On Wednesday, the day after we visited Lisbon we docked near Porto, Portugal. Porto is also known as Oporto as a result of linguistic mis-interpretation, as apparently when the Portuguese referred the city of Porto, they would precede it with an article “O”, and foreign traders therefore assumed the actually name of the city was Oporto.

A sure sign that we are in Porto, Portugal

The fame of Oporto, or at least the surrounding area, is that this is where the fortified wine known as Port is distributed from. According to our tour guide, there are 35 primary distributors of Port wine (all of whom are also producers of Port), and 35,000 total producers of Port. The large number of producers can be attributed to small mom and pop Port houses, many of whom sell their production to the larger Port distributors for blending into their larger productions. Until relatively recently, Port wine was shipping to London in casks and bottled there, but now Port is bottled primarily in Porto.

Before we docked in Porto, however, we spent the morning in the lounge of the Endeavour for a presentation by National Geographic photographer Massimo Bassano, a short and energetic Italian who has been a blast to travel with these last 10 days or so. Massimo shared some of his background and his storytelling approach to photography, as well as a video presentation on a long term stay with Curthusian monks in Italy. That was followed by photo critique by Massimo of both Krystyana’s and my photography. We both received kudos for our works and our sense of visual balance (i.e. “having an eye for composition”), as well as some suggestions for how to further improve our images. I hope to get some of our images up on this site when we have a faster (and cheaper) Internet connection.

After lunch we boarded a bus which took us around Porto and its environs, with the first stop being the Porto Cathedral, followed by a visit to the so-called Golden Church of St. Francis. The Church of St. Francis was built by the Franciscan monks after permission was granted in the 1300s from King John the First. We were told that John’s marriage to Phillipa of Lancaster resulted in the first official European agreement of cooperation between nations.

The inside of the St. Francis church is covered in gold, estimated to weigh be between 300 and 400 kilograms, which is a contradiction when considering that the Franciscans are an order of monks with a vow of poverty. However, it turns out that the funds for the ornate interior of the church came from wealthy patrons in the area around Porto in the form of donations in exchange for a promise that when such patrons and their families died, they would be buried in hallowed ground inside the church so that they would be “closer to heaven”.

The front of the St. Francis church in Porto, Portugal

During renovations in the 19th century, when laws in Portugal changed and started to forbid burials inside churches, the bones of those previously laid to rest within the floor of St. Francis were excavated and moved to the nearby consecrated grounds of the catacombs at St. Francis, where we were able to see the bones in person after we left the church.

Another thing that was interesting in the church was the rather graphic portrayal in the form of a three dimensional diorama of the beheading of Christian missionaries by Moors in Morocco and the crucifixion of others in Nagasaki, Japan. These missionaries were thus deemed martyred.
Once we had finished view the church and catacombs (sadly, we could not take photos without getting kicked out), we re-boarded the bus for our final destination, the House of Sandeman in Vila Nova de Gaia, across the Douro river from Porto (although arguably still considered part of Porto).

Sandeman’s extremely rare and old vintages are under lock and key

At Sandeman, we were given a tour of the facilities of Porto’s oldest Port house, started in 1790, and now one of the best known names in Port wine. Port wine is wine whose fermentation is stopped before all the sugars have been converted to alcohol, and then fortified with neutral wine spirits to maintain sweetness as well as boost the alcohol content of Port to about 20%. There are three basic types of Port: White, which is crisper and recommended as an aperitif; tawny, which is brownish red in color and aged in barrels before being bottled; and ruby, which has a dark red and burgundy color, and is used for bottle aged vintage Port. After our tour we were treated to a tasting of white and tawny ports. The kids tried them too but weren’t much enthralled. We ended up buying a vintage port “sampler” of three 375ml bottles, the oldest of which was from 1994 at the company store in the tasting area.

