Another great day, if not great weather. To me Bora Bora is all about the water. It’s a small island, only half the size of Moorea, but it’s surrounded by a huge lagoon with just one channel to the open sea. So to spend time in and on the beautiful blue water of said lagoon was my goal.

My activity today was a full day snorkel and lunch tour. I had a later pickup so after queuing at 6am to get my tender ticket I had several hours to have breakfast and start my packing for tomorrow’s change of cabins before going ashore at 9:30am.

An outrigger boat with 6 people picked myself and 2 others up before heading to a.nearby island resort to pickup 2 more. The captain then steered the 11 of us out to a shallow spot in the lagoon where we waded with stingrays! They’d become accustomed to the food brought by the tour boats and so were circling in anticipation for our arrival and were happy enough to be picked up and petted by our guides!

Next we motored over to the deeper dark blue water at the edge of the lagoon to swim with the sharks! Again, they’ve been conditioned to wait there for their daily feeding but not to be touched, of course. The majority were fairly harmless small 2 foot black tip sharks that swam in an endless circle around our boat but there was one more dangerous 6′ lemon shark circling lazily about 15′ below. We had strict instructions to stay close to the boat and at the surface while our guide dove down to feed the dozens of black tips and take people’s cameras down for closeups of the beasts. Unfortunately I don’t have an underwater camera and the wind kept the surface choppy so I don’t have any pictures that show just how many sharks and other fish there were.

The wind came up and made the next boat ride to our coral snorkeling stop wet with spray and rather chilly. The skies started become a bit overcast too so everyone was thoroughly chilled after our third time in the water. There wasn’t a lot of fish at our snorkeling site but the hard corals had wonderful shades of peach and lavender and a multitude of small blue-lipped clams! I’d never seen them before and they’re not just blue but shades of electric blue, neon green, spotted brown and more. As cold as I was I was the last aboard as I dawdled over these wonders.

Out last stop was a fantastic lunch served on handwoven palm leaf plates, eaten at picnic tables set in the shallows at a private uninhabited islet. Afterwards our guides taught us to weave our own palm plates and demonstrated the traditional (surprising) way to open a.coconut.

Just after 3pm we set off to begin dropping people off. The first 6 guests were staying at different fancy over water bungalow resorts so it turned out to be an ’round island tour! A great day in Bora Bora!