can we help
+44(0)1983 296060
+1 757-788-8872
tell me moreJoin a rally

Menu

Serendipity - Farewell French Polynesia




 

Tuesday 15th May: South Pacific Ocean 14 44.70S  155 59.5W  Still on passage to Suwarrow

Today’s Blog by David(Time zone UTC -10.00;  BST-11.00)

Simone  and Rachel are on watch, the sun is shining, the see is blue (and about as flat as ever am ocean is likely to be) and the Frog is drawing us down wind at about 7.5 knots. Peace continues to reign this morning!

I said that Raiatea and Ta’Aa are quite a special pair of islands – so diverse!  Bora Bora is similar or more developed  - there are hotels everywhere – but not your Benidorm style white blocks of flats. It is all single story (to survive cyclones) and even the Four Seasons, Intercontinental etc. Hotels  use the traditional  straw hut style of hotel building  (see yesterday’s piccy).

There are villages, with shops and restaurants too – any number of Dive Schools.  The international Moorings yacht charter operation  has a huge base centred in Raiatea (a note for that bucket list).

We dived in Tahiti,  Ta’Aa and Bora Bora – Bob slipped in another dive when we weren’t watching on Huahine.  These were consistent but each slightly different. What is most striking is the coral.  Each atoll is covered with coral.  There is a steep ocean wall that drops vertically from 10 -1000 metres; the top 50 or so metres is coral.  Inside the lagoons, there are similar walls of coral 20+metres high.  It would be spectacularly colourful and abundant with fish were it not for the  fact  that the vast, vast majority of the coral round here is dead. This is attributed by different people to different causes. The coral on the external reefs may have been trashed by the passage of cyclones (but cyclones have always been a feature of the weather ); the water temperature (at 26-29 degrees C) may be too hot for the coral, a particular spiny starfish stands accused by some of eating it – who knows. Either way though it is spectacularly dead – save in a few places inside lagoons – sheltered from the weather.

The sea  life is interesting but not as abundant as we had expected; that is with the exception of sharks which seem to be everywhere (c’est la vie!) (Black Tipped, White Tipped, Remora, Grey – and on Bora Bora  3 or 4 metre long Lemon Sharks which swim straight at you until they divert at the last moment – apparently completely unconcerned about our presence).  However, we have seen Sting,  Eagle and, Manta Rays; turtles, octopus, and any number of different types of fish.

After so long in French Polynesia there was always a danger of going native.  People are already commenting on the growing similarity between:

Your Correspondent, David image003       A Traditional French Polynesian Tiki image004

The flowers are quite slimming, don’t you think?

 


Previous | Next