Linda and Krystyana are among those at the Port wine tasting at Sandeman in Porto

After a small bit of something sweet at the neighboring café, we hooked up with Massimo as well as new trip friends Gretchen (from Bermuda), and Natalie and Bruce (from Oahu, Hawaii) and went on a walking tour of Gaia to see the back streets and take pictures, finally ending up at Adega & Presuntaria Transmontana 2, a local restaurant recommended to us by several people.

As soon as we sat down we started being served a wide range of local Tapas, including a cold cut plate, local cheeses, olives, marinated pig’s ears, pickled white anchovies, and pork livers. We topped this off with the house red wine, a “vino tinto” of the Douro river area. While we were not particularly wild about the pig’s ears (too chewy), everything else was pretty good. We ended with a large dessert buffet and some more twilight photography before returning back to the Endeavour, sated in many ways.

Looks like the official daily expedition reports prepared by the staff of the ship we’re on, Lindblad’s National Geographic Endeavour, are slowly starting to trickle onto Lindblad’s web site.

You can look at them here. Make sure to click the date of the entry to read the complete report for that day. There are presently three days posted:

• May 3 - Fez, Morocco
• May 4 - Meknez, Morocco
• May 5 - Silves, Portugal

We’ll post our own entry here on The Traveling Richters for today’s nice visit to Porto, Portugal in the next couple of days as we have to get up very early in the morning to go see the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela tomorrow, and we’re losing an hour due to a time zone change going from Portugal to Spain (we will be six hours ahead of the U.S. East Coast).

Visiting Lisbon, Portugal

This morning, around 6:30am, as the sun rose, we sailed (actually motored) our way to dock in Lisbon, the capital of Portugal. Locally, the name of the city is Lisboa, pronounced “Leezh-boh-ah”.

The sun rises over Lisbon, Portugal

We left the ship, after breakfast of course, around 8:30am, boarded the ubiquitous tour buses we’ve so become accustomed to, and got a tour of Lisbon, stopping first at the Tower of Lisbon, then the Explorer’s Monument, and then the Cathedral of Geronimo (where famed explorer Vasco de Gama is buried). The latter two stops were interesting, but the cathedral was overcrowded with tourists.

After the cathedral tour, we stopped in at another Lisbon landmark, Pasteis de Belem, a pastry and coffee shop that has been around since 1837, and which specialized in little custard tarts you sprinkle with powdered sugar and cinnamon. Yum!

Linda, Bas, Diane, and Krystyana after a great cafe stop in Lisbon, Portugal

From there the bus took us out from the Belem area to the heart of Lisbon, and on to the top of the tallest hill of Lisbon, where we disembarked, and made our way down the hill for some sightseeing on foot. We stumbled over a rather derelict building built in 1922 which had phenomenal tile work and statuary, and then after about three quarters of an hour, stopped into a local restaurant with outdoor seating and dined on seafood (Bas had pizza, and Diane, who had joined us, had vegetarian food – a mushroom omelet.

We then took a taxi to visit one of our favorite trip things to see, namely the local aquarium. The one in Lisbon is called the Oceanarium, and is located some ways out of town, but it’s absolutely brilliant. It has one of the best designs for a giant ocean tank, where huge viewing spaces are available all the way around, and other exhibits are well integrated into the environment. The tank was well stocked with a variety of interesting species, including a mola-mola (ocean sunfish), over a half dozen species of sharks, and likewise a number of different species of rays – and all in good health.

Diane and Linda observe the plethora of wildlife in the giant tank at the Lisbon Oceanarium

We had to hustle, as we only had an hour available because we had dawdled a bit at lunch, but we managed to get through everything in that time, making back to the ship only two minutes later than intended (and it did not leave without us).

Pre-dinner we learned how to tie a turban – two different ways and also learned about Spanish wines. During dinner we were joined by a Lindblad staff cultural historian, Steve Blamires from Scotland, who specializes in the history of the British Isles, and had a fascinating discussion on a range of topics including the building of places like Stonehenge, the Celtic peoples and their mythology and languages, cultural elements which gain or lose significance with the passage of time, and the decline of the Roman civilization. While little of our discussion was about the Iberian peninsula where we currently are visiting, the topics we did discuss were incredibly interesting and mentally stimulating. Both kids ended up getting very engrossed as well (although Bas’ tiredness finally won out and he headed back to his room). Steve will continue on the next segment the Endeavour goes on after it drops us off in Portsmouth, which is a tour of the British Isles (which is where David Barnes will be rejoining the vessel as well).

