It's easy to have a wonderful vacation on a cruise.
The onboard experience alone will put a big smile on your face. When the destinations arrive to the door of your floating resort, you choose your own adventure for the day, depending entirely on what appeals to you.
The difference between a good port and an amazing experience is often what you choose to do with your day. In Bora Bora, we chose to abandon our original plan to visit a nearby beach by jitney and instead have an spectacular day.
After withdrawing local currency from a nearby bank, we returned to buy tickets on the stingray-shark-coral garden-motu tour through a family run operation.
Six years earlier, we had done a similar tour in Moorea and still marveled over it, and who knows if we will ever be in this part of the world again?
After a short wait, our boat showed up, driven by the son of the woman who sold us our ticket.
The gentle giant behind the wheel took time to describe all the hotels we passed as we cruised through remarkable shades of water. As in Grand Cayman's Stingray City, long ago someone figured out that stingrays attracted by the sound of the boat engines could be coaxed to return daily if they were fed fish scraps, and a tourist excursion was born.
The stingrays are very friendly, smooth and soft to the touch, like dolphins. Our first encounter with stingrays years earlier was before the Crocodile Hunter met his untimely demise as the result of a stinger, but even knowing that we weren't worried. We were given chunks of fish to rub on the snouts of the stingrays so they would swim around us. Our jovial boat captain called the stingrays his babies, and indeed they seemed to be like pets. A few sharks showed up too, and we assumed this was a combined stop.
Our next stop was the coral garden, and our guide led us through fabulous coral growth where some brightly colored fish added to the views. Both Julie and I had to admit this was more spectacular in many ways than the Great Barrier Reef. The proud native of Bora Bora swam ahead of us, often pushing off coral with his big feet. Now considering most everywhere else we have been warned to never stand or touch coral, I had to ask him about this when we got back by the boat. He just said Bora Bora coral is strong and resilient. I think it has more to do with how few tourists there are in Bora Bora compared to other dive areas.
We hung out for a long time by the boat, where beautiful, diverse fish were plentiful.
As we got back on the boat, a check of my watch verified that we would probably be heading back if the tour was to end as scheduled.
Our guide, however, wasn't through showing off his island.
We went to another stop for sharks, and this was another highlight.
No matter how much you tell yourself that this must be safe or they wouldn't let you do it, you feel some adrenaline kick in when jump into the clear water with sharks darting around everywhere.
We weren't allowed to wear flippers, and a fellow passenger told about her son, who on a previous trip had a big chunk bit out of his flipper when he hung his leg over the side of the boat.
This was not a quick stop either.
Our guide truly enjoyed his job and didn't want to leave any more than the rest of us.
We still had another stop, a motu with a sandy beach and awesome views of the main island. There was no lunch there, but we had some drinks and fresh pineapple as we rode back to Bora Bora.
Our driver put his girlfriend/first mate at the wheel and played his guitar for us, singing traditional Bora Bora songs along with a couple of old rockers.
We had a little more time left, and we took the jitney to the beach where we had planned to go originally.
It was okay, but nothing compared to the rest of the day.
