Day 13 - Wednesday 17 January 2024

Day 13 of the big trip, and my last full day on Bora Bora and in French Polynesia. It may take a little time for the next blog as I fly out of Bora Bora at 20:10 tomorrow (Thursday), then take off from Papeete to fly to Auckland, New Zealand at 03:00 on Friday. I arrive in Auckland at 07:40 on Saturday thanks to crossing the International Date Line and losing a day, it’ll probably be on Saturday that the blog is next updated.

On returning from breakfast I took the opportunity to review yesterday’s footage and edit the week 2 video up to date, then onto the balcony and back into the latest book; I suspect I shan’t have much time for reading once I leave here!

At around 11.00 I wandered over to reception to get the plan of action for departure. Check out is at 11.00, so I’ll get a chance to pack tomorrow and see whether my plan of capturing the order that stuff came out a few days ago is useful. My transfer to the ferry and then the airport is at 18:20; less then two hours from the departure of the flight back to Papeete, but I’ll trust that they know what they are doing. They have a secure location for me to store my baggage, and a shower for my use before departure, so that all sounds well planned. There are times that I hate to be so damned organised!

I also sent a message to my next hotel in New Zealand; I’m scheduled to land there at 07:40 so I’m interested to know whether I can have an early check in. I also went to the Air New Zealand site to see if I could pre-book a seat, but that’s not possible for economy currently; I’ll try again at breakfast tomorrow as an aisle seat will be a preference.   

Back to the room, and the day was spent with my head in a book. There were a couple of hard showers that came over, but it is the wet season; it was quite amusing to watch those on sun loungers gather all of their stuff quickly and head for shelter! While I was on yesterday’s excursion, one of the guides mentioned that it was so windy and unsettled at the moment as there is a hurricane not far from the archipelago, so here’s hoping that it doesn’t steer it way in this direction for tomorrow.

In to dinner at around 18.30 and back to the room to compose todays blog; not much to report I’m afraid ….. just a nice calm day before the storm of 4 months of touring!

So, as my mind turns to ending the French Polynesia leg of the trip, what are my thoughts? French Polynesia has been everything I hoped it would be; the sun, the ocean, the scenery when you get away from the coast have all been fantastic. I’ve only done the three excursions, but what excursions they were; I’d happily do them all again.

French Polynesia has been as expensive as I’d expected, so I’ve had to be a little careful with the pennies; the oaty bars that I bought from home have been a useful lunch substitute to help try to keep the costs down, but when a basic one course meal costs over £25.00 you have to be a little careful. But that’s the price you pay when you go somewhere isolated in the middle of the Pacific ocean that has to import everything apart from fish and fruit; I have definitely been trying not to convert local prices to a UK equivalent as if I did I'd buy nothing!