Perspective

These manta rays in Bora Bora were about 14' from wingtip
to wingtip.

One evening at dinner, we were discussing the relative poverty levels of much of the world compared to the U.S. and other first-world countries. This, of course, was a rarity since most dinnertime topics seem to be either the boys discussing "strategy" about how to kill zombies in their one iPad game or us trying to explain why putting a piece of food the size of a baseball onto your fork is not considered to be good manners.  But I digress...back to world poverty. Mark chimed in with, "Well, we're poor, because we don't have a lot."

It just goes to show, you can always find something to complain about

Snorkeling in Bora Bora.

One of our guidebooks quips that the best kept secret about French Polynesia is the lousy weather. We tend to agree with that (although everything is relative--we're not talking snow and freezing temperatures). Even when it's not raining, we have had to run our generator more than we have anywhere else during our two and a half years of cruising because of the cloudiness. We actually had to use jackets during a couple of passages for the first time since the Bahamas and sheets while sleeping. And yes, I am well aware that we are now complete babies when it comes to weather (what? it's not sunny and 80 F every day?!).  Luckily we have had plenty of postcard perfect days along the way too, but we did feel bad for the guests of a buddy boat of ours who unfortunately hit a really ugly streak of rainy weather during their 2 weeks here.  They still had a great time, as have we, since the beauty of the islands and the friendliness of the people transcends whatever the weather is serving up.

Amazing experiences, all the time--um, no

 

'To our tormentors'

Conrad and Mark wrote the note above during the recent several-hour passage from Huahine to Raiatea. Inside, the note reads, 'Subject: Don't be lame and torture us.' The body reads, 'I will not be able to live without touching Mark for the rest of the passage.' There are very detailed pictures of how we are torturing them.

Hanging out in Tahiti

We have a ton of great shots of Mark being mauled by the very tame stingrays in Moorea. He was remarkably unphased by having stingrays all over him (there's a great shot of one on his face on our Facebook page). Conrad, on the other hand, was having none of it.