Wow, way behind. Lots of stuff to catch up on.
At the last update we were escaping the fire in Baie Avea. So we'll pick it up there with a picture of the fire. This hill is quite steep and the fire is burning down the hill which seemed unlikely to me, but that's what it did. It blew over the ridge from the windward side of the island and then burned down the hill. It doesn't look too impressive here, and it probably only burned 10 acres in total, but it was enough to put a lot of ash and burning embers into the air and drive all the boats out of the anchorage.
So we moved to Fare, the big town on Huahine. It's still very small, but Huahine is a small island. We rented a car and toured the island, driving every road on the island in about three hours. The highlight of the tour was the sacred blue eyed eels. These are fairly large, probably 4' - 6' in length and 6" - 8" in diameter. They were living in a partially concrete lined creek of fresh water. And they do have blue eyes! Fay fed them some canned mackerel and at the same time some local girls showed up and were feeding them pieces of fish. The eels are supposed to be "sacred", but the girls seemed to have fun scooping them up (hard to really grab an eel) and tossing them in the air. I don't know if the eels like it or not, but it doesn't seem like the thing do with a "sacred" animal.
After a few days in Huahine we moved on to Bora Bora. Bora Bora is an even smaller island with a dramatic mountain and large lagoon. We toured all of the leeward side of the lagoon in our dinghy and saw a number of hotels that had been shuttered and closed. All of French Polynesia (and much of the world) has suffered economically the last few years, but Bora Bora has gotten a 1-2-3 punch that has hit it very hard. First the general economic situation has led to reduced spending on vacations. Then the reefs were impacted by an invasion of the crown of thorns, a type of starfish with a voracious appetite for coral. Then cyclone Oli hit the island in February 2010, destroying most of the remaining coral on the outside reef and a number of buildings.
Our primary reason for coming to Bora Bora was to meet friends that were flying down from California which gave us an excuse to get off the boat and stay in a very nice hotel on shore. So last Monday - Saturday we did our part to help the local economy and enjoyed a wonderful hotel, great food and time with our friends. Not content to just stare
at the white sand and crystal clear turquoise water, we also enjoyed some water sports. First was paddle boarding. This is a growing activity that someone will probably turn into a competitive sport. Basically the idea is to stand on a big wide surfboard and paddle around. It takes some work to balance on the board while stroking the water with a very long paddle. Fay and I both did this on two different days and became reasonably proficient. Still undecided is whether we'll take this up as a new form of exercise in the 54 degree waters of Richardson's Bay!
Next we did some snorkeling. The hotel had created a sort of man made lagoon. It was quite large with several different areas and arms that snaked through the grounds. It was fed by a 4' drainage pipe that connected to the ocean and brought a strong flow of sea water into the lagoon. Then at the other end it flowed out into the main lagoon. My expectations were pretty low, but it turned out to have a number of excellent fish, like the orangespine unicornfish pictured above.
The hotel has also created a number of structures to encourage the growth of coral and there was definitely new coral growth and a new eco-system being created in the man made lagoon.
We also did some diving. The first dive was inside the lagoon to see the manta rays. The coral here was in good shape. I'm guessing that the location so far inside the lagoon had protected it from the pounding of cyclone Oli. The visibility was fair, not outstanding, but the manta rays were fantastic. The first photo with our friend and his camera gives you some feel for their size.
From wing tip to wing tip I think they were 8' - 10' and our fish book says they can be as large as 22'! They are impressively large in the water when they swim by. The area where we were diving is known as a "cleaning station" where the rays swim in and a small wrasse cleans any growth off their skin. It's a classic symbiotic relationship where the ray gets cleaned so they swim with less drag and the wrasse gets fed. The rays use their large mouth to capture the water and strain out the plankton, they are no threat to humans. None the less as they swam towards me, mouth wide open, I couldn't help but wonder. But then they would gracefully turn away, sort of like watching a 747 practice landings. Just watching the manta's swim around made the first dive one to remember.
Next we went to the outer reef, just outside the pass and dove a little deeper.
But even at 70' the coral was devastated, a gray wasteland of broken coral. But there were a surprising number of fish and the water clarity was excellent. Just after we finished our initial decent a lemon shark came by to check us out, complete with a remora attached to his left side. The Lemon sharks actually have a slight yellow tint to their skin and are also identifiable by their very small eyes. This one did a few slow laps then swam away, apparently we weren't very interesting which was fine with us!
The rest of the dive was mostly small reef fish, and an eel. Then as we were nearing the end of the dive we found a collection of Moorish Idols which got right in our faces. Normally these fish stay our of reach and ignore us, but these were right in our masks which led us to conclude that somebody had been feeding them. Bathy's Dive center, a big chain of dive shops in French Polynesia, is known to feed the fish to give their customers a better experience, a practice we don't agree with. We're pretty sure that these fish have been trained to think that divers mean it's feeding time.
It's been raining on and off for most of the last two days. New Morning is getting a nice fresh water rinse and we're taking stock of what we need to do over the next couple of weeks before putting New Morning on the hard for cyclone season. We expect to be here a couple more days then leave for Tahaa before heading to Raitea where we'll haul out on the 24th.
