Relaxing in Bora Bora Day 5 and 6 2020/02/10

Day 5 in beautiful Bora Bora. The showers from yesterday have returned, but it's only a light rain this morning. Luckily for us each room has an umbrella for just such an occasion. Lucky for one I guess. But Theresa plans ahead too. Inside our luggage she packed a compact umbrella for these types of days.

The breakfast offerings today were very similar to yesterday. Though in the area for fresh fruit, there's an entire bowl full of turmeric roots. Now I've seen turmeric power for cooking recipes, and even turmeric teas, but whole roots? Theresa got one, and yes, that's potent turmeric.

Theresa do you like just a little bit of Tabasco on your omelet today?

Breakfast was delicious as usual. The french toast is becoming a new favorite of mine here. And because skipping lunch and having a small dinner, we're going to be eating heartily this morning.

After breakfast the two of us walked back to the room. Man, that water is just too beautiful.

Now I can't have a personal hammock here, but there's one other thing that's almost as good. These things took up a bunch of room in our checked luggage, but it's worth it. We've brought them on vacations before, like when we were in Hawaii with Aubrey and Ian.
This time I was even more prepared. Since we're in open water, I made sure to pack ~25 feet of rope, plus some carabiners so we could easily attach to the deck and to each other. I'm not going to be bringing a float and then having to paddle back every 5 minutes. These will give us some room to float, but not too far out.
One other very fortunate happenstance is the way the wind is blowing. Should it have been blowing any other direction we could have been pushed back underneath our bungalow, or floated over towards our neighbors. But since the wind is going from east to west, we're being pushed out into the open water. Perfect.

What are we going to do floating out here? Fortunately Theresa and I love reading. It's just that we're generally so busy we don't often get a chance to put in real quality time reading. Sure, maybe 20-30 minutes here and there, but when you've got an 800 page book, it takes forever to finish.

But for our time here, we haven't booked any excursions. No reservations that we have to be watching a clock for. Our goal is to do "nothing" and enjoy the beauty.

And it's gotten so much easier now! I remember when we took our first trip to Moorea, we must have had 8 big heavy hardback books between the two of us. Now everything can fit on a super small Kindle that even happens to be waterproof!

After spending the day reading, around 3:30pm the two of us went for a walk. Theresa told me there was a volleyball court here before we came. I even packed one of my real AVP volleyballs and a pump, just in case we ran into someone who might want a game. Once we saw the net, yeah, I don't think we're going to get in any good games here. There's really no court to speak of and it's too close to the surrounding lounge chairs.

That and the height is very very low. Oh well. Let's find something else to do.

How about some snorkeling before dinner.

That glass floor is our bungalow. Here's the view from the other side. Yes, you can look right in, should you be so inclined.

From the pictures you've seen above, the water is pretty crystal clear, which means that there's not a whole lot of rocks and coral. Pretty for pictures, but not so good for snorkeling. It was really only around the bungalows and the walkways that the fish were congregating.

But from the photo above, we didn't want to be swimming under anyone's bungalows. That left the walkways.

There were a few interesting fishes around. But what was plentiful were the sea cucumbers. Tons and tons of sea cucumbers. Little brown cylindrical tubes laying on the bottom of the sand. It looks like a forest of, well, not so nice stuff.

Dinner time! Couldn't find any Chef Boyardee, but these canned raviolis will do. Add in some Ritz crackers and delicious Rotui juice. Yum.

The next morning was calm and beautiful like usual.

There's always been plenty of fruit available for breakfast.

Pickles? Raw fish? Not my sort of breakfast food, but hey, at least they have lots of options.

I don't think the resort is particularly busy this week. There's seating that's not on the water, but those seats are never taken. Every morning it's been possible for us to get a table for 2 right on the water.

Breakfast is a time to fill up on food for the day. Omelet, bacon, cheese, pastries.

And I thought I'd mix it up a little with the pancakes today, topping them with Nutella and butter. Nutella is one of those special vacation treats. Delicious.

Getting back to the bungalow, out on the deck, I saw a lot of action between three stingrays. I yelled for Theresa to come look, but by that time, they were going under the bungalow and towards the walkway. We both ran out the front door, Theresa a little ahead of me.
Now this next part, T said I was going to make fun of her for it, but really it's just funny.
I came up by her leaning over the railing, taking a few pictures, similar to the one below.
Me - Whatcha taking pictures of?
T - The stingrays
Me - Are you sure those are the stingrays?
They weren't moving. Turns out they were three rocks that were about the right size.

Once we figured that out, we were able to relocate the stingrays again.

Fun to see the wildlife up close like that.

Off they go again.

The rest of the day, really, all we do is lay out on the deck and read books. Can't beat this view.

Whoa, whoa. What's that?

The entire mountain and it's not covered with clouds? It didn't happen too frequently on this trip.

Once the hot part of the day had passed, and the UV index was back down to something more reasonable, around 5pm, Theresa and I ventured from the shade of our deck and into the water on our pool floats.

Dinner tonight is Ritz crackers, a variety of different cheeses, two different salamis, peanut butter, and jelly.

And a big hunk of goat cheese. Mmm.

Being treated to a beautiful sunset once again tonight. My prediction is that tomorrow is going to be a lot more of the same.