Tomorrow’s (actually by the time this posts it will be today’s, locally speaking) plans include a photography lecture followed by a photo critique session and then the rest of the day in Oporto, Portugal, where we will visit the Sandeman port house (where they make port wine), among other places.

We had an early wake-up at 6:30am Portugal time, which was 5:30am Morocco time, had breakfast, and then attended a presentation by the on-board historian, David Barnes (who sadly had to leave today, Tuesday, for another Lindblad trip), about the Iberian peninsula and the clashes between Christianity and Islam as well as Judaism, or more accurately the followers of each of those three mono-deistic religions.

While much of the Iberian peninsula (which is where Spain and Portugal are now located) was Muslim for hundreds of years, a crusade formed in the Christian northwest of the peninsula under the flag of St. James – who was referred to as Santiago Matamores (“death to the Moors”), even though he had lived and died some 1400 years before the crusade was even initiated. The cathedral at Santiago de Compostela, which we will be visiting in a few days, are said to contain the remains of St. James, and it is the third most popular Christian pilgrimage site in the world, after Jerusalem and the Vatican in Rome.

Another fascinating point David brought up was the history of why one can see the famous Iberian ham shanks at the entrance to most bars and restaurants in Spain, as well as displays of wine. Apparently, after 1492, when the last Moorish stronghold, Granada, fell to the crusade led by Ferdinand and Isabella, Muslims and Jews were told they either had to convert to Christianity or leave the peninsula (or face near certain death for being infidels). The Spanish Inquisition then would assert that converts had falsely converted, and they would be tested by being forced to eat pork (which neither devout Jews nor Muslims would eat) and drink wine (which devout Muslims would not do). Hence the start of the tradition that evolved into tapas – namely that of offering a small plate of ham along with a cup of wine to those entering a bar or similar establishment to weed out false converts to Christianity.

Amazingly, while the effort to weed out “false believers” has faded, the practice of hanging smoked hams and showing wines has lived on and become a part of Spain’s culinary culture.

David’s presentation was fascinating, but short, due in part to a video promoting the partnership of Lindblad and the National Geographic as well as a scheduled presentation on photograph techniques with digital cameras following his presentation. We’ll miss David’s interesting insights and witty commentaries.

While we had been sleeping and watching lectures the ship had made its way to Portugal, and was nearing Portimao, our destination for the day.

We had an early lunch before boarding buses to visit the historical city of Silves (pronounced “Sihl-vihsh”), the site of a Moorish fortress and old cathedral. We were apparently supposed to visit the village of Alte too, but I suspect the whole upset in our cruise schedule contributed to that stop being skipped.

Silves was a village surrounding a rather steep hill upon which a fortress known as Xelb sat, overlooking the town and river below. Xelb, which is now referred to as Castelo Silves, started as Roman fortification that was then later absorbed into a Moorish structure. Directly beneath the fortress was a Catholic cathedral, locally referred to as See of Silves, built sometime in the latter half of the thirteenth century. Parts of the cathedral collapsed during the massive Lisbon earthquake of 1755. This earthquake, incidentally, had a huge range, destroying whole towns and buildings as far south as mid-Morocco, and was felt as far away as Jamaica (presumably as a result of a tsunami generated by the earthquake).

We walked up the hill to the fortress, which is going through renovation/restoration in the courtyard and garden area, so our visit was limited to walking the top of the rather extensive walls. Great views of the surrounding area, but we felt a bit saddened to see how much modern building sprawl there was everywhere, destroying, at least in our minds, the quaintness and atmosphere of antiquity that some parts of the village still showed as we walked uphill through it. Sadly though, many of those older homes appear to be in a state of disrepair, so we have fallen antiquity battling well kept modernity, and the former will likely lose out as people continue to disregard community history in exchange for great personal comfort.

