Legendary Bora Bora. Just its name conjures pictures of palm trees and the bluest of blue waters. BUT…..there is no letter B in the Tahitian language! So how did the island get its name? The original European explorers heard the islanders tell them its name – Pora Pora – but instead of hearing the P, they heard B – so it became Bora Bora to the world, as the name stuck. Its original name means “firstborn,” as of all the Polynesian islands, Bora Bora was the first to emerge from the ocean.
For the second time on Bora Bora, we rented the last scooter available at Avis. It was just $45 for five hours, so we circled the island counter-clockwise. We stopped frequently, sometimes every few hundred feet, as we saw scenes to photograph. The water colors kept changing! As we noted when we posted a few photos on Instagram, the ever-changing ocean colors are “other-worldly.” We won’t try to write a caption for each picture. The photos are more or less chronological as we circled the island, and they tell a story of the South Pacific waters. Alongside the pretty blue ocean, there are two photos of “typical” houses that we saw, all rather small, compact, and one-story, built for tropical storms. We also photographed Mount Pahia several times as we made our way around the single ring road. It was sometimes enveloped in clouds, sometimes not. And it looked different from various vantage points!
There are several photos of over-the-water bungalows belonging to various hotels. Their nightly rate is around $1,000. They first appeared on the nearby French Polynesian island of Moorea (tomorrow’s destination) in the 1960s and have since become an iconic symbol of an island paradise. Speaking of storms, due to their location, they are usually the first buildings to be damaged by a storm. But while they are there, they look great, don’t they?
Now we will let gorgeous Bora Bora finish this blog and speak for itself through the photos.
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