Around the World Again

Vaitape, Bora Bora – January 24, 2018

My travel agency offers some tours that are similar to Holland America’s but are often a few dollars less expensive and/or are in smaller groups. Today I took my first one – it was a 2 ½ hour “Island Discovery”. Although it was only about a dollar cheaper than HAL’s, we had a number of empty seats on the truck.

We met in the Ocean Bar at 8:30 and it was arranged that we would all ride in the same tender. When we arrived ashore there were two vehicles awaiting our group. These vehicles are often called “Le Truck”. They have the cab of a truck but the back has been replaced with seats (that look like the molded plastic ones from school desks but with cushions added).

We followed the coastline around the island and saw some of the most beautiful areas. We stopped at a place where they make pareos and were shown how they tie-dyed them and then used linoleum stencils (cut from old flooring) to sun bleach designs like fish, shells, turtles, etc. into them. I bought myself a pareo and a blue flowered top. They also had some fresh, local fruits available for sampling.

As we passed one of the areas close to the shore we pulled over and the holes in the sand were pointed out. These are the homes of the tupa crabs. The inside of the truck had been decorated with hibiscus and we were told to take them down and throw them out the window. Immediately the crabs came out of the holes and grabbed the hibiscus and pulled them back in to feast on them. We saw a few crabs get into a squabble over possession of the flowers.

After all the crabs had returned underground with their goodies we drove to a beautiful white sand beach. It is a public beach called Matira Point. We had a few minutes to walk on the sand and wade in the water if we wanted. Two of our travel agency hosts are geocachers (if that is the correct term) and they were very excited they found one of the capsules (right word?) at Matira Point.

As we wound our way around the island we had our last stop at the famous “Bloody Mary’s”. I had lunch there on my previous visit to Bora Bora. Today we had a voucher for a free drink and I chose the vanilla rum punch which was delicious.

I looked around the craft tables before returning to the ship.

Ate lunch at the Dive-In again and then alternated swimming and sunning for about two hours. It was really hot in the sun so I was in the pool for 75 minutes.

All six of us were present for 5pm trivia though that didn’t really help us very much as we only had 9 correct and the winning team had 16 out of 17.

1)What is the largest fresh water lake in the world?

2)What color is absinthe?

3) What flavor is Cointreau?

4)Where is the Sea of Tranquility?

5)On what date was the Euro introduced? (full date – really????)

Listened to Jamm before dinner (he was doing requests tonight). For dinner I had a shrimp cocktail, chilled pineapple with coconut rum and Adobo pork ribs. Liz had requested key lime pie for dessert a few nights ago and tonight we had it. Delicious!

Went to the show with Cyndi and Ed. It was an illusionist, Nathan Coe Marsh. No idea how he did any of his tricks.

When the show was over I went out on my deck to watch the sail-away from Bora Bora. It was a beautiful starry night.

Tomorrow is a sea day.

Around the island...