Being Brave in Bora Bora

Welcome to Paradise!

As we began our pacific crossing over to Australia and New Zealand for the second half of our contract, we had two stops in Bora Bora and Tahiti. Both of these destinations are islands in French Polynesia, in the Pacific ocean.

Bora Bora was truly stunning. For our first day myself and Caroline booked ourselves onto a snorkeling excursion, on which we would swim with Sharks and Rays. We booked via Trip Advisor so it seemed quite legit; however we thought the same with the Luau in Hawaii, and we all know how that one ended!

(If not, give this a read).

I have to admit I was waiting for someone to ask for a military ID as we boarded the boat, however I am happy to report it did not happen, and we seemed to had actually booked something correctly for once. When we got on the boat we were joined by about 6 other people, which made it feel like our own private boat as we all had our little corners to ourselves to enjoy the trip. On this excursion there were 3 different snorkeling stops:

1.Sharks

2.Rays

3.Coral reef

As we arrived at the first stop of the trip, we looked down into the water and it became apparent that the boat was now surrounded by sharks and a lot of them too. After convincing ouselves that we won’t be eaten, we jumped in the water and instantly we found ourselves swimming among two types of sharks: Lemon sharks and Black Tip sharks. I would like to say it was equally exciting and terrifying, but at this point terrifying was definitely taking the lead on this one. The sharks did keep at a safe distance and were clearly not bothered by us at all, which provided us with some much needed reassurance. What an experience. Onto stop two…

Next up was the ray stop. This is where we headed into shallower water, which resulted in the water going to an extremely satisfying turquoise colour. We began to see some huge silhouettes all around the boat. The rays had arrived…

We jumped off the boat, into the water and began to get closer to the rays. Our tour guide had bought some dead fish along to entice them a little closer to us. What a brilliant idea. That was until I found myself hit in the head with a dead fish whilst swimming and suddenly subsequently swamped by multiple rays in an extremely intimidating manner. I have to admit I did make a tiny addition to the amount of liquid in the pacific ocean as a result. It all got a bit too much. I’m sorry.

The rays were super cool, and came close enough to touch them. Apart from the dead fish incident, everything seemed to be going very well until a 3 metre long shark suddenly came out of nowhere and began weaving in and out of us all, triggering screams and mild panic within the group. It was completely harmless to us and clearly only here because of the dead fish we were feeding to the rays. I did have a quick moment of realization that if this particular shark happens to be on the hunt for a tall, extremely long limbed individual with a fresh hint of dead fish – I would 100% be the chosen one. Luck seemed to be on my side, and the shark moved on with thankfully no visible signs of increase in interest.

On the way to the final stop of the trip, we passed the well known ‘Bora Bora bungalows’. These are one of the main selling points and attractions to the island, extremely popular with couples on their Honeymoon.  It genuinely felt like we were looking at generic computer wallpaper. Quite a strange feeling.

 Before actually arriving at the next stop, the crew on board the boat did advise us that if we were to see any Moray eels whilst in the water at the coral reef, we were to swim with our hands under our arm pits, as anything worm like such as fingers, they will immediately be attracted to. Just a little bit worrying.

Then we arrived at the final snorkeling stop, the coral reef. Once in the water, we swam amongst hundreds of tropical fish. It was awesome. Very relaxing and satisfying until the moment about 4 moray eels appeared. They were about 2 meters long and were actively searching amongst the reef for their next victim. We all instantly put our hands under our armpits and collectively looked like a shoal of freshly amputated humans heading back to the safety on the boat. What an awesome experience.

Unfortunately, due to having no access to an underwater camera, I was unable to capture any photos or videos from the snorkeling trip. However, I thought it was extremely unreasonable and unfair for me to expect the people who read this, to not have an accurate visual representation of our experience.

You are welcome…

With the sharks.

With the rays.

With the eels.

Once the snorkeling trip was complete we headed back to shore and had some time to explore a little. When I say ‘explore’ I do actually mean: find some dogs and give them some very much needed attention…

Our trip to Bora Bora was complete. Now onto Tahiti…

I’m really proud to say that our visit to Tahiti was a day full of exploring the culture, history and sophistication of a few carefully selected local destinations*.

I am aware that I do have some international readers following this blog, so just in case there is any misunderstanding due to any language differences, I would like to clarify the following:

* ‘Carefully selected destinations’ are sometimes known as ‘bars’ and as a result of the overwhelming experience, we all got extremely thirsty and unfortunately had to have some (quite a few) drinks to re-hydrate.

I know what some of you will be thinking right now:

“This sounds suspiciously like something we would often refer to as a bar crawl”.

Absolutely not.

We didn’t crawl… we walked!

This post was written somewhere between French Polynesia and New Zealand.

Sam Wearing

Quite Tall, smells like dead fish

25, The Ocean

The World

The Universe