Bas tries to move the sword of a statue in Silves, Portugal

After our circuit of the fortress walls we visited the cathedral and marveled at all the relics and burial markers – a number of people are buried under large marble slabs in the floor of the cathedral, as has been the tradition with older cathedrals for centuries. The newer part of the cathedral, rebuilt after 1755, was noticeably different in structure and tone from the older part that had withstood the great earthquake.

We made our way down to a café where we were treated to ice cream, and then returned to Portimao, stopping at the Mirador of St. Catherine, a small chapel dedicated to St. Catherine surrounded by fortifications. This structure had a great view of the nearby beaches and ocean, but again was surrounded by modern construction.

Lindblad's National Geographic Endeavour in port at Portimao, Portugal

Back on board the ship we dressed up for the Captain’s cocktail party, had a nice dinner, and collapsed to bed, still somewhat tired and sleep deprived, but did finally sleep pretty well.

We’re now in the final throes of getting ready for the next expedition of The Traveling Richters. We depart Bonaire on Friday, April 18th on a five week journey which will take us to Spain and then Morocco.

We start in Spain in Barcelona for several days (which including meeting up with our friend Martin and his father), then fly to Granada to see the Alhambra. We then rent a car, drive south to the mountains of Andalusia to stay at villas managed by Peter, an old friend from Bonaire. We’ll use his place as a base to visit Gibraltar for a day, and then when we leave, go via Ronda to then spend several days in Sevilla before flying south.

In Morocco we join up with a group as part of a Lindblad Expeditions tour which includes academic lectures on culture, history, and sociology, as well as hands on work with a National Geographic photographer.

After a few days in Marrakech and the Atlas mountains visiting with Berber tribes, we board the National Geographic Endeavour in Safi, visit Kenitra and some historical sites there, and then head up to spend three days learning about Portugal (including the making of port wine) and then visit the largest and most revered cathedral and third most visited Christian pilgrimage site at Santiago de Compostella.

Then, after a couple of days at sea, we will go to Mont St. Michel off the northern coast of France, then Sark in the Channel Islands the next day, before finally arriving in England. After a private tour with the curator of the HMS Victory, we spend three days in London. On the night of May 13th, we take part in a BonaireTalk mini-meet in Surrey - if you’re in the London area that night and want to join us, drop a note on BonaireTalk.

On May 15th, courtesy of the TGV high speed train and the Chunnel, we head to Paris to finish off our trip with non-stop tours of museums, galleries, and restaurants. Our friends Martin and Angela will join us over the weekend we’re there as well.

And, assuming flights all work out, we’ll be back home sometime on May 23rd!

The itinerary, by date, is here.

Day 7 of our Pacific Journey - Bora Bora
October 26, 2007

Our second full day aboard the Pacific Princess commenced with anchoring at Bora Bora, a larger atoll and island located some hundreds of miles northwest of Moorea - we sailed (if moving under propeller power can aptly be called sailing) about 15 hours to get here.

One of the geological differences between the atoll of Bora Bora and that of Moorea was that Bora Bora had many things in the atoll lagoon referred to as a “Motu”, or motus in plural. A motu is a small piece of land between the barrier reef of the atoll and the main island at the center of the atoll. The motu land is typically a volcanic substrate with some exposed coralline rock, and because of the volcanic soil, can be covered with lush vegetation, as was the case with the motus around the island of Bora Bora.

The Hawaiki Outrigger Race

After breakfast and the now-usual tour group congregation, we were ferried over by tender to Vituape, the nearest port. Port traffic was hopping, as was island traffic in general, and we only learned later that this was because today was the final day of the Hawaiki Outrigger Race, in which many contenders in outrigger canoes (a long canoe with a pontoon on one side and about a half dozen rowers) had been rowing diligently for the last three days between several islands. It was kind of like the Tour de France, but with outriggers and teams instead of bicycles and individual riders and held in the water instead of the lands and mountains of France. Okay, so maybe not quite like the Tour de France, but the local populace was pretty excited about the whole thing - so much so that people cut out early from work and clogged the sole around-the-island road.

