Monday 24 – Saturday 29 April
Saturday 29 April
It’s our last day in Bora Bora and we’ve agreed to have a relaxing one. Craig left early to have a morning walk whilst I basically did absolutely nothing for a couple of hours and loved it! We’ve been up and out early every day that we’ve been in BB and I’d have been perfectly happy to simply chill by our lovely pool, snorkel and read but as you’re probably aware by now Craig has to do stuff!
We got a (very expensive) taxi to the only public beach in BB – it’s called Maitira Beach – and we spent the day on the beach close to a snack bar called Snack Mamie Pina and four massive very sleepy dogs. Mamie was about 90 – or if she’s younger then she’s had an extremely hard life – and her daughter kept coming out of the kitchen to bark at her as she was clearly completely deaf. Mamie didn’t stop smiling once and her daughter didn’t smile once! Hilarious. Great view from the inside of Mamie’s.
The guide from our trip with Vavau yesterday had told us that the row of very fancy hotels with water bungalows that you see in all the photos of BB (St Regis, The Intercontinental, The Four Seasons, Meridian, etc) had fake beaches and their sand was replenished each night by people with spades very quietly! This beach is completely natural, lovely and used by locals and tourists alike but isn’t too busy.
I’m sitting under this tree in the shade writing this on my phone notes page to transfer to my blog later. I’ve just finished the Bernard Cornwell book and unfortunately can’t download the next in the series as I have no Wi-Fi and Craig is off on another walk with Dronie after sunbathing. The🦞 obviously needed to top up as he clearly didn’t feel red enough! Ah, look at Dronie in his black case sunbathing with his friend 😆.
When he’s not being called 🦞, Craig’s nickname is “The Lizard”🦎as he’ll be out in the sun at any opportunity. I’m not much a fan of direct blazing sun and not at all of sand. Unless I’m wearing sunglasses, trainers, a raincoat and a warm hat and walking the length of gorgeous beaches in the Hebrides of course. Then I like it. I’ve already mentioned I’m just not a fan of sitting on a beach, sand getting everywhere, especially without a comfy sun bed… HFB is well aware of this and when we go away together we do beach and pool trade offs so we both get to enjoy time together at the one we each prefer. I’ve not sat on the beach that much on holiday really and Craig loves it so here we are and it’s very pretty!
When he returned we popped back into Mamie’s, had a beer and called our taxi guy. It was almost 5pm and would be a close call as to whether we’d get to St James for one last happy hour cocktail before 6pm… the taxi arrived, we got back at 5.20 pm, Craig jumped in the shower then headed out the door to get there first and order our margaritas whilst I had a shower and arrived just before 6pm. Hoorah! 🍸 We enjoyed the end of one last sunset but it was pretty much done by the time I arrived but still not bad!
We said thank you and farewell to our lovely bar staff friends then headed back to Bora Home for another delicious food truck dinner.
So, tomorrow is a big day for FP. They’re voting for a new assembly. The choice they’re facing is a bit like Brexit (we came up with Polyexit whilst eating tonight). The vote is split between two main parties; if the one currently in power wins it will mean continuing as a French overseas territory whilst the other main party wants independence from France and a return to what our taxi driver described as “back to fishing and coconuts and goodbye to tourists”. President Edouard Fritch has been in the top job for nine years. He and his colleagues greatly upset everyone by ignoring Covid rules and attending the lavish wedding of the VP during the crisis whilst no one else was allowed out. A leader and his cronies attending parties during lockdown? 🤔🧐 Such a thing would never happen in the UK 🤨😬😠…The vote is being seen by many as a stand against the hypocrisy of the ruling party. It all just sounds so unbelievably familiar. It’s very clear where the majority of people here in BB stand. Pro independence. Their flags are everywhere. Big business owners will clearly be voting to remain. There’s going to be radical change if the independence party win. Let’s see what happens. I’ll keep you updated.
