Arriving in Bora Bora is one of those memories where the feeling will live with me forever. This place is so beautiful, I almost cried a number of times. It feels like a fake place in a video game, it’s just so beautiful!
Day 1 in Bora Bora started with a short flight, then boat ride to the Intercontinental Thalasso, where we were welcomed with a flower lei and a conch shell horn.
We enjoyed the pool, had a mai tai in a coconut, played on the Bora Bora swing and went for a kayak until our room was ready.
Wow, what a room! The room is truly unbelievable.
Dinner over a Polynesian show was awesome.
The next day we went into the mainland and hired a twizzy to drive around and do a couple of hikes. We decided not to do the big 6-8hr hike because our accommodation was too good to stay away from, but the two hikes we did do were really cool and gave some amazing views across Bora Bora.
We had a poisson crud and a Hinano lager which went down amazingly at Aloe Café, then picked up supplies for dinner for the next few nights. Andrew blew up one of the floaties (best purchase ever by Andrew!) and we had a relaxing evening watching the mountain, then the stars.
Day 3 I had my (birthday present, thank you Andrew!) coconut wrap and massage at Deep Ocean Spa. The coconut wrap was confusing, but awesome. After confirming I wasn’t claustrophobic, the process started off sitting on a big plastic sheet, then being slathered with amazing smelling coconut cream with bits of coconut in it, and finished with being wrapped in what I can only describe as a giant air mattress (similar to the one thrown around to celebrate Collingwood’s win), with warm bubbling water underneath you for about 20m. So, weird, but awesome! The massage was also amazing; I chose the pineapple smelling oil which left my skin feeling incredible. My favourite part was the sound bowl thing that was used both as a relaxing sound, and as part of a massage when it was placed on me (head, back, legs) and sounded which felt lovely.
Andrew purchased a day pass and we spent some time enjoying the spa facilities. My favourite was the steam room, Andrew’s the wading spa, and we both loved to hate the deep water ice plunge which I cannot believe I did, and was the coldest thing I’ve ever experienced! Andrew compared it to sliding rock in Asheville; it was painfully cold but also wildly invigorating, I can see why ice baths are a thing.
We borrowed some snorkels and looked around the resort area which was surprisingly good snorkelling, then took a kayak to check out what we could see around our place (not much at all). We definitely had the most pimped out hut at the resort! That night we watched Moana/Viana which is so clearly set on Bora Bora.
Our last full day we enjoyed the accommodation as much as possible, spending most of our time on our floaties. We ducked into the resort at lunchtime to catch the days’ activity which was basket weaving. Andrew was amazing at it! He even kept correcting my mistakes. My contribution was the handle part (which was mostly just a plait), and we were really happy with the end result which was actually useful to carry our wet bathers around. That night we watched the ukulele band over a light dinner, and way too many cocktails.
We woke up early to enjoy our last day in paradise as much as possible. Breakfast, a bath, and more floating where we saw a proposal on the bungalow next to ours! It was so lovely. The guy set up a tripod camera with the ruse that it was to film two members of the resort as they rowed up on a white outrigger to prepared breakfast for them (something you could pay for). In The mean time, he proposed and shouted “she said yes!” The most memorable part though was that during the entire thing, Andrew was twitting about doing the most ridiculous stuff in the background. He managed to flip his floaty while trying to get on from the ladder, lost his sunnies (for the second time), found them and dived for them (without losing a contact!) then got on his floatie and spent about 5 minutes trying to reach up to get the sunnies off the ledge. I had to muffle my laughter to not ruin their special moment. I sincerely hope some of this is on their footage. We gave them our floaties as a congratulations gift, which they started using, and we hope they passed along to the next people when they left.
I’ve never been so sad leaving anywhere as I was leaving Bora Bora, I actually cried when the shell horn sounded the start of our boat trip to the airport.
