02.01.2014Bora Bora – Hello New Year!

The main island of Bora Bora is surrounded by a lagoon, a barrier reef and several small islands, the so called motu. The lagoon shades vary from turquoise to deep blue and in the center of the main island the two peaks of an extinct volcano, Mount Pahia and Mount Otemanu, rise with the highest point at 727 meters.

The airport of Bora Bora is located on one of the small motu and as soon as you get out of the plane you are in the middle of paradise:

Boat shuttles transport passengers from the airport to the main island:

The route to the main island passes by the motus, some of the other hotels on-water bungalows and parts of the main island:

We were picked up by Annette, our host at Vaitape and brought to our home for the next days. It was a nice little bungalow right at the ocean with a beautiful view:

We had our private patio over the water, where we had breakfast and dinner the next days:

As it was the last day of 2013 we relaxed a little in the afternoon and prepared for our New Years Eve party at the Yacht Club of Bora Bora.

With an 11 hour time difference to Germany, it was a funny feeling to know, that everybody at home had already celebrated New Years Eve and was in the new Year by now…

The evening started with an incredible variety of food. On the outside they were barbecuing different kinds of meats and fish and on the inside there was a buffet of French Polynesian specialties, side dishes and salads. Especially to Tini’s delight there was also a big variety of desserts. The food choice was just mouthwatering! Oh, and there was an open bar with free drinks the entire evening…

The hours just flew by while we were eating, drinking, chatting, dancing and of course missing family and friends on such a special evening. We discovered that the two of us had never celebrated New Years Eve without other friends and family before.
We noticed we were getting close to midnight when people started queuing at the bar for champagne… And before long we stood outside on the pier, counted down and welcomed the new year. They even had some fireworks going off:

Cheers! And a Happy New 2014!

First things we did in 2014: Kissing, drinking and dancing 🙂

Next day we slept in very looong and had a very late breakfast on our shady patio:

That first day of the new year was over fairly quickly:

The next few days we spent with snorkeling, kayaking and relaxing:

By the way this is the French Polynesian money, called CFP (“Colonies Françaises du Pacifique”) or just “franc”. The notes are pretty big, both in geometrical dimensions and value, and look nice with their colorful and exotic paintings. The overall design hasn’t changed since 1969: One side shows landscapes or historical figures of New Caledonia, while the other side of the banknotes shows landscapes or historical figures of French Polynesia. The notes feel like fake-money, almost as if somebody had printed them with his home printer…

On one of the days we rented two bikes and circuited the island. Tini got a pink bike, that perfectly matched her bikini and nail polish 🙂

We used our GPS tracker to record the bike ride around the island. Here you can see an interactive Google map of our 32 km outing (if you wait for it to load you can zoom in on all parts of the trek; be careful when using the mouse wheel while the mouse cursor is located on the map!):

On the way we passed by picture perfect lagoons:

Drove along the coastal street seamed by palm trees:

We even discovered the Bora Bora Police station:

And of course there were some flowers:

Most of the time it was very nice to bike along the sea because a light breeze made the hot temperatures tolerable. But we both were happy when we arrived at a nice beach at Matira Point in the south of the island. The water was very clear but too warm to cool us down, even for Tini…

After some swimming, relaxing and napping under a shady palm tree, we continued our bike ride back home.

Here is probably one of our best time laps videos of our last sunset on Bora Bora. We enjoyed this sun set while eating, drinking and chatting with our hosts Annette and Marc on the patio. It is quite amazing to see the clouds build up and the moon appear on the sky:

On the next day our time on Bora Bora was already over and we took the plane back to Tahiti. When we parted we got a shell necklace as a farewell gift from Annette and Marc.
Here we were waiting for the boat shuttle to the airport:

And finally our last flight with Air Tahiti, before continuing on to New Zealand:

Au revoir, Tahiti!