💃🏼🪩 MORNING DISCO 🪩 🕺
So, will I choose a song with beach in the title or by a group with beach in their name? So many options and yet non, j’ai choisi quelque chose de pertinent et un peu drôle!
She’s French, her surname means paradise and she had an hit with taxi in the title; this one chose itself today. They’ll be plenty of time for the Beach Boys and songs about beaches, don’t you worry.
Take a trip down memory lane with me back to the 80’s – hopefully whichever mode of transport you choose to take you down memory lane will be much much cheaper than the half a month’s mortgage payment I paid for todays taxis!
Here’s ‘Joe le taxi’ (1987) by Vanessa Paradis; enjoy!
Friday 28 April
We’ve been away for 14 weeks and have five left! Happy weekend everyone 🍹
We were picked up from the hotel by Vauvau Tours nice and early. I instantly forgot the guide’s name, whoops. There was a lovely French couple from Nantes who spoke a tiny bit of English so with my tiny bit of French we almost managed to have proper conversations for three hours! Rick was also on the tour. He’s just retired at 67, been happily divorced for 20 years, comes from Minnesota and was staying on the cruise ship that arrived the day before. He told us that big ships have been banned since last year throughout the islands so whereas BB used to be a stop between NZ and the US you now have to fly to Tahiti to get a local one; I heartily approve. This one has 400 people on it. We saw it arrive last night as we were enjoying happy hour cocktails and I can see it now from my balcony, it leaves Saturday. He was bucking the trend and booked his own tour (with us) as he said he wanted to go on a trip that wasn’t full of the grey haired! He was hilarious and the three of them plus the unnamed guide made it a great morning.
The idea was to circle the island, stop at some interesting places and head “up” a couple of times – we already knew it was 32km around the island as Craig had cycled it with Bikey the day before. He had returned the bike before we set off on the trip and he was genuinely sad to let it go! It was a lovely morning, hot (of course!) but definitely less humid so it was actually quite pleasant. We were in a 4×4 and for a while behind us was a convoy of quad bikes. Had to take this picture; amazing!
We took a turn off, he changed something on the gears or whatever to make it a 4×4 and then we went up. He said it was called the ‘Oh my god road’. Kid you not, it was an almost vertical climb and even the others who were all clearly comfortable with heights were shrieking and we had to hold on for dear life (it was an open vehicle with a soft roof). Bleedin terrifying! There was no way you could let go with either hand to take a photo. I just googled. Seems no one else managed it either! At the top was one of eight massive cannon on the island from WW2 although the cannon themselves date back to WW1.
Mr Nantes far left with unnamed guide and no, Rick on the right is not having a pee although it does look like it 😆.
Throughout FP, only BB was fortified during the war as it’s centrally located and only has one pass to defend. BB was also the first island in FP to get an airport in 1943 (more than ten years before Tahiti), built by the Americans during the war and it is now the site of the gorgeous airport we flew into. The view from the cannon was pretty good too.
After an equally terrifying descent we went to see how they tie dye sarongs which sounds dull but 1) wasn’t at all 2) they gave us yummy coconut and grapefruit to eat and 3) it had a loo! These two sisters made one in just a few seconds in front of us. Pretty cool. None of us bought anything although we wanted to but I hadn’t brought enough cash (no cards) and I thought $25 US was a bit of a cheeky price anyway. Hey, it’s BB so what did I expect?! Especially as she said they pump out 300+ a day by hand if the sun shines (they need it to dry the die) I ain’t no mathematician but that’s $7,500 a day if they sell them all! They supply posh hotels and local shops as well as selling direct. Here they are with the one they made in front of us before they add the shapes (made of thick black plastic) on top. Within 15 minutes the dye has dried enough to leave the shapes permanently imprinted. The other picture is of a manta ray sarong that we might have been tempted to buy. That one is machine made. They didn’t talk about those so I’m not sure if they made them on site or import them from China!
