Mark's Pages

"'It's great as long as you live in a five-star bungalow,' quipped a ponytailed Californian who repaired visiting yachts. Bora-Bora, thickly settled with resorts - and a population of seven thousand on only twenty-three square miles of land - was on the brink of environmental collapse. With only one break in the encircling reef, the lagoon couldn't flush the sewage pumped into its once-crystalline water. If the wind and tide ran the wrong way, scum coated the surface. Overfishing had killed off much of the marine life. Fresh water was so scarce it had to be cut off each night from nine P.M. to five A.M."

— Tony Horwitz, Blue Latitudes