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ADIEU BORA BORA

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ADIEU BORA BORA
Bora Bora's crater, viewed from the south

Mai Kai Marina – April 26, 2015– On a mooring. 
-                    Note about moorings at the Mai Kai:  just grab one and don’t even try to anchor here!  It’s 30- meter deep with lots of coral at the bottom.  Nasty gusts constantly rush down the mountain, tossing boats around.  Just yesterday, some guy dropped anchor not far from us; an hour later, he was dragging into the mooring field, tried to raise his anchor (by hand) and snagged a mooring chain… big mess!
-                    Note about your dinghy:  There has been a rash of dinghy/motor theft, not only in Bora but also Huahine and Raiatea.  AsI said before, LIFT it, LOCK it, or LOSE it!
-                    Happy Hour at the Mai Kai: 1700-1800 -

Well, this is it.  Tomorrow morning at 0100 we’re slipping our mooring lines and making off to Suwarrow (AKA “Suvarof”) –

Moorings at the Mai-Kai Marina - After our cruise to Motu Piti Aau (SE of the atoll)   

CLEARING OUT - Clearing out of French Polynesia is much easier here in Bora Bora than it would have been in Papeete.  The normal clearing procedure in Papeete starts 3 days before your intended departure, as follows:  you e-mail a notice of departure to the Port Captain (Ken Vernaudon),who emails it to Customs, who clear the document and email it to immigration, who notifies you that you are now able to pickup your clearance.  Then, you go to the Customs office to get your document, hand-carry it to the immigration office who stamps (or not) your passports, and you MUST leave Papeete before midnight THAT day, not to touch land anywhere in French Polynesia, lest you would be considered as a “drogue-trafiqueur” and be subject to fines and boat seizure.  IF you want detaxed “export” fuel (about 1cent/liter less than detaxed fuel), you must do it AFTER immigration gives you your clearance, but BEFORE leaving Papeete before midnight that night…  good luck!

What did we do?  Got our regular detaxed fuel document from customs, cleared out of Papeete with the Port Captain, destination “Iles sous le vent” (you must clear out with the Port Captain when you travel 50 miles from Tahiti and beyond) – Then, we fueled up in Raiatea and made for Bora Bora (with a detour by Maupiti) where we have been waiting for a weather window.  This morning, Sunday, we went to the “Gendarmerie” and cleared out (immigration, port and customs, all rolled into ONE gendarme) and have 24 hours to leave.  None of that “Before Midnight” nonsense. (The gendarmerie is open 7 days a week.)

Going around Bora's East end - Green track


But we had a few days to explore the SE end of Bora Bora’s lagoon, a bit further down than we did last time.  

Nasty S-turn, but well marked - Just don't go to sleep!


As before, I found the “S” turns in the lagoon a bit unnerving, but we had great visibility and navigation was no problem.

Off to a little snorkeling
Motu Piti Aau - 16°31.95S - 151°42.595W -   We anchored in 8 meters of blue water, sand, right off the 2-meter sand shelf.  Many boats DO anchor on the sand shelf, all the way to the S end of the motu, in front of the little pension.  We try to stay further from land to avoid potential mosquitoes and “nonos.”

Stunning coral flowers in gin-clear water... and nothing else!
We were anxious to re-visit what had enthralled us 20 years ago, the “Coral Garden” at the southern point of Motu Piti Aau.  But what a disappointment!  Where were the 2-feet wide giant clams?  The multitude of fish?  The variegated coral formations?  All there is left is a desert of rocky formations, once live coral, with a few blooming coral flowers in iridescent pastels.  Stunning water clarity and beautiful coral blooms… BUT: hardly any fish remain; the bottom is littered with thousands upon thousands of giant clam shells, many smaller than 6”, a graveyard not only for the “Pahuas”but for the entire reef life.  Nothing made me sadder in this entire trip.  (Note: when you snorkel this area, watch out for the current, it’s very strong at that end of the lagoon.)

Impressive water clarity... and a harvested 6"pahua...sad: pahuas used to reach 24" here... no more!

Not far, local guides were conducting a shark feeding operation, a dozen tourists strung on a line, sharks circling freely, and I couldn’t stop wondering when these shark feeding operations would be outlawed.  This shark-feeding practice is a total nonsense to me.

Crystal clear view of... a whole lot of nothing left
To try and feel better, we checked out the snorkeling at Motu Piti Uu, on the land side of the island.  The fish population was plentiful, though the specimen were mostly juveniles.

Auger
Some cone....

In despair, I decided to check out the sand shelf and found a few sand creatures: marlinspikes, augers, miters, cones, dartfish, and even a blenny… or was that a goby?  I’m still confused between them, especially when I can’t see the dorsal fin.  And, of course, lots of stingrays and eagle rays.

And a tiny little goby... or blenny, nestled in a tuft of stray algae

As we motored back up towards the town of Vaitape and the Mai Kai mooring field, we took a last look at the hundreds of luxury bungalows strung over the turquoise waters.  Bora Bora is no longer the “Pearl of the Pacific.”  It’s beauty has been sacrificed to the $$ god, its motus thrashed, its underwater treasures pillaged.

Cones are common here
Big marlinspikes are easy to find: just look for their trails and dig at the head of the trail... there they are!

Pearl of the Pacific?  We just got back from our provisioning trip.  It’s been raining and we’ve had to slog though mud in the streets, just like we did in Paraguay or Brazil or Guatemala, and we couldn’t help comment that, in spite of its thousand-dollar-a-night hotel rooms and the luxury ship Paul Gaugin anchored just a few yards from us and disgorging its white-dress –clad misses, Bora Bora reminds us of a third-world village, far from the classy, responsible, ecologic tourist spot it pretends to be.

The impressive volcano is still there; the lagoon is still blue in appearance; the sea life is depressingly absent.



And so we’re off to Suwarrow, hoping to catch some fish during our 3-day passage, because we have not caught a single fish in all our stay in the Society Islands.

Off to Suwarrow…

Until then…


dominomarie

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