Back on the road and up another terrifying track for more lovely views. Basically from here on in we went up tracks and took pictures of views of the island, motus and views from different angles so here is a selection of my photos. It really is a lovely looking place.
What I love about this last picture is that the view behind and all around them is being completely ignored in favour of discussing drones. Unnamed guide has done this trip plenty of times so he’s let off but Craig? Come on! Hopefully he took some amazing shots and I’ll get to enjoy the video on TiketyTok.
We drove past the overwater bungalow that Marlon Brando stayed in the first time he visited FP. Surprisingly it’s on the main island right near the main road. Maybe the big hotels hadn’t built on the motus then or maybe he wasn’t interested in all that stuff. He later bought it and the one next door so he had one for him and one for his friends. Yours for about US $500 a night courtesy of AirBnB! (Not my photo as he didn’t stop).
He fell in love with the islands and much later had his own home built on an island near Tahiti. After he died it was developed into a hotel called Brandos. It’s where Tamara and I will be staying once we’ve won the lottery. It’s currently over €5,000 a night so it’s not part of mine and Craig’s current travel agenda!
After the tour we said goodbye to each other and were dropped off back at our place. We had a very quick turnaround before the next tour so Craig nipped to the supermarket to get us something to eat in between.
We were collected from our hotel wharf and greeted by our captain / guide from Moana Adventures and seven others already on the boat. One honeymooning couple from New Jersey who were unintentionally very amusing, an older American couple who smiled a lot but didn’t speak much, a young French couple who fastidiously ignored the rest of us and a sailor who had a very interesting story that we later learned when we were in the car with her on the way back to our hotel after the tour.
We zoomed off to a gorgeous shallow area in part of the lagoon where the water was a maximum of 1.6 m. You could see the black tip sharks circling the boat and a couple of massive stingrays gliding under the boat. Masks on and in we went! We swam really close to them all for over 45 minutes. Sharks were circling, coming straight towards you then sliding away at the last second. I counted five sharks, two rays and a giant white porcupine fish. When we arrived it was just our boat, unfortunately by the time we left there were about 60 people in the water. Clearly not my photo but this is pretty close to what it was actually like.
Shark, fish and ray feeding was banned three years ago but the creatures still go to the same spots, probably wondering why on earth there’s no feeding anymore! For now, while they’re still visiting and hoping for food, it’s pretty fantastic but I’m sure they’ll get bored and leave at some stage just as I’m sure the numbers of sharks and rays visiting the area used to be much higher.
We got back on the boat then off to another quiet part of the lagoon (first to arrive again) and went past the half hidden holiday home of the owner of the beauty company Nars (we were told) on a lovely motu.
We were snorkelling in a very shallow reef. It was stunning. It looked like someone had taken pots of purple, lilac and mauve paint and thrown them over the coral. When I’d been googling the reef we last dived on to use in my diary I came across pictures of a reef that I thought had been enhanced or photoshopped but it turned out to be this one! We spent a great 45 minutes gently swimming and marvelling at the reef. It was so clear it felt at times as if I wasn’t underwater. I’ve never really been bothered by snorkelling but now I get it. These downloaded photos don’t do it any justice at all (and one is a bit fuzzy) but they’re better than nothing ie the photos I didn’t take!
It was over too soon. We enjoyed the fast sprint across the lagoon (our last; farewell to being on the water in BB!) and were transferred to a nice van with an amusing driver. The sailor told us she’d sailed with two others in 2019 from the US across the Pacific, ending up in the Marquesas, the most far flung of the FP island chains. Covid struck and they had to fly home and leave their boat. The three of them had recently flown back to repair the boat, finish their planned travels around the islands then take the boat back to the US. Amazing!
When the driver dropped us off he laughed at Craig and called him lobster man. 🦞 Indeed Craig had been in the sun too long and he instantly fell asleep when we got inside the room.
As a result we missed happy hour at St James 😱 but I wasn’t that bothered as we’d been four nights in a row and I finished off the last of my bottle of white wine on the balcony whilst Craig slept.
