Di and Cam

What a fantastic place!

We arrived in Tahiti late on Tuesday 12th, and after dropping our bags into our hotel in Papeete, went for a walk down by the harbour and ate pizza and pineapple crepes at 'Le Roulottes', the caravans down at the waterfront.

Set the alarm for an early start on Wednesday so that we had time to check out the local market place before our flight to Bora Bora at 11.30am. We caught 'Le Truck' to the airport - essentially a flat-bed ute with a wooden cab and bench seats built onto the back.

The 50-minute flight to Bora Bora was beautiful with a great view of some of the Society Islands (not unlike the flight to Great Barrrier Island, Bron!)

The small airport at Bora Bora is on a 'motu', island, and affords a fantastic first sight of the main island.

After a short boat shuttle to the main island we were taken to our hotel (Novotel) in another 'Le Truck'. The hotel is situated on a spectacular beach with a view out to several small motu and a dive shop right next door!

We walked to the local market to buy some groceries to snack on while we drank the bottles of wine that we'd taken over with us. Incidentally, we had promised to take photos when we drank the bottle of bubbly that Cam's parents bought him for his birthday and, conveniently, the F&P boys had bought Cam a tripod for the camera which attaches to the top of a bottle (hence the mirror photo)!

We spent Thursday and Friday morning diving at several different dive sites outside the lagoon. The diving was spectacular with 25-30m visibility and a huge array of tropical fish, reef sharks, a mantra ray and a huge turtle.

On Thursday afternoon we rented bikes and cycled the 32km around the island. It was very hot, but we were glad that we'd made the effort as we got to see the small villages on the opposite side of the island from the main resort beaches.

On Friday afternoon we were lazy and relaxed on loungers and swam in the lagoon until the tips of our fingers were wrinkly!

On our last day on the island we had a huge breakfast and climbed up to a lookout point for a view of the main township Vaitape, and the motu and coral reef surrounding the lagoon.

We also had a tour of one of the largest pearl farms in Bora Bora - French Polynesia is world-famous for it's black pearls. The pearls were very expensive as only around 4% of the pearls produced are of gem quality which are used to make high-end jewellery.

We spent the afternoon swimming and snorkelling and saw tons of tiny tropical fish, several of which attempted to swim up Cam's boardshorts!

Our flights back to Papeete, and through to Los Angeles and Vancouver were a long haul but everything ran smoothly and we arrived safe and sound in Vancouver several days ago now. We will spend Christmas here in Vancouver at Di's Mum's house and then drive up to Kelowna (and the lake district) and on through the Rocky Mountains to Calgary (brrr!).

Will keep you posted in a week or so with some photos of the constrasting climate and weather conditions here compared to the Tahiti sunshine.

Di and Cam ;-)