Bora BORA

Bora Bora was our second and final destination that required a tender to get ashore.
To be honest after the beautiful day we had in Moorea, Bora Bora got off to a rocky start, it was raining. And windy. And cold.

tender

On this day, I had expressed to Ri that I needed to be near nice clean facilities. So we decided to get a day pass to the intercontinental, which had been so amazing in Moorea.

It wasn't as nice as the one in Moorea, the staff at the desk were unpleasant and it didn't have the same beautiful coral reef or dolphins or turtles. We did some snorkelling, but it was much colder than it was in Moorea (because of the wind).

The staff inside were lovely, our pass included access to the beach and lunch, but one member of staff brought us out some pastries from the breakfast buffet, for the kids. He also got us some extra towels for the kids when he noticed Arch was cold. Super nice.

We spent a bit of time on the beach, reading, building a sandcastle and running around the beach.
The lunch was nice, the best part was not having to hunt around for somewhere to eat, it didn't take a large chuck of our day from us. It was just relaxing and yummy.

Lunch with my little man

We checked out the beach across the road from the hotel and it was nice, but a lot busier. We didn't really have time to get into the water and have a good snorkel.

The other beach

My least favourite part of cruising was the short days that we had on shore, we had to be back at the boat by 3:30pm. And I think we tendered at 9am. We might go on other cruise, but if we don't, that would be the reason. Everything else about it was great. I'd recommend at least trying it once.

Before boarding the tender we found a shave ice place and had a sneaky shave ice while we waited to be herded onto the penultimate tender.

Shave ice on Bora Bora 

Moorea

We had to use one of the little tender boats to get to Moorea, of the five places that we went to, this one was my favourite and I hope to get back there one day for a week, so we can better explore the island.
The shape of the island reminded me of a dino-foot print. (Sometimes it's those weird small details that you want to remember, so excuse me for slipping that in. Or blurting it out, that's probably a better description of that sentence.)

We started our day by hiring a car, the car hire was right next to the intercontinental, which had a dolphin centre and a turtle rehabilitation section. We went up to the dolphin centre with the plan of just seeing some dolphins, but when we read the guidelines, they allowed children as young as 2 to swim with the dolphins (as long as they were held by a parent/common sense - don't take it your child if you know they will hurt the animal or freak out).
We were so excited by this. At one of our local theme parks, that has dolphins (Sea world) only children 9 and older can swim with the dolphins. I understand why they would have this age limit.
But I also appreciated the chance to let my small ones swim with dolphins.
The people at the dolphin centre were so lovely, they helped us get a time slot that ensured that we would be back in time to catch one of the last tenders for the ship, although I don't think I would have been that sad to be left behind. The staff were amazing to us, and we weren't even guests at their hotel, we made that very clear. But they still treated us like we were important to them.
Stuck on this gorgeous island.
But we did have Bora Bora coming up next, and I still thought that it would be even better (wrong).   And I would have definitely been devastated to not finish out the holiday with Erin et al. They had decided to do a boat tour that day. But that was something I loved about travelling with them. We did things together and we did things apart, but always came back together for dinner.
Love those guys.
Ok so once we had our dolphin appointment time provided for us, we went for a drive on the western side of the island. Found a cute place to have lunch, called the Plantation. We had the entire place to ourselves (and wifi... woot woot). The price for the internet our a carnival cruise is just insane. So I'd gone on a social media diet. And I was dying to know if my friend had had her baby yet (no news). I posted a few photos and we ordered a couple of vegetarian pasta dishes. They took a while to cook, but the result was oh so good. The waitress/owner told us they it was cooked outside over a fire, well whatever they did. It was GOOD.

lunch

We were early back to the dolphin centre so we spent sometime looking at the turtles that were being rehabilitated. They were so beautiful.

I think words are going to fail me, when I try to explain what it was like to swim with the dolphins. You don't realise how powerful these animals are. The trainer had a kiss the dolphins and when I was staring Koa (the dolphin) straight in the eyes, down past his body, I was acutely aware of how strong and big he was. We gave him pats, saw him do some flips, and the trainer did a great job of engaging the kids and explaining dolphin anatomy and physiology to them.
We took away the video, to help the kids consolidate the memory.
But even if they forget it (Arch will).
I will remember this experience for the rest of my life. It was magic.

Our two year old eagerly waiting to swim with a dolphin

After swimming with Koa, we went for a ten minute drive to the east side of the island (within the third claw of the dinosaur print) and did some snorkelling. Beautiful. Unfortunately the kids were not quite into snorkelling, but I think they will be in a year or two, and I can't wait to share an experience like the one I had on Moorea with them.
 

Me snorkelling

This isn't my image, its from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs97xAbUtPM but it best sums up what I saw

swimming

Paradise