Moorea and Bora Bora are both part of the French overseas territory called French Polynesia. If you think like me that French Polynesia has just a couple of islands, you’re as wrong as I was. It consists of 118 islands which cover an area as big as the European Union. This is one of the last overseas colonies but probably not for a long time as they will have a referendum next year where the Polynesians can decide if they become independent or not. This is a big topic for them and when talking to them you can get a sense of their uncertainty if the independence will be the better choice. It’s funny how they ask you questions like “Is it better to be independent?”  or “Is Germany independent?”.  But considering that France takes care of main areas like education or public services it`s questionable if they are ready for the change.

On both the islands you have a couple of options to spend your time, the favorite option being to just sit and stare at the amazing greenish water. But then there are also Tahitian cultural shows or you can just grab a kayak and explore the islets called Motu or you can go and discover the underwater world. If you see all this paradise it’s hard to believe that France used parts of French Polynesia for their nuclear tests, the latest ones being less than 20 years ago. Maybe that’s why you see fish having all the possible colors :=)

A funny story is that before we arrived to French Polynesia I learnt another two things.

First, that you can never be too early at the departure gate as it might happen that you are randomly selected for a chemical test and the results may reveal that you have traces of explosives. But fortunately the dog that was brought to smell on my belongings was more interested in another lady’s purse than in my brand new daypack so it was a false alarm and we arrived just in time at the gate.

The second learnt lesson is that you should be careful when flying over the “end of the world” as the edge of the time zones is around French Polynesia. That means that we flew on Friday evening from Auckland and arrived on Thursday in Tahiti. What a cool thing to just win a day after a five hours flight. The drawback of the story is that when flying back to Auckland even though it’s again just an over day five hours flight you arrive one calendar day later and because we bought separate flight tickets we had to change the flight to Australia and the hotel bookings in Australia and Auckland.

Next stop

The Great Barrier Reef