Day 21: Bora Bora

The ultimate sail-in. This place was built by a post card company. Check it out:

Here we are, about as far away from modern civilisation as you can find, and some guys phone beeps with an SMS message.
Give me a break. International mobile phone coverage in Bora Bora? How pathetically 21st century can you get? What kind of idiot needs a mobile phone out here?
So I asked myself “who can I ring?”
More to the point, “who can I ring and gloat about being in tropical paradise?”
I figured my brother Gary’s family were ideal. I got through to my sister-in-law Alison, who immediately (and correctly) accused me of showing off. Here’s a pic of us on the phone to Ali in mid-gloat:

We couldn’t get onto the tour we wanted to do, so we caught a tender to shore and went for a wander.
It’s official: this may be the most beautiful island in the world, but it’s really, really - urm - dull. Nicole and Keith may spent $20,000 a week for their little slice of tropical isolation here, but it’s hard to see why. Apart from the reef activities (which we were wait-listed for, but missed out on), the tourist infrastructure is only slightly ahead of McMurdo Station in Antarctica, and frankly I’m not sure about that.
We looked at a few crappy overpriced T-shirts and had a cup of coffee (which I rather liked, although at about $US4 it wasn’t the cheapest cuppa I’d ever had), walked from one end of the town to the other (about 20 minutes in total), and decided to head back to the ship.
Now from a deck-chair on Deck 7, suitably armed with a margarita and a daiquiri, we watched the island as the sun went down, and our opinion of Bora Bora began to rise again.
For dinner we hit the pizza restaurant again. Nothing of particular interest pizza-wise, although I was a bit concerned when I ordered a Diet Coke and the waiter wrote:
D/CK
It wasn’t clear if this was his opinion of me, or if I should expect something unusual in my drink…
Having done next-to-nothing all day we were exhausted, and our evening’s entertainment was doing our laundry (excitement++). There was a very active party happening on top on Deck 12, but we were too tired to take part. So, pathetic old people that we are, we went to bed and watched a David Attenborough documentary instead.