The Island Circle Tour

Anyhow, we were guided to a set of three vehicles that at first glance looked like buses, but in fact were trucks onto which bus-like structure had been added on. This structure featured rows of office chairs bolted onto wood frames, and also had a woven reed roof. Very innovative, but not particularly comfortable. We ended up in bus 2, with Virge (”Vihr-zheh”) as our driver and tour guide Enua (”Enn-ooh-ah”). Enua was quite an interesting character - a blend of French arrogance, island charm, scolding parent, and I’m-Big-Mama-don’t-mess-with-me (and she was a big woman too - that helped support that attitude). I don’t believe I liked her much. And, while I felt she was talking down to us during a fair bit of the tour, there was never any one thing I could point to to support that feeling on my part. Linda’s take is that Enua exuded a not-so-subtle sense of having better things to do than shepherd a bunch of cruise cattle. I certainly enjoyed Sandy’s more down-to-earth tour guide style on Moorea. That’s for sure.

This was my first experience in a long time of being in a large bus (or bus-like-thing) with a large group of people, and I did not really enjoy it much at all. Enua kept having us stop in various places for 5 minute breaks - I’m not sure if that was for us as tourists (because the places we tended to stop did not seem particularly noteworthy for the most part) or for her so she could take a cigarette break. Something, like her lighting up as soon as we had all removed ourselves from the bus, leads me to believe it was the latter. The part I really did not care for was that with all of the older folks on board, it took longer to get off and back on the bus than we actually spent at a particular 5-minute break location.

Our first real non-break/photo stop was at a pareo “factory” - basically someone’s house with a big backyard where the pareos were made. A pareo, as I pointed out in my previous post on Moorea, is much like a sarong. While the pareos on Moorea were basically just tie-dye-like patterns on cloth, on Bora Bora they had come up with an interesting way of incorporating recognizable designs, such as shells, sea turtles, and the words “Bora Bora”.

This was accomplished by taking the freshly dyed (and still damp) pareos, laying them out on a flat surface, and then putting linoleum forms and shapes over them. These linoleum forms would be cut in the shapes of shells, sea turtles, and the words “Bora Bora”, for example. As the sun dried the exposed parts of the pareo and faded it a bit in the process, the parts under the linoleum would dry more slowly and not fade, thereby highlighting the pareo with the shape of the linoleum forms. A human analogue would be when people are sunbathing, the parts of their bodies that are exposed to the sun turn one color (brown, but more often pink and red), while the parts that are covered by bathing suits, bikini tops, or thongs, remain relatively pale. We call the intersection of such burned tanned areas and the untouched areas a tan line. What the Bora Bora pareo makers do, in effect, is give their pareos tan lines too.

The ladies at the pareo “factory” greeted us with fresh fruit - pineapple, grapefruit, coconut (not really a fruit - it’s a seed, I guess), and papaya, and then proceeded to demonstrate pareo-making and pareo-tying. They also had a nice special of “buy five, get one free”, so we did, and got a couple of small tridacna clam shells as a bonus. This made the kids happy, and Bas was so thrilled with the pareo that he picked out that he wore it as a cape for much of the rest of the day.

Along the way, we did learn a few things from Enua. First was that the major export of Bora Bora, and in fact, many of the surrounding islands, was something called “copra”. Copra is dried coconut meat (the white part of the coconut), and when it was a major trade item in the Pacific, starting back in the 1800s, it was used to make coconut oil. Copra continued to be actively made from harvested coconuts until the end of the 1900s, with the coconut husks being used to fuel Bora Bora’s power generation, but as the pay for work in the service industries, especially in tourism, improved, copra production became less attractive as a means of livelihood and has since faded away as a cash crop. And the power plant is now fueled by diesel instead.

