Bora Bora, a volcano going under

1. An almost-atoll, that is, a volcano in the act of disappearing

Bora Bora’s subaerial volcanism is dated between 3.45 and 3.10 million years. The island is thus markedly older than Tahiti or Moorea — and that age gap explains everything else.

Darwin worked out the mechanism: a volcano is born, coral settles on its edges, the volcano subsides, the coral keeps growing upwards. In the end only the crown is left: an atoll. Bora Bora is halfway there. It is called an almost-atoll: a stump of basalt still standing in the middle of a crown of motu.

The island is sinking five to fourteen centimetres per thousand years. The lagoon already covers 78 km² against 30 km² of land — two and a half times more water than ground. The crown will outlive the peak.

Two summits dominate: ’Ōtemanu, 727 metres, and Pahia, 661. A single pass opens the lagoon to the ocean, the Teavanui pass, to the west, deep enough for freighters and cruise ships.

And there is that detail nobody tells you: the volcano’s caldera is under your boat. Between Vaitape and motu Toopua, the thirty-metre depths are the crater itself. Toopua, rising to 148 metres, is its west wall left standing. You do not sail round the volcano: you sail inside it.

2. The name: it is not “Bora Bora”

Tahitian has eight consonants: f, h, m, n, p, r, t, v. There is no B. The island’s name is Pora Pora; “Bora Bora” is an 18th-century European transcription, heard by ears that did not have the right alphabet.

Pora Pora means “first-born”: in tradition, the first island drawn out of the ocean after Havai’i — Ra’iātea. An older name, Vava’u, is sometimes proposed and linked to Vava’u in Tonga; that is oral tradition, not an established fact, and we give it as such.

The Marotetini marae, in Faanui Bay, was restored in 1968 by Yosihiko Sinoto; the royal family’s tombs lie nearby. Sources give its ahu as forty-two or fifty metres, depending on the survey.

3. February 1942: four thousand Americans, not a shot fired

On 27 January 1942 a naval force left Charleston. On 17 February it landed at Bora Bora: this was Operation Bobcat, the first American joint operation of the Pacific. Around four thousand four hundred men at the landing — sources give up to seven thousand cumulatively over the period.

They set up a fuel depot, coastal batteries — six to eight seven-inch guns depending on the source, seven of which are still in place on the heights — and, from 16 December 1942, a runway on motu Mute. It opened on 5 April 1943: the first airstrip in French Polynesia.

The base closed on 2 June 1946 without the island ever being attacked. Seven guns still rust above Matira and Farepiti. And the runway built for bombers is the airport you will land on.

That is also why you do not arrive on the island: the airport is on a motu, and the journey ends by boat, to Vaitape.

4. The lagoon, the mountain, and one beach

• The lagoon tour by outrigger motor boat, the classic outing.
• Anau: a cleaning station where around ten manta rays reside, between five and thirty metres deep. Blacktip reef sharks, eagle rays and turtles complete the picture, mostly from May to December.
• Climbing Pahia, 661 metres, or Popoti, shorter — a guide is recommended for both.
• Matira, at the southern point: the island’s only public beach, two to three kilometres of sand.
• The ring road, some thirty tarred kilometres, very manageable by bike or scooter.

On ’Ōtemanu, let us be precise. The summit is reputed unclimbable — the basalt is crumbling and the walls vertical — and it is closed to hikers. Filmed ascents nonetheless exist. So we write “reputed unclimbable”, not “never climbed”: the second is false.

The island’s economy rests almost entirely on tourism: around 36 % of all hotel nights in Polynesia, and close to three jobs in four tied to the sector. The first hotel dates from 1961. That is a strength and a fragility: when the planes stop, everything stops.

5. What people get wrong

• The overwater bungalow is not a Polynesian tradition. It was invented in 1967 at Ra’iātea, at the Bali Hai hotel, by three Americans faced with a plot that had no beach. It is a hotelier’s trick, not a heritage.
• “Bora Bora” is not the local name. Tahitian has no B: it is Pora Pora.
• The lagoon is not 1,446 km². That figure, which circulates everywhere, belongs to Rangiroa. Bora Bora’s is 78 km² — already remarkable against 30 km² of land.
• Bora Bora is not an atoll, and it is not the capital of anything. It is an almost-atoll, and the capital is Pape’ete.
• You do not land on the island. The airport is on motu Mute; the last leg is by boat.

As on our other pages, when sources diverge — the number of guns, the length of the ahu, the 1942 headcount — we give the range. It is less clean-cut, and it is truer.

For the origin of the Polynesian people, the canoe crossings and navigation by the stars, see Where Polynesians come from.