Shifting Views – Bora Bora, French Polynesia – [01/29/2013]

I pity people who work in normal offices. Looking out at the same skyline hour after hour, day after day. Nothing ever really changing except which cars are zooming by below you.

My office windows are a vista. Even on this ship, where the library doesn’t have the 180 degree view that it does on the larger classes, there is never anything that’s the same out there from minute to minute, let alone from hour to hour.

Today we’re anchored off the coast of Bora Bora, and our sturdy little tenders are ferrying the guests back and forth between their floating home and one of the most famous pieces of paradise in the world. We can see little of the coastline from here, much of the town is lost in the lush vegetation that covers the island, but it’s to make out the famous bungalows, jutting out over the water on stilts. One day I will be able to afford to stay there, somehow. But today isn’t that day. Today I just watch, and I’m content with that.

As the tenders zip across the lagoon, outrigger canoes follow them, paddling madly as they ride the wake. It must be a thrill, because not a single tender leaves the ship without at least one outrigger trailing it all the way to shore, before turning around and coming back to follow the next tender. That’s all they’ve been doing all day, following our tenders. One wonders if they’re just bored with everything else the island has to offer! From this high up, it’s easy to see why we nick-name them water bugs; they look very, very tiny. In fact, you can barely make out that there are people in the kayaks at all! They could just as easily be propelling themselves!

Inside the office everything is whirring with the sound of clacking keyboards and steaming coffee machines, plus the occasional clatter of silverware and the underlying murmur of conversation in at least three different languages that I can make out. The view in here is never the same either. I’ve learned to get used to it. I just have to remind myself once in a while to pull my nose out of my books and look out the window.