We also saw a Marae - a sacred place of power for those who believed in the so-called old Gods of the Polynesians. Enua told us that human sacrifices used to be made there. The marae we saw, indicated by a stone with a carving of a turtle on it, still stands because it is “tapu” (taboo) to build anything on the land where it resides.

Land crabs were another feature of our tour - we saw them lured out with green leaves and fighting over that leaf. There were holes all over the shoreline where these crabs live. The crabs will eat most anything they can get their claws on, which means that island residents have to take extra measures to prevent the crabs from destroying their crops. That includes putting metal bands on palm trees (which keeps the rats away from the coconuts too). The land crabs are edible, but only once they have been “cleaned” for two weeks with a diet of coconut, mango, and papaya.

Enua also made sure to tell us about every hotel we passed by. For some reason, hotels and resorts were perceived to be tourist landmarks, a thing we found both curious and annoying at the same time. Sandy back on Moorea did the same thing, but as they only have three big resorts, it didn’t grate upon us as much.

One of the sights we did enjoy, but from afar, were the multitude of motus surrounding Bora Bora. The turquoise waters around the motus were stunningly beautiful. But almost all of the motus were privately owned, and only accessible by boat. Interestingly, Bora Bora’s airport also sits on a motu.

After several more “breaks” - which were actually sorely needed because the road conditions were horrific as a result of lots of pot holes and no real suspension in the bus to speak of, we ended up at a tourist trap fine local bar and restaurant called “Bloody Mary’s”. We assumed it was a great place, because lots of world-renowned celebrities who likely knew nothing at all about Bora Bora had visited the establishment and had apparently agreed to have their names listed on a board of patrons. The $12 house special strawberry daiquiri was a real treat, and worth at least one-sixth that price.

We had to bypass one final stop, namely at a pretty beach, because it was intensely crowded with people awaiting the arrival of the outrigger canoes in the aforementioned Hawaiki Outrigger Race, returning instead to the small village of Vituape.

Fine Dining on Bora Bora

While our search for local cuisine was not quite as thwarted on Bora Bora as on Moorea, our choices were still rather limited, at least within walking distance of Vituape (and we really did not care to go back and eat over-priced burgers at Bloody Mary’s either). After some wandering about we settled on a local “snack”. Much as on Bonaire, a snack is a local eatery where food is typically ordered at a counter for take-away. Some snacks have a larger counter where one can also eat the purchased food on site, much as we did at a little place called Fare Poulet. Fare Poulet featured mostly modified oriental fare, using some local ingredients. Krystyana had a fish dish, I had pork in oyster sauce, and both Linda and Bas had chicken in tamarind sauce. All quite tasty and filling (and no ill results the next day either).

While we enjoyed our snack fare, we found the lack of nice sit-down restaurants a bit troubling. As best we can figure is that most of the resorts are either all-inclusives or make it very difficult for their guests to leave by being on private motus, and as such demand for fine dining is too low to support a breadth of fine dining establishments. Again, for us this was a stark contrast to Bonaire, which, while having an abundance of snacks, also has a great selection of sit-down eateries within easy walking distance of the piers where cruise ships would dock.

We wandered about the various tourist-oriented shops in Vituape for a bit, and also checked out the local grocery store where we encountered a geriatric stock boy dusting the shelves as he filled them, wearing nothing more than sandals, shorts, and a duster (he wasn’t actually wearing the latter, but did have it in hand).

Diving Dry

We were supposed to return to the dock for a 1:50pm pick-up to go on our afternoon excursion aboard a submarine, but it turns out that that time was a typo on our tickets, and in fact were supposed to show up at 2:50pm. We were a bit disgruntled, but ended up using our time to view the outrigger canoes which had finished the race and were being packed up to be taken back to their homes - locally and on other islands) and followed that up by some ice cream and a French puff pastry at a little café we had stumbled across.

