South Pacific
French Polynesia & Bora Bora
The lagoon is not really blue; it is a ladder of blues, from gin-clear over the sand to lapis at the pass. Gauguin ran out of words. You will too.
The Society Islands are volcanic hearts ringed by coral atolls, and the only way to see them properly is from the water that made them. We overnight in Bora Bora's lagoon beneath Mount Otemanu, so you see the mountain turn rose at dawn and violet at dusk.
Between islands: vanilla curing sheds on Taha'a, a marae temple on Raiatea older than the moai, and Moorea's Opunohu Bay, where Cook anchored and where lunch is poisson cru made by a family we have known for years.
Ports & places
Where we call
Two days in the lagoon: rays and reef sharks off the marina platform, a private motu dinner, Otemanu above it all.
Cook's anchorage under the shattered crown of Mount Rotui; swim with stingrays in chest-deep, silk-clear water.
The air itself smells of vanilla. Visit a family plantation, then snorkel the coral garden drift between the motus.
Polynesia's great voyaging temple, UNESCO-listed — departure point of the canoes that settled a third of the planet.
Roulottes food trucks on the waterfront, black pearls in the market, and the silhouette of Moorea at sailaway.
In the frame
The light of the place
