Bora Bora!

Bora Bora is amazing, and by Bora Bora I mean the St. Regis, Bora Bora. We took a 45 minute flight from Moorea and the attitude and ease of these inter-island flights has restored my faith in air travel, even airport security. Get this, we took liquids on the plane... IN OUR CARRY ON!

Aerial view of the St. Regis extending from the motu into the lagoon.

As you get off the plane and enter the airport in Bora Bora you instantly feel the difference from Moorea. Whereas Moorea was a bit more laidback (think Maui), Bora Bora was luxury. We didn't get two steps into the airport when the bellboy from the St. Regis called us by name. It is as if he had a picture of us or something. Amanda says it is because we were the last two off the plane and he must have just called everyone else Mr. and Mrs. Derakhshan, but I like to think they just knew somehow. Anyway, the dude whisks us away to a private speedboat while someone else collected our bags. It was about a 10 minute boat ride from the airport to our motu (one of a series of closely spaced coral islets separated by narrow channels). All the nice resorts are on motus and not on the main island of Bora Bora.

Arrival at Bora Bora.

On our private speedboat.

Let me tell you how ridiculous this place is. As the speedboat pulls into the resort, next to the giant St. Regis yacht I might add, we are greeted with a refreshing cold towel and some delicious homemade ice tea, I guess to help us ease into the resort after our arduous journey by private speedboat.

Our home for the next 5 nights.

Our butler, Emmanuel escorts us to the lobby where they collect our passports. He returns in a minute saying our room is being prepared and that he will take us on a tour. A quick lap of the tour and we hop on our golf cart, or club car as they are called here, and we see the rest of the property. It is a 44 acre resort with a tennis court, spa, lounge, gym, pool, beach, three restaurants including Lagoon by Jean Georges, and a man made lagoonarium stocked with fish for snorkeling. We are in room 207, a deluxe overwater bungalow.



First we enjoyed the fresh, ice cold, mango juice provided in our room, one of the many amenities at the St. Regis. Then tanning on our deck, then jumping into the ocean. The water here is much deeper than at Moorea so we got a bit more adventurous.

!!!

Fresh mango juice on the sundeck.

Pool toys in the ocean? Yes.

Picture perfect swan dive! (slight belly-flop in reality)

Emmanuel appears again with a box of truffles and explains the butler service. Yeah, we have our own butler, rather a team of them. They drive you around, get you ice, iron your clothes (i'm serious), and if you want, you can call them and they will come make you coffee or tea in your room. It's so overboard.

The beach at the St. Regis.

Because the resort is so big, there are bicycles everywhere that you can use to get around, though they aren't all in the best of condition. We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring on our beach cruisers.

Dining in Moorea

Our final post from Moorea is our camera's fault. We normally don't take pictures of our food (so tacky!), but our camera had a special "Gourmet" setting so we HAD to try it.

Magret du canard at Te Honu Iti (2500 XPF).

A note about our camera. We are using the sony cybershot DSC-TX10. It is a 16.2 Megapixel, 1080p/60i HD video point-and-shoot but has the advantage of being waterproof to 5.0 meters. Amanda got it right before the trip. We contemplated bringing an SLR with some lenses but in the end we were more interested in a vacation where we weren't carrying a 15 lb bag over our shoulder at all times. We've seen these mini SLR cameras with small detachable lenses, but we didn't have enough time to research them before we left. Amanda picked this one because it was the best of all the waterproof point and shoots on the market. That being said, we have yet to use it in the water because Amanda is afraid that if for some reason it leaks and breaks, then we won't be able to take any pictures. Good thing we got the waterproof camera huh.

Back to the food. Amanda and I are quasi-foodies; we like to eat (who doesn't?) but our concern for our growing bellies, inability to pace ourselves during a meal, and disinterest in fancy-shamncy pretentious dining doesn't fit with the foodie credo.

Tuna tartar at Le Mahagony. 2100 XPF.

Chow mein at Le Mahagony. 1800 XPF.

Despite a wide range of reviews for hotels on TripAdvisor, everyone seemed to agree that the food in French Polynesia is subpar, to the point where we were actually worried. Either we had our expectations sufficiently lowered, or the hoity-toity critics on TripAdvisor were expecting 12 star dinning. We had a fresh tuna dish of some sort with every meal and were never disappointed. We also tried a pizza, a steak, a salad, magret du canard, some chinese food and few desserts. None of them were bad, but I will say that none of them were that memorable. Very few meals are in my mind, and sadly the most memorable meal was the time Amanda and I got food poisoning from Basha's (lebanese food in Montreal). Some close seconds though would be the tasting menu we did with Mitra at Toque, the homemade pumpkin and sage tortellini I had with my dad in Rome, the feasts at Dominic's place when he'd invite me over for copious quantities of persian food, and I guess anything my mom cooked for me as a child because to this day I still love me some mushroom soup on toast, no matter how ghetto it might sound.

Primavera pizza and homemade chocolate mouse delivered from Allo Pizza. 3000 XPF.

Aside from breakfast, which we ate everyday at the Hilton we ate three meals at the hilton, and three at places outside the hotel. Expect to pay ~2500 XPF per entree in Moorea, no matter where you eat.

Risotto (top) and a giant piece of ahi tuna (bottom) at the Hilton. 5000 XPF.

Meringue bowl with raspberry sorbet and white chocolate at the Hilton. 1300 XPF.