At just before 3pm we found ourselves with Sebastian, the pilot of a small, fast boat heading out beyond the barrier reef encircling Bora Bora. We approached what at first appeared to be a yellow spot on the horizon, but soon grew to be the submarine we had reserved space on. Along with us was an older couple, for a grand total of six passengers - the maximum the submarine could hold.

We boarded the submarine with the assistance of its captain, Alan, a Frenchman filled with enthusiasm for his job (truly!), and embarked for our journey into the depth’s of Bora Bora’s waters. Awaiting us, on the other side of 9 centimeters of plexiglass, were a bevy of remoras. Remoras are the fish which are usually seen clinging to large marine creatures, like sharks, whales, and manta rays. They are also known as shark suckers.

After the submarine’s hatch closed, and our ballast tanks were loaded with sea water, we started to slowly descend in a rocking motion, first pitching forward for a while, then backwards, until we had descended to nearly 20 meters (66 feet) below the water’s surface. Alan waxed on with infectious glee about the various fish we were seeing outside the submarine, providing an on-going commentary about how the submarine operated, where to look for the most interesting fish, and what we might expect next.

Bas, who was initially rather filled with trepidation by the whole concept of going underwater in a submarine lost all his worries and started joining Alan in pointing out various fish species (he and Linda had been studying some fish guides we brought along with us after they snorkeled briefly in Tahiti at our hotel there).

One thing that attracted the fish to the submarine was a small exterior hatch that was well stocked with frozen, aged (stinky) fish. The opening to the hatch could be popped open temporarily, and Alan used this feature to create small feeding frenzies for our viewing pleasure.

Over the course of the 45 minute dive, we saw dozens of species of jacks, snappers, butterfly fish, angelfish, several coronet fish, a trumpet fish, black tipped reef sharks, lemon sharks, a school of young barracuda, triggerfish, and many more. And the mildly eerie cyan lighting permeating the interior of the sub as the colors of sunlight were filtered by the depth of the water in which we found ourselves only made the experience more interesting.

All in all, the enjoyment of our submarine ride far outshone our disappointment with the morning’s circle island tour, and Bas stated he would love to go down in a submarine anytime the opportunity arose again. Definitely a convert to the underwater life. Now we just need to remind him he can see all the same things and more when he goes scuba diving with us.

We returned to the pier at 4pm to catch the penultimate tender back to the Pacific Princess. Once on board I headed off for another spa treatment (this time with Karen and a men’s facial). And at 6pm we took our first “formal night” in stride with the best clothes we had brought with us, and dined in Sterling Steakhouse Grill, one of the two specialty restaurants on board. The meal was good, as was the service.

After dinner, Krystyana and I went to see the evening show put on by the ship’s entertainment staff. The show was entitled “Shake, Rattle, and Roll”, featuring rock music of the 60s - clearly targeted at the median age demographic of our fellow passengers. But we knew most of the music as well and enjoyed ourselves. I was pleased to find virtually no lip-syncing going on (a contrast to my first and only prior big-ship cruise on Carnival about 20 years ago) - the performers actually did their own singing (and dancing, of course). That show got Krystyana hooked on attending the evening performances as well, much to our amusement.

Conclusion

As might be apparent from the above, we were less than charmed by Bora Bora. It seemed overly busy, and not particularly friendly to visitors (other than wanting to part them with their money at places like Bloody Mary’s). Others who had visited Bora Bora before told us that our day was unusual, mostly because of the Hawaiki Outrigger Race, and normally Bora Bora was a sleepy, quiet place. Bora Bora might be worth a return visit at some point, but it’s definitely not very high on our list, especially in contrast with Moorea. I will note that first impressions, when you have but a part of a day to experience a new destination, are critical, and our bus tour was our first (and negative) impression. If the people giving you your tour don’t exude enthusiasm and delight over their own lands (or island), how can visitors expect to be delighted with their visit? Food for thought, even for our friends back on Bonaire, which is seeing an influx of cruise tourism itself even as I write this.

And so ends day 7 of our Pacific Journey.

Photos from this day can be found here.