Not Today, and not Tomorrow Either

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Woke around 6:30. The sky was heavy and grey – this is bad news, today was supposed to be our helicopter flight over Bora Bora and one of the neighbouring islands. Lonely Planet describes the view from the helicopter as so beautiful it will bring tears to your eyes. About 15 years ago, Florence sent me a link to a picture of this view. I’d heard of Bora Bora but never knew it looked quite so incredible. 15 Years later and we’re finally here. We’ve been lucky with the weather so far on this leg of the trip but here, in Bora Bora, our luck has run out. This island seems to have a micro-climate of its own; the day before we came here we enjoyed a sunny day for our day out on the sea round Tahaa. Bora Bora, only 10 miles away, had a day of rain and wind. I went to the concierge desk early to get the expected bad news, the helicopter company was on the phone while I was there – no flights today! There’s a chance for tomorrow though.

We had plenty of time for a leisurely breakfast, making the most of the fruit, pastries and espresso machine. As we ate, the weather got slowly worse. The rain poured down, we could hardly see the fish in the lagoon because of the wind and rain on the water. We did notice a fish nursery, one large fish brought about 20 little ones over to the restaurant area, presumably to show them where the best food is. When you throw some bread in the water for them, the fish all start moving well before it hits the water, we assumed this is because they’re used to watching for insects from under the surface.

We made a dash for our room and re-planned our day’s activities, what to do if it rained and what to do if and when it cleared. I phoned home to catch up on the news from London – sounded like the weather was better there – for once.

The morning passed with a bit of reading and some research for the next leg of our travels.

It’s soon lunchtime. We wandered over to the bar and shared a sandwich and a couple of juices. A large group had just arrived, apparently straight from their international flight – they’re all wearing long trousers which looks surprisingly unusual.

At 2:00pm, we’d booked a couple of eco-activities for an hour. Florence was planting baby coral in the coral nursery and I was spending an hour in the Turtle hospital. Pieces of coral that have broken off from reefs but are still alive are collected and mounted in small plastic cups then initially planted within the lagoon. They hopefully grow slowly into a larger piece of coral that can be moved to more open water elsewhere around the site. It’s quite a new project and they’re learning all the time how to improve survival and growth rates.

I start my time helping to clean the shells of a few of the turtles with a toothbrush. In the ocean, this would be done by small fish while the turtles sleep but here it’s done by hand. I was told that it’s quite a boring part of the job so they came up with the idea of charging tourists to do it for them; I think this is quite near the truth for them but it fascinating to be this close to animals we’ve only seen in the distance before. The turtles have suffered a variety of injuries and illnesses; one has lost a flipper after getting caught in fishing net and she is re-learning to swim, one was shot with a spear gun which pierced her shell and neck and while she was injured, she was attacked by sharks who took a number of bites out of her tail area. Even quite a small turtle, about 50 cm long, weighs 30kg or more, and they’re strong so it takes some effort to hold them still while we scrub. Each day, one of the turtles spends a few hours in a small enclosure to get used to swimming again, the highlight of my time is the opportunity to swim with them. The enclosure is about 60m long, with pipes to the ocean at one end so fish can come and go and the water is kept fresh. The turtle clearly relished its relative freedom, speeding up and down far faster than me, the only way to see her was to stay still and wait for her to speed past. While waiting for her to appear I was shown a moray eel hiding among the rocks at the bottom.

Back to the room for a shower. We have an hour to spare until our next activity – a long massage. Florence has chosen a salt body scrub followed by a massage, I selected an 80 minute Polynesian massage. This involves continuous movement by the masseur invoking the feeling of waves. The massage room was over the water so we could hear the waves outside, there was some gentle background ukelele music too. It was very relaxing – yes we can be even more relaxed.

The hotel had taken measures against the weather, the outside bar and restaurant were closed and as much as possible has been moved away from the beach. It was cocktail hour but no sunset to accompany it tonight. We called in at the concierge desk – no helicopter flights tomorrow either; we’ll just have to come back and do it.