Goodbye Bora Bora ! Thanks for everything !

Saturday July 25th 2015

It's hard to leave you Bora Bora !

Matthew is really getting the hang of wake boarding now !

It is rumoured to be the most beautiful island in the world and, from my still limited experience. I have to agree. The thing that is so special in Bora Bora has got to be the water, it is exceptionally beautiful! No where else have we ever been surrounded by so many shades of blue. My eyes have been filled with images and colours which I hope to carry with me everyday, for the rest of my life.

The view from our cockpit !

The view from my bathroom in the morning !

We feel so grateful that we were on a boat to experience Bora Bora, as we have been able to circumnavigate the island (as best we can with all the reefs surrounding it) and experience all of the best anchorages and best views. Sometimes we anchored off exotic looking resorts (one of which being the Exclusive St Regis resort, featured in the Movie ‘Couples’Retreat’)...right in front of the little over-the-water cabana’s. When we park ourselves in between these and the imposing and now famous rock formations, at first I felt a bit badly, about perhaps blocking the views from their $800/night rooms, but then, I look at it as a service...as Amelie  provides a nice backdrop to their sun set pictures!  Well, except when I have laundry hanging on the lines !)

Its easy to see Amelie's bottom in the clear waters !

It is difficult for all of us to leave French Polynesia. Personally, I had very few expectations about it before we arrived not having done much reading about it, all I had was some general, preconceived ideas of what the various places offered visitors. Now, as we get ready to pull anchor one last time, we leave with our hearts filled to the brim with love for these very special islands, its people, culture and beauty perhaps with a little luck, we will be able to return some day.

A colourful feeding frenzy

Before

After

We weren’t sure exactly when our departure date was going to be, having to be out of FP by the end of the month. The wind forecast is forcing us to leave this week (on the 28, 29th or 30th). I guess that is the part of this lifestyle, we have to go when the wind calls us, we have to say goodbye to a few cherished friends whom we  hope to catch up with later on perhaps in Tonga or even New Zealand, but if not, just like with all of our other traveling friends we have said goodbye to in the last year, we will cherish the good times we have shared and live with the certainty that our paths will cross again, some time in the future.

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Meghan On Amelie (Written in August 2015)

This past month, we were lucky enough to have our three great friends, Olivia, Alexis and Sonia, stay on board with us for 2 weeks!  With them, we explored the rest of the Society Islands and I'm pretty sure they had a great time because I know that we sure had a blast!  I think I would have to say that those two weeks were my favourite days this summer vacation. Moorea: Stingray City and More Dancing

We had heard the last time we were in Moorea that there was a sandy, shallow spot called Stingray City where you could feed wild stingrays!  Unfortunately, there was a great big resort right in front of it and starting at about nine in the morning, big boats full of tourists come to feed the stingrays throughout the day and of course, being a bigger group with more sardines, the stingrays would all go to them.  Fortunately, we are very used to this kind of thing so we know ways around it.  The simplest solution is: go at 8:00 am instead of 9:00.

I guess I was so excited about the thought of feeding rays that I never really clicked that these were the kinds of rays that could sting people.  When we got there, it was my mom that was the brave one.  The moment she got in, because we were the first ones that day and the only ones there, at least six stingrays surrounded her instantly, not afraid of her at all (most probably because they get fed everyday by people)!  Thankfully, since I was the second one in, some of them stayed with my mom but no less than three also came to me.  Your heart really starts to beat when they start to shimmy up you so it is "easier" for you to put the sardine in their mouth!  The number one phrase I used in the first ten minutes when my adrenaline rush would not stop was most probably, "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh" in a Miss Piggy voice!   But after those first ten minutes, you realize that as long as you don't grab them by the tail or try to strangle them, they aren't going to sting you.  For me, the coolest part was when I saw the mouth (which looked really funny and unique) open and then when they ate the sardine out of my hand, they sucked it up like a vacuum!  Yes, sometimes, they would accidentally bite your finger too but it didn't hurt and it just made the whole experience even more memorable.  So yes, even though it was a bit nerve racking at first for everyone, I think we all had an awesome time! Our guests also got to see some real Polynesian dancing.  In fact, the show was at the same hotel and the dancers were the same dancers as we saw at the Pacific Puddle Jump party (see my last blog to hear about the party)!  At the end, our friends were invited to dance too and they did actually pretty good! Huahine (pronounced hoo-ah-hee-nee)

I thought Ua Pou (wa-poo) in the Marquesas was the most unusual name of a place I had ever been to but maybe now Ua Pou and Huahine are tied!

We were very happy when we got to show our guests a less common and populated anchorage and village.  We took a nice walk through this tiny village and then on the way back, we walked along the rocks and dead coral since it was low tide.

Also, the two girls and I made a message in a bottle that we threw overboard on our way to the next island, Bora Bora.  We wrote the message in both English and French (which was a good summer French class) and we wrote: who we were, where we were from, where we threw the bottle and how the people could get in contact with us! 

I'm not sure if any of you heard the story of what happened last time I made a message in a bottle.  It was when I was nine years old and we were chartering a boat in the British Virgin Islands (northern Caribbean).  A few months after we returned home, we received an email from a french family with triplet girls living in Boston who found my bottle while they were on vacation in Puerto Rico!  They sent us a map of exactly where they found it and they took a picture of it stuck in the sand on the beach where they found it!  I didn't really realize until I was a bit older how amazingly lucky that was that they even found it so of course I am not expecting that will happen to the bottle we threw on our crossing to Bora Bora but who knows what will happen?!

Bora Bora: Bye Bye French Polynesia

Bora Bora the last place we visited in French Polynesia for both our guests and us.  It was definitely my favourite place in the Society Islands.

We got to anchor in 10 ft of water (or less) a few times in Bora Bora which was a real experience for our guests and even a rare treat for us.  Just about 50 metres off of our stern, we could just jump in the water every morning and swim with the manta rays that were right there!  Manta rays are very different from stingrays.  For one, they can't sting you (stingrays are the only types of rays with stingers).  Also, manta rays are a lot bigger than any other ray.  The biggest one we saw had about a 10 foot wing span but they can even get bigger than that! Fortunately, our guests got to spend their last day in paradise at anchor in the beautiful shallow water.  Olivia, Sonia and Alexis, if you are reading this, we want you to know that you really brought us joy and we had an awesome, awesome time with you girls! After they left, we still stayed around Bora Bora for a couple more weeks and we explored the island just a little bit more!

After re-stocked up on food and finding a good weather window, we left the island of Bora Bora and the beauty of French Polynesia.  We had been in French Polynesia for the past three months (about a month in each archipelago) and it was far better than my expectations (if you want to know more about our French Polynesian experience, read our blogs we wrote in the past three months). Since we are not European (since French Polynesia is governed by France, anybody with European passports is allowed to stay for as long as they want), we only had a three month policy and the wind was telling us to leave anyways so we are now on a miniature island called Niue but you will have to wait for a few weeks to find out about Niue and the Cook Islands.Thanks for tuning once more into "Meghan On Amelie"! 

Meg says that it is like paddling in the sky