Tales from the South Pacific
Thursday, May 26th - Bora Bora
Today was our designated "circle the island" day. Though my bony butt had recovered from yesterday's bike ride... we still decided to opt for a motorized form of transportation (in retrospect, a VERY wise decision). The "small" cars and buggies were already rented out for the day (and it was only 9 am)... so we had no choice to go for one of the largest vehicles available to rent -- a four-seater. When we saw it, we had to laugh... as it was easily the smallest car that either of us had ever been in!
It was fun to get out and see the entire island of Bora Bora... though generally a flat road hugging the coast, it did get hilly at times... so biking it would have been a bit of a challenge... especially hitting those hills 5-6 miles into the ride. We had all of our tourbooks out to check out the main attractions around the islands (WWII guns, bungalows owned by Marlon Brando)... but no such luck... even on a little hike up a hill on Day 2 of our stay here we were unable to find any of the remnants of the American cannons left on the island.
Since the island road is only 18 miles long, we ended up driving around it twice. The first time too about 1.5 hours, including some stops. Since we had the car for 4 hours, it seemed a bit silly to turn it in so soon... and needless to say, the rental fee for 4 hours was probably the same amount of $$ that you would pay in the states for a full day (or even 2 days)!
We stopped for lunch at another local place that caught our eye in the guide books... Snack Matira. It was just across the road from Ben's Place and was quite the mix. The menu was completely in French, but the items definitely had an island flavor... though there were certainly the food staples of burgers and pizza. I had a quite delicious mahi mahi - frommage - frites sandwich (that's mahi mahi with cheese and fries) and Todd opted for the cheeseburger.
Given that we were overlooking the gorgeous Bora Bora lagoon from this roadside eatery I had to take a picture... so I present...
A real-life Cheeseburger In Paradise:
Next Up: Time To Say Goodbye (The finale, finally, for real!)
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