is incredible how one rock can look so different from so many sides. There was another area labeled in the book as a “lagoonararium”, and we figured it must be the fenced in area. We dingied over near it and found out that they keep and feed sharks in there! All the birds were just waiting for any little fish to surface close enough to be eaten. It was a really spectacular view of Avatar as we returned from that ride.

One morning I noticed a barge motor in over by the motus. It had several guys on it and was empty other than them. I watched carefully through the binoculars as they all jumped in the water with shovels. This is when I realized

“this is a Polynesian dredging machine!” These 6 guys shoveled bleached white sand off the bottom of the lagoon until it was piled higher and deeper. At the end of the day they drove back to where ever they were moving the sand to. We thought it was quite humorous!! Bet their backs did not think so, but they were all young guys.

We finally got a break in the wind and dingied over to the spot Jaye had told us where the Manta Rays often are seen. We saw all the dive boats, but we did not want to spend the money to go on a professional dive trip. So we dingied to the spot, tied up to a buoy and jumped in with our snorkel gear. There was a large coral growth area with a green channel marker on it that we decided we would swim around and back to the boat. Most of the rest of the water was quite deep and looked like the blue abyss. We did see some cute fishes and bright lipped clams and even a huge Moray eel who ducked his head into a hole in the reef and a big cloud of sand came out. Somebody must have been eaten for lunch! This guy was definitely cruising the reef for food, so we staid well above him and just watched. We had just about given up on seeing the mantas when they suddenly appeared out of the deep blue abyss. There were 4 of them. The first one we saw seemed to be chasing a cloud of plankton along the deep part of the reef. The water was not crystal clear, but that is because the plankton make it murky and that is what manta rays eat. They use their big “horns” on the front of their head to funnel the water into their filter where they sift out the plankton and let the rest of the water come out their gills on the bottom side. They had interesting markings too. The bottom of them was all white and the tops mostly black with white markings. Each one had very distinct markings and could be easily identified, like a whale is with their tails. A bit later a momma and two babies (we think) came cruising past us and just kept swimming on. Mom was the biggest of them all (so maybe it was dad?), but that one's back had very little white on it. The two youngsters looked almost identical, but the middle space between the markings was larger on one than the other. The first one kept swimming close to us. Not sure if he was checking us out or just keeping us at bay while the others swam on. All three of us were stoked beyond belief. It was so amazing to watch them swim so gracefully through the water. A definite spiritual experience! For me, it was a dream come true, as I had wanted to swim with Mantas since I first read about them in Skin Diver magazine when I was a kid. We did learn that these are reef mantas, with white mouths and they live in the lagoon inside the reef. They get to be up to 14 feet wide. There is another species that are called Oceanic Mantas and they swim out in the open ocean, have black mouths and can be as big as 24 feet across!! Impressive animals!!

We spent the next week down in the South East corner of the lagoon where the view of the island was just spectacular! The monolith is much more square from here and the water is that dreamy “pinch me I am dreaming blue”. There is no channel around the south end of the island, so we will go back around the North end to get back to the Maikai on the West side.