Please don’t have a heart attack but we didn’t go to St James at all! It was a slightly cooler evening so once Craig had woken and showered we walked into town and ate at a great open air restaurant / food truck called Bora Home with tables set up opposite the bank. We shared tuna marinated in yummy herbs and white wine, BBQ’d in front of us and a really delicious prawn curry. No booze! There was far too much for us and the rest is sitting in our mini fridge.
Another great day!
💃🏼🪩 MORNING DISCO 🪩 🕺
Craig has chosen today’s song; it’s The Beatles’ ‘Day Tripper’ (1966). Surely no explanation required! Gotta love the dancers who appear briefly at the beginning of this TV appearance and then just disappear… 💃🏼💃🏼💃🏼 Groovy baby!
Thursday 27 April
So I’m guessing you know the routine by now. Two dives, cheese and wine lunch, relaxing afternoon, happy hour at St James…
We haven’t quite got that far yet but we did have another two amazing dives. There was a different scuba crew – two really lovely French people called Jane and Nicolas (I loved him, he was our DM) and different guests – three nice Americans and two lovely Aussies from Sidney who were on their honeymoon. We happily returned to the manta ray site and the visibility was much better. We saw loads really close up. Fantastic!
We then went to a really healthy colourful reef for our second dive. Again, this is not exactly what we saw but it is a picture of the reef. Nice.
We of course held hands during our last dive and waved farewell to underwater Bora Bora. 😢
Craig’s decided to be very active and he’s gone off for four hours on a hired bike. I’m chilling, something I’m starting to get good at! I’m going to see Tom on reception soon to see if we can book a trip for tomorrow. Up to now we’ve been on trips that I booked before we left the UK (plus a few extra Craig found spontaneously) but I’m just going to see what’s available. We’d like to see the island itself as we’ve basically had three lagoon tours on our dive boats. I’ll let you know later when things are sorted and we’re at St James for cocktails and decent Wi-Fi.
Update…
A lovely person who works in our hotel booked us two half day tours for tomorrow. She saved us £160 in the process as I was very clear that the day trip we wanted to go on was ridiculously expensive so she called around and got us exactly the same tour (without lunch) but split into two with two different companies. Good woman.
I then swam in the infinity pool and realised I’d not taken any photos of our lovely hotel. It looks lovely doesn’t it? That’s our room that you can see poking out in the background in the top right of the first picture. When I’d booked this place there was a bar and restaurant here but unfortunately it’s closed. The entire hospitality industry worldwide is suffering from a combination of crazy food prices and lack of staff so it’s completely understandable. On one hand that’s a good thing as I might never leave otherwise but on the other it would have been very very nice.
That’s my stuff on the sunbed. Classy ‘Discount Pharmacy’ bag from Auckland included.
After chilling I had another shower (number three of the day, I really must conserve more water, sorry 😬; two of them were pretty swift though!).
So unfortunately there wasn’t any Wi-Fi all night at St James and I’m updating this from our room with dodgy Wi-Fi.
I headed there for 5.30 pm and Craig met me ten minutes later having left his bike (apparently it’s his new best friend so Droney is probably sulking in a corner somewhere) outside. I suggested he go to the bathroom to wash off and cool down… he was a bit sweaty after cycling 32 km around the whole island! Top work!!
The American couple we’d briefly spoken to last night reappeared – Bob and Carrie, it’s their 39th wedding anniversary tomorrow night – and this time we chatted properly for about a hour before they went to eat in the restaurant. As a result Craig and I now have an open invitation to visit Napa Valley, Lake Tahoe and their villa in the south of France. Wowsers! That’s Bora Bora for you. They popped back into the bar after they’d finished eating to reconfirm and say goodnight as they wanted us to know they were genuine about their offer. They’re keen to return to London too. I can’t wait to see their faces if they stay at our little terrace in Tooting. They lived in Richmond and Kensington when they were in the UK. It might be a slightly different experience for them chez nous Tooting 😆 😆. I’ve got to clean the place up pretty damn quickly after we return for Mags and Sophes’ stay at the end of June so at least the 🐁💩 will be gone by then 😬. I hope they don’t stay with us until we’ve been to at least one of their absolutely lovely sounding homes!
