Bora Bora Day 2

The bugs are in Bora Bora!  At breakfast this morning, everything was covered or under a mosquito net.  Some man next to us freaked out over a gnat on his fruit plate.  Actually, they are not gnats but tinier no-seeums!    I really don’t care what any of them do if they don’t bite.  As I write this sitting in our air conditioned room, one is crawling across the screen.  Croissants of all shapes this morning were available this morning, including coconut ones and apple filled ones.  They make them small so you can eat many different flavors.

After breakfast we sat on our deck until the breeze died, thinking this garden suite was not the greatest during the day.  We took a very short walk to the beach and we the only people there, hermit crabs, those crabs that live in the rocks and a few pretty birds were our only company.

After the beach we packed up for our 4WD Safari tour of the main island.  One takes water, suntan lotion, bug spray, sunglasses and then it’s off to the shuttle from Pearl Beach to the mainland where we were met by Etienne in a 4WD.  He was not our tour guide, but our shuttle to the tour vehicle to meet Moana our guide.  He drove slowly along the coast road, pointing out all sorts of history and interesting facts.  It was probably a 20 to 30 minute ride to reach our tour guide and his vehicle.    We rode straight up onto the mountain, stopped at various points to look out at the motu, the airport runway and again were given much information.  Basically, the people of Bora Bora are grateful to the American GI’s during the war who built the coast road (the only paved road) around the island, built the airport and many other things to be helpful  to the people of Bora Bora.  We learned we are in Polynesia, NOT French Polynesia.  No one here is fond of the French for taking over and making things go their way. 

There are 8 cannons on the island; we were able to go off road up to the two that protected the airport.  We were very surprised when Moana (our guide) pointed out the inscription on the cannon.  There were made in 1907 at Bethlehem Steel!!  Those same cannons had served in WWI.  For those who don’t know, I lived as a child not far from there, and many folks were Beth Steel employees, including my Uncle Jack who went to work there after the war.  After our tour, we were brought back to the Pearl boat shuttle by our guide and in 5 minutes were zipped across to our motu where the resort is located.

After a muddy off the road ride (I got splattered a bit), it felt nice to jump into our spa for a brief soak – to get rid of the bug spray and suntan lotion before I actually took a shower!  My bug spray works – one of the guys on our tour was being eaten alive.  He and his new bride are staying at the Intercontinental and he said the mosquitos are really bad at their Over the Water Bungalow.   No bugs here at our resort, but there were today on the main island and they would light on me and take off right after landing!  The Deet spray works!  I never used a bug spray that really worked before – perhaps it will be good on Eastern Shore mosquitos and flies as well! 
Tahitian people are the warmest, friendliest people you will ever meet.  On the ride back to our boat dock, Jim’s hat blew off in the wind and went flying up the road.  It was his hat from Nice, so it was too bad.  We got on the boat, and just before we left, someone came up and handed the hat to the staff and he gave it to Jim!  Imagine.  Whoever was following us got the hat and followed our open truck to our boat dock!   We had no opportunity to thank anyone, just were amazed at the whole thing!!

It is very humid here, but the breeze from the lagoon is fantastic.  Our garden suite is great early in the morning and in the evening.  The rest of the time, the beach is a better place…or I suppose one could go to the fresh water swimming pool.  Not being a fan of pools, it makes no sense to me to go there when the beach is a few feet from the real lagoon.  Of course, if one would be squeamish about crabs and wild life….guess the pool is for them.