Bora-Bora: cloudy
Bora-Bora: cloudy
The day I sailed over here, Wednesday, was the only really good one since I returned a week ago. The above picture was taken from my mooring at the Bora-Bora Yacht Club that afternoon.
Yesterday was mostly cloudy, though it rained only a few minutes at noon and after dark, and I was able to sit on deck, listen to Gurrumul, and watch a dimmed sunset change the colors of water, cloud and Otemanu, Bora-Bora’s central mountain, with my two evening gin and tonics, sans ice.
I’ve rowed ashore twice. The first time to pick up my laundry, which was expectedly expensive at about $20 U.S. per load. Mostly it was passage clothes that are worth less than it cost to wash them. I also walked to a nearby store, which is the smallest store I have ever been in. Not even one-room. Maybe tool shed. Or closet. There is hardly space to turn around, and definitely not for two people to turn at the same time. However I was able to buy some bottled water and cartons of orange juice that I didn’t have to cart a mile.
After rowing laundry and purchases out to HAWKE, I rowed in again, walked to one of the bigger markets, bought cans of ice tea, soft drinks, crackers, cheese for lunch, and a bottle of red wine and one of Calvados, which is French apple brandy and less expensive here than most things, including gin.
Carted all back along the edge of the narrow two-lane blacktop road which is fairly busy. Flowers and the lagoon on one side. The mountain rising on the other. Small houses tucked beneath trees, some palm, some pine. Coconut crabs scurrying back to their burrows on my approach. Dogs barking at me. Roosters crowing in late morning. Not so bad to be walking along a road on Bora-Bora.
I showered at the Yacht Club. Hot showers, very welcomed even in this climate after freezing at Raiatea Carenage.
Friday, September 11, 2009