I wanted to get a photo of our great barman in shot and I think we just about managed it. By the end of the week I’m sure he’ll be posing in a photo with us but the guy doesn’t stop to breathe!
No sunset photos tonight. We were too busy unknowingly securing some free holiday venues by chatting to Bob and Carrie! Lovely bar meal, one drink too many then I walked home whilst Craig and his new best friend Bikey wobbled all over the road together. I was a bit worried every time a car passed! We arrived home without any accidents and I’m updating this whilst Craig is trying to do his quarterly VAT return. Ah, I totally love Xero as I did his quarterly and annual returns for 14 years and Xero has recently made me redundant. Bloomin’ cheers to that! 🥂
💃🏼🪩 MORNING DISCO 🪩 🕺
No explanation required. It’s Craig’s new best friend until it’s returned tomorrow at 8.30 am. Here’s the genius AKA Queen with ‘Bicycle Race’ (1978). I suggest you listen to it rather than watch the video unless you love psychedelic craziness! Although even then many of the lyrics are totally inappropriate so we’ll just focus on these ones:
“I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike, I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride it where I like” 🚵♀️🚲
Wednesday 26 April
Another day, another two dives!
We were collected from the jetty again at 7.45 am and the small boat was packed. There was a French / Belgian couple with their three children and – couldn’t quite work out the relationship – an uncle, friend? who were all staying on a catamaran then we picked up one more French guy from another hotel. Too many to dive with one Dive Master (DM) so there were two today plus a different captain. One was Remi (unfortunately his name is not Renee from Allo Allo as I’d thought, clearly I misheard yesterday) who had switched jobs from captain to DM, and Julie who was our DM. She was great, she told Craig off a few times for being naughty underwater! 😆 I’ve given up doing that as it happens every time and so I just ignore it.
So, could we top 18 eagle rays and ten black tip reef sharks? Yes indeed we could!
Our first dive was in the lagoon, it was murky and we stayed close to the bottom. I’m not sure how many of these truly magnificent creatures we saw as they kept gliding and changing direction but there were at least four as we saw them fly over our heads in formation. Stunning. At one point I tapped Julie on the shoulder and she turned around just in time to see one clear our heads by inches. I’m running out of superlatives so I’ll just use magical again. I might be using that word a lot! Again, I’ve googled pictures taken in BB lagoon to give you an idea but the visibility wasn’t this clear!
They are so beautiful and graceful. They are also big! They have a wingspan of up to 29 feet / 8.8 metres. They are filter feeders and eat large quantities of zooplankton, just like one of other favourites, the whale shark although there are none of those here.
Second dive was back to see sharks but in a different location. OK, so these aren’t the most enormous sharks we’ve ever seen but when there are almost 30 (I lost count, the little buggars wouldn’t stay still and line up to be counted 😆) circling above, to the side and behind you your heart does go a bit. We’ve never dived with that many sharks at once before. Apparently it’s good practice for somewhere else we’re going later on our trip where that will be a derisory number of sightings!! 😳😬
We finished with a gentle half hour above an amazing coral reef teeming with life. Hardly had to move my fins as the gentle current gently swept us along.
Back home, another wine and cheese lunch then some relaxing and reading before a last minute rush to St James for happy hour (three minutes to spare; he looked pointedly at his watch when I ordered!). Sorry to repeat myself but the sunset was, again, fantastic. I’ve held back and I’m only including three pictures today 😆. We chatted to an American couple who were having a drink next to us. They’d arrived last night and they said they’d read that just seeing pictures of sunsets can induce happiness. You are most welcome! 🥂
We decided to eat in Le Panda D’or, a Chinese restaurant opposite St James, just to mix it up a bit. I still can’t quite face the walk in the dark and back into grotty town along a road where the cars hammer along and there’s no path. It was full of locals which boded well. We had a nice dinner (duck for me) then back to read and sleep. I’ve just started the Bernard Cornwell series of 12 books (!) known as The Saxon Series starting with The Last Kingdom. They’re about Wessex and King Alfred so that should keep me going a while. It’s good so far… I just googled and apparently there’s a series on Netflix so I’ll have to read them first then watch it. Great! Good night.
