Raratonga, Cook Islands
Trip Start
Jan 14, 2006
1
13
44
Trip End
Ongoing
Where I stayed
Hotel Monte Carlo
Raratonga,
Cook Islands
Friday, June 9, 2006
We left Bora-Bora on the 4th June after sending nearly 2 months in French Polynesia. After leaving Huahine (by far the best island in the Society Islands) we headed for Raiatea where we moored the boat in the middle of the main town of Uturoa. It was great to be able to step off the boat and be in a supermarket in 2 minutes for a change!
It rained all day on the 22nd of May, but I had a great birthday on the dock. We found a great brassiere where we had lunch and then headed back to the boat to cook up a home-made birthday cake with fresh bananas and pineapple! Definitely a birthday I'll not forget in a hurry. We also found a great area to fly my Flexifoil kite that I had lugged from the UK, which was great - just enough wind for a bit of jumping, which the local kids loved
At the top of Bora-Bora
!After Raiatea we sailed within the same lagoon to the island of Tahaa, where the majority of Vanilla that is exported from French Polynesia is produced (fresh vanilla is amazing!!!). We only spent a few days around Tahaa, enough time to snorkel a reef pass that went from 4m down to 28m in an almost sheer drop and do some more teaching on sail handling for George and John.
We left Tahaa on the 28th May and sailed to Bora-Bora, the notoriously beautiful island for its steep mountain and blue lagoon. The island is breathtaking, but as you sail around it you can see nothing but hotels lining the coast and motus on the inside of the fringing reef. The hotels don't look so bad as there is a law on the island that prohibits building over 2 storeys, so there aren't any high rises but individual bungalows on the water. The problem is that there are so many hotels! Compared with Huahine, which is relatively untouched and very quiet, Bora-Bora is a bustling tourist location.
We anchored in a bay in the South West of the island, just off the Hotel Bora-Bora for a few days and manage to see the Tahitian dancing and fire dancing on their beach one evening
Bora Bora lagoon
. I don't know how much of it was the original dancing of the islands and how much had been put on for the tourists but it was a good show and worth seeing.Many of the corals in Bora-Bora were wiped out by the El Nino in 2001, so the snorkelling wasn't as good as it had been in the other islands. What really grabs you about Bora-Bora is its two peaks that rocket out of the lagoon to about 720m. You get the feeling when you look at it of "damn, I bet there's an amazing view from up there, lets climb it". So we did! The day before leaving the island we set off at 6.30 and walked to the base of the 2nd highest peak (the highest is only accessible by helicopter or vertical rock climbing) and climbed up through the forest on the faint trail and up rock faces where ropes had been laid to help. After 3 hours we were at the third highest peak on the island and the view was stunning. We could see Raiatea and Tahaa and almost all of Bora-Bora's lagoon - beautiful!
After descending back into the town we got back to Shambhala and took her onto the town quay for our last night's entertainment; Miss Bora-Bora contest! It was pretty full with locals and not many tourists (which was a surprise), but it was really slow! After each set of parading there were gaps of about 20 minutes where nothing happened so we stayed for a few hours and then took the boat back to the mooring at the Bora-Bora yacht club.
On our last morning on the island we took Shambhala over to the reef and took the dinghy to an area where about a dozen stingrays (each with a wingspan of at least 1m) were being fed in waist deep water. It was great to feed wild stingrays and hold them as they flapped up against you, searching for food. It was a great end to French Polynesia before our 3-4 day passage to Raratonga in the Cook Islands (no more French as the islands are a protectorate of NZ!).
Lots of love,
Tom xxx
Comments
Hiya!
heya hope its goin well! looks great and i cant wait to come out in the summer!!! sorry i havent posted till now, but i have only just nade a user. missing you loads. cya soon
Hello Stranger!!
Hello chap hope that all is well sorry to hear the bad news we are sending a hug over the internet(hope you feel it).... The pics are fantastic and wish that we were there we might have the heat here at the moment but we certainly do not have the scenery. Missing you buddy!!!!
Love Anna & Chris XX