Bora Bora is one of the most romantic travel destination in the world! It is part of Polynesian Islands in the Southern Pacific and belongs to the country of Tahiti. It is known to have the clearest water in the world and have a calm lagoon, which allows many of the resort to build the world famous over water bungalows.
The only flight to Bora Bora is from Papeete, Tahiti. To get to Papeete, Tahiti, the only flight from North America is from L.A at around 11:30pm. Air Tahiti Nui leaves at 11:30pm and arrives at Papeete, Tahiti around 5am. Then you take Air Tahiti at around 7:30am to get to Bora Bora at 8am. This means that you will have to spend 2 hours at Tahiti Airport. The Tahiti Airport is quite small and most shops are not open this early in the morning. You can use this time wisely to read some tourist guide about Bora Bora. If you have already done your homework and know what you want to do, make sure you bring some games to entertain yourself during these 2 hours. Remember that when you board the plane to Bora Bora, make sure you sit on the left side of the plane. This will allow you to have a aerial view of Bora Bora when the plane flies over the island! Most people don't know about this and missed the amazing view of Bora Bora from the sky!
Once you get to Bora Bora airport, the hotel resort that you are staying at will be giving a warm welcome and picking you up at the airport. Essentially they will be checking you in at the airport and carry your luggage for you. They will load your luggage onto the boat and take you to the resort. We chose to stay at Four Seasons Bora Bora, and it did not disappoint. The boat is new and more fancy than most of the other resort. When we arrived at Four Seasons Bora Bora Resort, there were already hotel employees waiting at the dock greeting us. There was 1 hotel employees serving each family. The hotel employee also served us mango slush! It is so good! Remember that when you arrive at the resort, it is still early in the morning and the hotel may not be able to check you in yet if the resort is fully booked and people have not checked out yet. If you want to freshen up and take a shower, you can use the shower at the spa. It is a very nice shower room. Then you can head to the beach and also go to the restaurant for brunch. I recommend that you go visit Vaitape on the first day when you get to Bora Bora and have a walk there.
Vaitape is the largest city on the main island of Bora Bora. All the resorts should provide free shuttle service to Vaitape. There are usually 3 shuttle services each day. When you get to Vaitape, make sure you go to The Farm Bora Pearl Company for a real pearl diving experience! The Farm Bora Pearl Company has few pearl farms located 3m under the sea and allows guests to dive under to fetch the oyster themselves. This activity costs around $300 but it is definitely worth the experience! Once you fetch the oyster, you can pick one to be opened up and you will get the pearl that is inside the oyster that you chose. Tahiti is known for breeding large black pearls. If you are lucky, you will be able to find a big one! If you happen to find a small one or one that doesn't look good and you dont like it, you can choose to trade with the store for a pearl that has an equivalent value to $300. Note that if you plan to go to The Farm Bora Pearl Company, make sure you call them first and tell them that you are coming. They will send someone to pick you up from the dock and take you back to the dock afterwards.
Once you got back to the dock, you should still have more than enough time to take a walk around Vaitape. You can visit all the different pearl store and look at those gigantic black pearl! These pearls are extremely expensive but people still buy them! On the side of the street, you will also find a very old Coca Cola vending machine and a very nicely painted church. There is also a super market there where you can buy some snack and drinks if you like. In addition, most of the stores at Bora Bora accepts credit card, so you don't have to worry about having not enough cash. Just keep in mind that most stores only accepts Visa and Master card. Most of them don't accept American Express. Moreover, most restaurants don't expect you to pay them tips. But if you insist, you can pay tips as well.
The resort also offers many different cool excursion experience. The one we did is a package for jet ski and shark/sting ray snorkeling experience. In the morning, the boat took us to a location that has tons of sharks and string rays. You might be worried about the sharks, but these are reef sharks. They are not aggressive and don't even go near you. Just make sure you don't go too close to them and never try to touch a shark! The sting rays do go near you however, and you can choose to feed them too! Sometimes the sting ray would lay on your foot and even lay on your back! Don't panic if the sting rays does do lay on you since they are not aggressive. Just swim away slowly and they will just swim away as well. Please do remember not to grab sting ray's tail!
After visiting sharks and sting rays, the guide took us to the coral garden for a bit of snorkeling to look at all the beautiful fish out there. The coral garden was beautiful. The best thing is that there aren't many people there. So we get to snorkel around the coral garden ourselves. There were a lot of beautiful fish swimming and hiding around the coral. If this is your first snorkeling experience, I suggest you to practice breathing through the tube first. Also, be careful not to get scratched by the coral since they are actually quite hard and can cut you.
At noon, the boat took us to the main island and have lunch at Bloody Mary. It is a pretty cool restaurant if you ask me and it has a lot of characters to it. The ground of the restaurant is filled with white sand, so don't wear your sneakers with you! The bathroom at Bloody Mary is also kind of unique. It has some adult contents there, but it is still interesting! Bloody Mary serves mostly fish burgers and fries with pineapples. The burger actually tasted different than what we used to in North America.
In the afternoon, we went for a ride on jet ski. You get to ride the jet ski and go completely around the lagoon! 2 people share a jet ski, but you do have a chance to switch the pilot in the middle of the tour. If this is your first time doing jet ski, I recommend you to put more strength on maneuvering the jet ski. It actually gets harder to turn as the jet ski goes faster. Also, if the weather is windy, it will create small waves on the lagoon. This might make the jet ski ride more bumpy. During the tour, the guide also took us to a private island of his, and showed us how to open a coconut when you don't have any tool. He also explained to us the difference between coconut milk and coconut juice. I didn't even know what coconut milk is!
Other than drinking cocktails and laying on the beach to enjoy the sun, the spa is amazing at Four Seasons Bora Bora. It is the best experience we have ever had. When we got to the spa, the hotel employee first asked us to select the type of ingredient that we want to use. There is like over 20 different ingredient! Once we have selected the ingredient, hotel employee led us into a small room that is built on top of the lagoon. It has glass floor beneath that bed that you lay on, and there are coral reef right under it! The massage service is about an hour to relax your muscle. You can choose the intensity of the massage as well. After the massage is done, they told us we can have this room for an hour for ourselves. They also brought in fresh fruit and served us cocktail drinks. There is a Jacuzzi on the balcony of the room that we can use to enjoy the view and feel the breeze of the wind. It made me feel like I was living in paradise! Sadly, good time always passes by rather fast. An hour later, we had to exit the room and head out. If you would like to do the spa, make sure you call them and make reservation before hand because it gets full very quickly!
The overall experience at Bora Bora is just amazing. We feel like it is what paradise is like. During the day you have the view of azure blue lagoon and perfectly green mountain. At night, you have the view of milky way in the the starry sky. Unfortunately the good time always pass by very fast. The recommendation I have is that if you are concerned about spending too much, Bora Bora may not be a place for you to go to. It is definitely considered as a luxury vacation destination. Also, when you go to Bora Bora, June to September is that best time to go when the probability of precipitation is the lowest. In addition, although almost all the shops take credit card at Bora Bora(Visa/Master), make sure you still carry around $500-$1000 USD of cash with you just in case.
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