💃🏼🪩 MORNING DISCO 🪩 🕺
Why not have a song by Madonna? We’ve had one by Miley Cyrus so it’s open season for all sorts! This won some Grammies too. It’s upbeat, it’s great to dance to and she looks pretty good with a sunset behind her so that’s another link to my blog and another reason to play it.
We have to pay tribute to the amazing manta rays somehow so here’s Madonna with ‘Ray of Light’ (1998). It’s that time again folks – get your handbags in a pile on the dance floor and dance around them pretending to glide like mantas 😆💃🏼😆
Tuesday 25 April
It’s a diving day! Less chilled than Huahine, we met at 7.45 am; Bora Ocean Adventures collected us from the hotel jetty. Our Captain was much younger than most we’ve met – his name is Renee (no Allo Allo jokes allowed!) and our Dive Master is Guillaume, also quite young – both are French and both are great. We set off to Motu Tevairoa (top left on the map) to collect a French couple and an American from Denver, Lauren who is an ex dive Instructor and we had a great chat about diving all over the world. We then headed out to the ocean for what sounded like a great dive. It was! At one stage up to ten of these beautiful creatures were with us, they followed us for quite a while, at one stage cutting Craig off from the group and circling him; one properly eyeballed him! Apparently they show each other respect by swimming up to each other then passing each other on the right hand side. Craig wasn’t aware of this so continued to stick a camera right in the face of one of them until it got a bit too close and he then joined us again! Clearly – as Thara noted – I’m googling these pictures! This photo is a recent one from Bora Bora so it may well include actual black tip reef sharks that we saw.
For our second dive we headed back into the lagoon and were diving pretty soon again. I’ll cut to the chase – a group of 18 eagle rays gliding, circling and playing. We knelt on the sandy bottom to watch them and if they moved we carefully followed. Magical.
We took our time going back to the boat and saw a massive hawksbill turtle snoozing under a rock – as I didn’t see him properly I’ll cross my fingers and hope to see another so I can justify a photo.
Two great dives, that’s a good morning!
We were dropped off on the jetty, went back to our room, showered and I pretended I was French with my little lunch; mainly down to the fact we had nothing else and I couldn’t be bothered to go back to the supermarket for fresh bread!
We saw our dive people return at 2pm to collect some other lucky divers. We’re diving twice a day for three days so I wasn’t jealous. Not really…
We had a chilled few hours then headed back to St James for happy hour. Here’s my view as I sip my caipirinha. 🍸
Cheers – it’s not a bad life!!
We had a delicious dinner, watched the amazing sunset which just kept getting better and better then we had another couple of drinks – pah! to budgets, for now at least. We’re in Bora Bora!!
I think that’s probably enough of the sunset but it’s pretty spectacular. We headed home, read, went to sleep very happy.
💃🏼🪩 MORNING DISCO 🪩 🕺
I’ve selected the fabulous ‘Waterloo Sunset’ (1967) by The Kinks played live here in 1973. I know we’re not in London but I always sing this song in my head when I cross Waterloo bridge on foot or by bus so it’s a nice memory of one of my favourite views in the world whilst paying tribute to great sunsets here in paradise. I hope you enjoy this lovely song.
Monday 24 April
We had an early morning visit from Mme Huahine and her babies who all slipped under the gate into our lovely garden to say hi and bye!
