Finally! On the 2023 Volendam "Bali Cha'i, Tales of the South Pacific." cruise, we awoke at five in the morning to catch a glimpse of the cloud covered eerie Bora Bora that the captain swung by as a consolation for not docking. At last, we made it to the insanely gorgeous Bora Bora!
After visiting the Roman Catholic church with Tahitian disciples, we headed out for a lagoon snorkeling excursion on an island tour.
We saw a rainbow of tropical fish in a coral garden, including: one stingray, two giant mantas, three parrotfish, four butterflyfish, five clownfish, six damselfish, seven surgeonfish, eight angelfish, nine needlefish, ten reef fish, eleven eagle rays, twelve black tip reef sharks and a rooster in a breadfruit tree!
Our two guides blessed us with humor calling our fishing boat the Titanic and telling shark jokes as we nervously swam with the blacktip reef sharks (on a shore excursion, one congregant was bit and had a dozen stiches!). They told us what its like to live on a small island on ten thousand where they know everyone and have difficulty dating They shared with a smile that before we're married we have to ask our grandpa, "Hey, are we related?"
They told us that their island Vavau as it is known among locals
was misnamed Bora Bora from the island chief telling people to clap when Captain Cook arrived, saying Pora, Pora, (Clap, Clap). But maybe the joke was on us, as Pora Pora is customarily translated as "first born" as it was the first of the volcanic archipelago or the legends describing this as the first island to rise when supreme god Taaroa, fished it out of the waters after the mythical creation of Havai'i, now known as Raiatea which we visited a two and a half years ago aboard the Volendam.
