Whenever people talk about going to Tahiti or Bora Bora, they always imagine a romantic honeymoon on the beach with a Mai Tai in hand while staying in one of those traditional huts on the water. What they don’t take into account is the 30 plus hours flight each way, numerous connections, and crazy debilitating jet lag. Nor do they imagine it will be almost exactly like the Caribbean, but with worse food and more fish. That’s the surprise I found when I travelled to the South Pacific with my family earlier this month.
Located in the southern hemisphere, in the Pacific Ocean just north of New Zealand, Tahiti has a climate quite similar to St. Maarten’s. There were many of the same plants blooming, from breadfruit and mango trees, to plantain, banana, and coconut trees. Like St. Maarten, the days were warm and comfortable – even though it is now their winter. I did observe that the houses were more humble and they had no hurricane shutters ready, waiting to close at a moment’s notice.
The unique part of the islands around Tahiti is that they are almost completely surrounded by coral reef systems which come up from the depths to just below the surface, sometimes above it. To get into them, you have to go through a narrow pass that can only be navigated in calm weather.
Tahiti is French, and lucky for us and other tourists, most locals can speak three languages: Tahitian, French and English. Food is very expensive as they have to ship it a long way. Some food comes all the way from France by boat. They have an added challenge: only small boats can fit through those passes between the reefs.
A little background: I am coming from a family that likes to travel wherever and whenever we feel like it, and we like going to places less well known. We rented a 40-foot sailboat from the Sunsail base in Raiatea, an island in the Tahitian Society Islands. This would allow us to travel between the islands as well as all around them however we wished, as long as it was deep enough Luckily, the boat had a small dinghy capable of fitting all four of us; although perhaps not capable of going particularly fast.
While some islands had at least four passes through the reefs, Bora Bora only had one and it was on the opposite side of the island from which we were sailing, so it was one of our longer sails. However, the distance between the Taha’a and Bora Bora wasn’t much more than the distance between St. Maarten and Saba.
Once inside the reef system, the water is about waist deep. Then suddenly like a cliff, it falls away to about 20 to 40 feet deep for a bit before it becomes over 100 feet deep. And this isn’t a gradual slope; it’s like terraces cut into a mountain, where it’s a straight fall down to the next level. You can easily identify these depths by the colour of the water. White is extremely shallow with a sandy bottom, a depth of two to three feet. Light turquoise is anywhere from 15 to 20 feet deep. Dark turquoise water marks a depth of 20 to 40 feet, and dark sapphire blue means “holy smokes” that’s deep! The water is so clear there that you can see the bottom at 100 feet deep.
One of the most amazing places we anchored was off a little motu (what they call the islands) inside of Raiatea’s reef system. The anchorage had only enough space for one boat. We went ashore to have a look around and to stretch our legs. The side where we landed with the dinghy was so shallow we had to paddle in the last bit instead of motoring in all the way to the beach. But when we walked over to the side where we could see Raiatea and looked down into the ocean, we saw a sandy slope with a few coral heads and then it just went down, down, down, down, down, down, down, until we couldn’t see any more. But we knew it went deeper.
We only had 14 days there so we made the most of it. We started in Raiatea, and then sailed to Taha’a where we snorkelled everywhere the dinghy could take us, including the coral gardens. We sipped $17 Mai Tais from a picturesque resort, and had a traditional meal with traditional dancers as entertainment.
For some reason, all traditional food is cooked wrapped in banana leaves in a pit. So it all tastes smoky. Besides a few items, the food is remarkably like the Caribbean’s, but it tastes worse. The dancers were wearing the traditional Sarongs and grass skirts. They did dances like the hula – remember Lilo and Stitch?
From Taha’a, we sailed to Bora Bora which was actually a bit of a let-down as it was so touristy. It was beautiful – don’t get me wrong – but everywhere we went, there were loads of other people. So it was hard to enjoy the beauty without constantly worrying about all the boats zipping around. The only bright side was that because all the tourist boats fed the sea animals, they would swarm around you whenever you jumped in or they heard a motor. That’s pretty cool when it’s a school of giant sting rays following your dinghy; not so cool when it was a school of black tip reef sharks, each about five feet long! Even though they were reportedly harmless, we weren’t too keen on jumping in the water with those swimming around.
From Bora Bora, we motored back to Raiatea to go back to the Sunsail base for more dinghy fuel, fresh water, clean sheets, and a real shower. We spent a few days around Raiatea doing more snorkelling and looking at the Maraes. Maraes were ancient religious sites where human sacrifices were made. Amazingly still around today as some are right on the water line, they consist of ancient stones and carvings.
From Raiatea, we sailed to Huahine, an island about the same distance away from Raiatea as St. Barths is from St. Maarten. And that is our uncontested favourite place of the entire trip. Not only was the snorkelling the best, but we also finally found Nemo after spotting every other fish in that movie except for Dory. It was quieter, more rustic, and had loads more nature to offer. It was the only island we went diving on that we encountered not only a school of eagle rays, but also a whole school of four-foot tuna and black tip reef sharks ranging from one foot to about 12 feet long. Some of the bigger sharks were pregnant and looked like those strange guppies you get at the pet store.
We also visited a pearl farm where the famous Black Tahitian Pearls are grown. Amazingly, the centre of the pearl is a small bead made from a shell only found in the Mississippi River. This shell is shipped to China to be made into beads before being put into the clam. It takes 18 months for the pearl to actually be made by the clam and six years before the biggest pearls can be harvested, at which point the clam dies.
On our last day, a whole pod of spinner dolphins was jumping near our boat inside the lagoon and that night humpback whales swam by. They were about 50 feet from our boat as we were moored in deep water. We heard them enter the pass and saw them when a powerful light from the boat next door was shone on them.
Every night, we were lulled to sleep by the sound of waves crashing on the reef and stared at the Milky Way. We would spend 10 minutes every night just looking up at all of the amazing stars.
All in all, it was an amazing trip which we only wish could have lasted longer… and that it took less time to get to! We had so much fun and saw so many amazing things, that we highly recommend this trip to everyone. Even if you aren’t sailors, there are plenty of companies that will send a skipper with you to do all the boaty stuff and make sure that you get from island to island. Go and find your own Nemo!
Contributed by Nina Manley
