Photos From Our Final Days in French Polynesia: Bora Bora and Taha'a

We spent the last two weeks enjoying two of our favorite islands:  Bora Bora and Taha'a.  Little need be said about Bora Bora, since it's so famous, and Taha'a is home to several of our favorite bays:  Tapuamu, Ha'amene, and Apu.  We'll start with some Bora Bora photos taken on a walk down Fa'anui Bay.

What a wonderful house construction!  There are 3 sizes of board here, all covering blue tarp walls.

During World War 2, Bora Bora was the first island selected for as a way station for Allied shipping.  Operation Bear Cat was created to organize SeaBees (the US Navy Construction Battalion) and convert a sleepy Polynesian island into a 20th century military base.  They built long concrete quays into Fa'anui Bay, as shown here.

Here, lovely Conni walks along the remnants of those exact quays!  Little remains of those structures, but the presence of the Allied troops changed French Polynesia forever. 

A bit more can be seen here, closer to shore.  There's renewed interest in those days and organizations are stepping up to remind the world of what happened here.

We don't know what it is, but it's impressively beautiful, isn't it?  It would a house plant in Anchorage.

Bora Bora's mountains change shape as one moves around them.  Here, we're looking from the east side of Fa'anui Bay.

Back in the Bora Bora Yacht Club, we enjoyed a nice dinner while everyone was entranced with the tropical sunset.  Note anchor lights on the moored boats.

We Move to Taha'a, the Vanilla Island of French Polynesia

Conni's favorite bay is Ha'amene on Taha'a, and one of her favorite restaurants in Taha'a MaiTai.  My meal was this delicious shrimp curry concoction. 

We opted for this outrageous dessert that was similar to a huge banana split.  On the menu, it was named a profiterole, and it was as good as it looks!

We were moored in Ha'amene Bay and after tying our dinghy to the dock, we strolled along this dyke.

Fa'a'aha...or something like that.  There are lots of vowels here.

 

Here's one of the island's two schools, an inclusive elementary, middle, and high school.  Uniforms are the order of the day. 

As we strolled around town, we caught glimpses of Wings on her mooring.

Ha'amene is simply exquisite:  lush and green with every shade in between.

Conni loves the gardens and I love the streams with the greenery overhanging the banks...and I had the camera!

The palm fronds meet on the main rachis, or leaf stem, but not in circular formations.  Why are there circular sun images?  The rachis/leaflet conjunction is small enough to act as "pin hole" cameras and actually produce a small image of sun's disk!  My feet and my interest...

Looking across the head of Ha'amene Bay.  It had rained a lot so the water was muddy from the streams flowing into the bay.

You've seen this before, but this walkway across the arm of Ha'amene is still beautiful to us.

This is another gorgeous home in Ha'amene.

And this outrageously-colored home is also on Ha'amen and is Conni's favorite!  The color combination would work nowhere else, probably, but it works here.

These are baguette-delivery boxes.

Back to the school, this is the sign for the high school section.

As we depart Ha'amene Bay, we can see the highlands on the bay's mouth.

From Ha'amen Bay, we motored around to Tapuamu, again, and enjoyed this gorgeous sunset from Wings'.

As Ian Malcom stated, "life will find a way", and indeed it does.  Whatever it is, it took root in the fender well.

The next morning in Tapuamu, this fast ferry, Apetahi Express, came jetting into the tiny town of Tapuamu.

With the village showing past the stern, the Express rotates to be heading out after docking.

Looking down after dumping some old food in the water, we noticed remoras!  Note the sucker area on its head.

Another remora swims around.  They stayed under the boat unless food appeared. 

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