Bora Bora, French Polynesia - February 12

welcome to Bora Bora!

Partly cloudy, 28 degrees

We are anchored again in the harbor which makes going in on our own before the tour a bit more complicated. It didn’t look like there was a lot to wander around and see within walking distance of the port, so we decided to just spend an easy morning on the boat.

“Aquasafari” was the title of today’s tour. A couple of days ago we were on an

not a bad view for room service lunch!

‘off-road safari’…they seem to like the term ‘safari’ here in French Polynesia…none of these are the safari I think of when I think of safari. Nevertheless, the description is more of what’s appealing about today’s activity.

“special dive helmet…descend to a depth of up to 10 feet…walk along the ocean floor, surrounded by fish and coral…freely maneuver in total security just a few feet below the

post dive

surface, head remains dry inside helmet …connected to boat by an air hose…breathe just as on land.” SOLD!! Sounded super cool, was super cool! It was pretty much as the description described, except for NOTHING!

We traveled to the dive site by small boat from the pier – 15 minutes. There were 9 of us from the ship with a driver, guide and when we got to the site an additional person who mostly took our photos, but also pointed some things out. I was only a bit nervous. Everything was super easy; the hardest part was keeping in one spot as there was a bit of a current. One by one we descended a ladder into the water to about our shoulders, then the helmet was

the water is so blue!

placed on our heads and we are led to the ocean floor by our guide. We were told to expect our ears to feel the pressure and mine sure did – they were quite sore until I finally popped them, but it took a while. I thought it was odd, as we were only down 10 feet, in fact – every so often, we knelt and even that change in depth caused my ears to feel it.

We saw a TON of fish, a ray, coral, and clams. I actually expected to see more, but what I did see was great. I can’t help feel a bit torn about all of

back to the pier

the wildlife we are seeing. I love seeing it, but know it’s attracted by humans with food and these animals likely wouldn’t be so concentrated if it wasn’t for human intervention.

Animals aside, it was pretty cool to be able to breath underwater, especially with my head staying dry! The helmet wasn’t sealed to my shoulders, but air was constantly being pumped in so I could breath. When I had to pop my ears, I was able to plug my nose simply by putting my hand up into my helmet.

We were under the water for about 30 minutes. That was enough. I

wasn’t dying to get out, but by the time we were leaving I was done. There was a photographer down with us the entire time. Typically, we don’t buy the promo photos, but today was different. We had NO photos of our own, so we got these. We left our email with the photographer and she will send the photos to us – we’re still waiting.

We found out today that American Samoa has closed its ports to all

cruise ships due to the corona virus. That means we have 4 (possibly 5) sea days ahead of us. We were headed into a scheduled 2 days before arriving at American Samoa and Samoa (still can’t quite figure the difference), followed by one more sea day before arriving at Fiji. Sooooo, that’s at least 4 sea days ahead of us. Not the worse problem in the world,

desserts at the French restaurant

but in the last 19 days, 10 have been sea days! I am the last person to say ‘no’ to a sea day, but come on?? Before we left home, I expected to miss some ports for weather or political reasons, but this I didn’t quite expect. As we’ve been watching the news and especially what’s happening with cruises in other parts of the world, I’m not at all surprised. In fact, I expect to have more of the rest of the cruise altered due to the virus.

Then…if the ship staff didn’t have enough to deal with, we had a 20-minute blackout. We didn’t actually even know, but our loud talking neighbors broadcasted it for everyone outside. We had 30 minutes of

apple tart

emergency power that we didn’t need all of and then all was fine.

Dinner tonight was at the ship’s French ‘speciality’ restaurant. This is our third visit, and I don’t understand the big deal. I think the fact that they require reservations increases their appeal. Variety is nice, I suppose, but the main dining room has a different menu each night. Sure, some items have repeated since we’ve boarded over a month ago, but nothing repeats more frequently than once a week or every 10 days. In fact, Chris has consommé pretty much every night and those don’t repeat for at least 7 days! The main dining room allows you to eat whenever you want and with as many or as little people as you want, which we see as an advantage. Plus, there are some servers in the main dining room we see night after night and who remember our preferences – nice.

We didn’t really see much of the island today. That’s the downside of only being here for a day, we did a cool activity, but didn’t see any of the cultural aspects of the island, not did we see any of the overwater bungalows – we did see some of these a couple of days ago in Moorea….next time.