We left at 10.15 am, were at the airport six minutes later and had checked in our (overweight 🤭) luggage five minutes after that. The flight was at 11.30 am; they’re pretty chilled here! We had a coffee and a Chocolat chaud (I’m going to make it a tradition at every FP airport if possible) then were walking onto the plane before we knew it. It was only a 15 minute flight. Love these tiny airports and quick flights!
Oh mon dieu, sacre bleu! First glimpse out of the window.
This is the view on our walk from the plane to the terminal. The whole airport is on a motu – I’ve added a picture of the beautiful terminal too. Not bad, eh? 😉 🏝️🌋
We bumped into a couple of lovely people we’d been on the boat part of the tour with yesterday in Huahine who I had lunch with on the motu while Craig and Droney went for a walk. They’re staying at the extremely fancy Intercontinental Hotel the lucky things!
We quickly collected our luggage (no speedy out of the terminal records broken unfortunately) and got on the public (free) transfer boat to the capital, Vaitape on the main island. We waved farewell to our new found friends who disappeared on a private transfer boat plied with booze and flowers. Nice.
Now, I’d like to manage expectations because when you’re on a 130+ night trip on our budget you can’t always get somewhere amazing to stay. We’ve been lucky in that the places we’ve visited up to now I have managed to find good accommodation at a decent price. Budget has to be more than doubled for BB. That’s not just for accommodation but for everything. I’d found the best we could afford but it’s not on a lovely motu with an amazing view of the central island. It’s still really nice; we’re on the main island with just over a 15 minute walk south into Vaitape. It’s a small hotel called Oa Oa Lodge and it has three over water bungalows- not quite what you see in the photos of the Four Seasons but we love it! We have a tiny jetty to the side which we’ll be snorkelling off at some point.
The minute we checked in it started chucking it down with rain! Ah well, paradise is still paradise even in the rain. It stopped after a while and it was instantly blazing hot. So hot that the 15 minute walk into Vaitape was not a pleasant experience. Neither unfortunately is Vaitape. It’s not compact and friendly like Fare on Huahine, it’s a linear village, very spread out and not particularly nice.
Luckily we’re six minutes from a supermarket, a bank and a place called St James which I’d found whilst working out where to stay. After a sad hot walk around the capital we agreed to head to the bank, St James and the supermarket in that order. St James is a nice hotel with a bar and restaurant on the waterfront. They’ve created a bar ‘beach’ so that you can sit and drink with your feet in the sand even though you’re not on the beach. It’s a lovely place and I’ve a feeling it’s our new second home. The nearest actual beach on this island is about 25 minutes drive south and we’ll try and get there later in the week. That’s our hotel in the distance you can see from St James. It looks closer – camera zoom plus it’s shorter around the water but you have to walk along the road.
We had a drink – the price was extortionate, more than double the price of the Yacht Club but I’ve told Craig that we have to stop comparing as we have to adjust to what’s the norm here so I will only mention this now. The meals are 2.5 – 4 x price of the Yacht Club and the French we spoke to there said they couldn’t believe how expensive it was in Huahine. Ha! Come here mate!!! We promised to return for happy hour and a bar meal and went back for showers and a half hour of relaxing.
Back to St James for a kind of sunset in between the showers and happy hour cocktails.
The place was packed, all French, no locals unlike in Huahine where everyone went to the Yacht Club. Anyway, stop comparing Catherine!!
We chose what we thought would be the most substantial thing on the menu – fish and chips – which turned out to be a work of art as well as delicious. The chips were sweet potato and we were given a massive basket of baguette (they clearly knew we needed to soak up our cocktails!) so we were pretty stuffed afterwards. Yum.
We headed back pretty early and a few hours away from being the last to leave but we were tired and had to be up at 6am for diving. Night!
💃🏼🪩 MORNING DISCO 🪩 🕺
Craig has chosen today’s song. It’s a Monday and we’re on holiday in a great new place so it’s a good obvious choice although I’m not familiar with it. It’s good! I hope you enjoy The Happy Mondays with ‘Holiday’ (1990).