What can be
said or written about Bora Bora that hasn’t already been? Movies such as Mutiny on the Bounty and South
Pacific have conjured up this idyllic Island Paradise to be the Home of Legends
and the Place of Dreams.
Time, however, is not being kind to Bora Bora. Tourism
is now the anchor of the local economy and is bringing about a subtle but real
change to the island feeling. Gone is
the simple lifestyle of quaint village fisherman and their families sustained
completely by the land and the sea. When
we first visited in 1990 there was less of everything. Sometimes less is more. Back then, there were few cars and we walked
dirt roads overrun with large coconut crabs.
Today they are gone replaced by paved roads and more cars per capita
than most large cities. Along with the
hustle and bustle of traffic there are the Ocean Cruise ships, non-existent in
these waters 20 years ago. Today they
come and go with clockwork regularity bringing with them the hordes of tourist
crowds that exhaust the local infrastructure and leave behind them a land filled
with waste and garbage.
The purist
part of Bora Bora remains the atoll waters.
More so on the east side of the island where the cruise ships cannot
go. There you can still swim with the
giant Manta Rays and enjoy the coral reef gardens, provided you go when the
cruise ship launches are not there.
We
are grateful we saw Bora Bora 25 years ago when it was still the Bora Bora of
the movies and close up it was beautiful.
This visit, while we were still able to enjoy a good Burger at Bloody
Mary’s it was 5 times the price without the quaint setting and instead of
island music it is rap music and Wi-Fi.
Today it is Bora Bora the tourist trap, much more romantic from a
distance than upon closer inspection. Bora
Bora was once considered the jewel of the Pacific because of its natural beauty. In my humble opinion the new manmade beauty pales
by comparison. This Jewel has lost its
luster.
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