What do you get when you cross a marine with a cannibal? Bora Bora.

What do you get when you cross a marine with a cannibal?
Quick reaction: you don’t want to find out, Run!
Actual outcome: a real estate developer.

Yesterday (Oct 21 as I wrote this), our boat tour guide, Aro, proud to be 100% native of Bora Bora, told us that in 1942 2,000 cannibals lived on the island, and 6,000 marines. So now it is 12,000 people, 30% of mixed origin. (Reminds me of Trier/Salsburg area where Werbos family came from, but Roman Republic legionnaires weren’t exactly marines. I think.) The row of modernized tikis which you see to the left is one of many modern hotels; I think the right is Matira beach.

He pointed at another island "There they grow pineapples." To another: "There they grow breadfruit." (Or was it something else? ) "Here we grow resorts. All those little beaches and motus (small islands) which used to be public, where all the people would come, now they are all private, verboten, mainly hotels. There is still one public motu left, however, and there we will have lunch."

It was a great lunch, much better than any lunch on the cruise ship in two months. Simple and natural but tasty and healthy. Best was a dish standard in the area; one of the other tourists said "that’s the usual poisson cru, their version of ceviche." Fresh raw tuna marinated with special sauce and just the right amount of live-feeling salad type ingredients, which we spooned onto a leaf "plate" they put together on site. (They made a little show of how to do it, along with the usual coconut show. ) There was also an interesting desert no one explained, two varieties of coconut bread, and maybe 6 more boring choices for tourists who prefer boring. (I did try a little grilled local fish, but just a little, skipped chicken and beef.)

In fact, the whole motu itself seemed simple and natural, rustic, with buildings and bathroom huts which seemed all natural (except for discrete, clean plumbing), rather different from real rustic bathrooms I have seen anywhere. Our guide admitted that this motu was not really public, public only for us, as the tour company rented the use of it at times.

As he circumnavigated the entire island, he told us that there are just three population centers -- the harbor, the airport and his village, a small part of a large calm lagoon which looked circular to us from the boat. In all directions, the shoreline was covered with a kind of standard issue thatched hut, typically renting for $2000 per night (many with transparent floors to see the water). "That one is the Intercontinental, that is St. Regis, the top one.." I recognized all the names, but forget them now. "They choose this area because it is protected from cyclones by my tower (a rocky mountain)," but we also saw them all around the rest of the island -- EXCEPT for Matira Beach, a true public beach, the most exciting point for me in my one and only previous visit to Bora Bora two weeks ago.

The safe lagoon was also dense with coral reefs. The snorkeling was far better than anything I have ever experienced elsewhere, except for St. John’s in the Caribbean, where I remembered even more color and biodiversity. That fits with what other people tell me on the cruise ship who have been all around the world.

At the motu, even without a snorkel mask, I could walk into shallow clear lagoon water from the motu with my water shoes, go reasonably far out and still see lots of fish and coral very clearly. Of course I had to look closely to watch where I was stepping, and not touch the coral. Feeling and watching little currents and waves, as I stopped and as I perturbed things, was part of the exercise. (I saw no coral or even fish at Matira beach; all soft white sand, but stronger currents. Like a big baby toy in its way.)

The boat trip yesterday started with a drive beyond the coral reef surrounding Bora Bora, to the Pacific, snorkeling with sharks. All I saw were moderate sized blackfin sharks, cousins to the bigger ones I had seen two weeks ago snorkeling around Mo’orea,  my first really competent snorkeling. (I had real problems on three snorkeling days before that, due to sea sickness. Some combination of ginger candy, sea bands and experience got rid of the main problem, but I still never lasted as long as I did at St. John’s years ago.

Luda stayed out just a little longer than me in the Pacific snorkel. She says she also saw a much bigger shark, a lemon shark, far below us.

After the Pacific snorkel, the boat took us to a standard tourist delight, a shallow place with a little coral where sting rays and small blackfin sharks abound. Sting rays approach people. Guides show how they can handle them, and sometimes feed them, as sharks hope for scraps. We have photos of Luda encircled by sharks, and holding up a sting ray the safe way. But as we left, I feel sad about missing a really great photo image: three pure white birds (terns? tropic birds) suddenly emerging over my head, with green, red and blue light shining out from them reflecting the green water and some blue and red nearby. I did get some white/green bird photos after that, but nothing like the original.

The third snorkel, near a hotel, was to a swarm of about 50 eagle rays deep below us. Luda and half the boat went out, but this time I didn’t. Through a patch of clear water by the boat, I could see them as clearly as I could have through a snorkel mask. Beyond that patch, reflected sunlight modified the image, but it was interesting to see the same creatures from different angles.

After that, we went past Matira beach to the fourth and final snorkel, the classic coral reef snorkel I mentioned already. Many types of coral and fish. Currents strong enough to be interesting, and make me glad I used fins, but not seriously distracting. Reef large enough to let me avoid the human overcrowding in some places. Then to lunch.

After lunch, the boat returned to the harbour and it started to rain. Luda asked me to stand in the long line to get into a tender boat back to our ship, the Maasdam. Did a bit of space politics by email/smartphone as I stood there, finished just in time to board the tender.

We had a similar all-day boat trip in Bora Bora two weeks before, led by Alfonso. Aro and Alfonso were both energetic and entertaining folks, outgoing and engaging. (And no, I have yet to do web checks to follow up what they said.) There were a couple of times when Aro worried he might have been just a bit too engaging with females, and said “Oh don’t worry, ladies, I am gay..” That didn't relax me, after I read the story about the gay (rae rae) on Nuku Hiva who served as a guide to a German tourist, and ate him, circa 2010. But that story was about a guy full of unique inner tensions, with a militant Catholic father versus old mahu (lgtb) traditions on the islands, great cultivation of sexual energy in general (one version of “mana"), and huge frustrations of that energy in his specific case.

Many more pictures are coming. This is the best I took that day.