Tips 👏
- The most beautiful lagoon of our trip.
- Equally expensive as the other islands.
- If you’re staying on a resort on a private island, be ready to get ripped off.
- The resorts are on the surrounding atolls. We were hapilly surprised to find out that the main island is still very authentic.
🏠 Accommodation
We split in two parts, a very nice AirBnB with a private beach and motu, and the Intercontinental le Moana, see below.
🚲 Getting there
Flight with Air Tahiti from Huahine, for about 25 minutes.
⏱ Duration
We stayed there four days, but could have done easily six if we had the money.
Scuba diving 🐟
We did two dives during the same day (Anau and reef border) and the sub-marine life was really good. We managed to see a manta ray of 3 meters, quite a lot of black tip sharks, a big lemon shark, a lot of fishes and even a turtle.
We’re both graduated divers (PADI Open Water) but you can still dive if you don’t have any experiences until 12m below the surface. We did it with Eleuthera near Matira Point and it was 60£/dive. The dive center was very organized but our guide was not very professional and we felt rushed so sadly we wouldn’t recommend them (we had to dive without a personal computer since they didn’t had any). But definitely make sure to dive in Bora-Bora!
Boat tour 🛶
The owner of our AirBnB also owned a boat, and proposed us a private tour of the island full-day. That was incredible, we can’t recommend that to you enough. It can be quite expensive if you’re alone, but really worth it.
Our host brought us to several snorkelling spots where we swam with rays and sharks (we even spotted eagle rays on the way). He also showed us from close all the resorts from the island, stopped to take the best pictures of the lagoon, and brought us on his personal motu (private island) where we had lunch and fresh coconut and where we could get on the end of the reef (lunch not included, but the host provide ice pack). Spectacular views of the lagoon, the ocean, the mountain and the underwater life.
Hotels 🏨
We stayed two nights at the AirBnB of Tereva. Really amazing place, with private access to the lagoon (we took breakfast on top of the sea) and very organised owner (airport pick-up and drop-off). Ideal for two or four people (there’s two different little houses in the AirBnB). The place had a kitchen, washing machine and also kayak and paddle for free. It’s a bit far away of everything but we rented a car from the owner so that was fine.
We then stayed two nights at the Intercontinental le Moana, located at Matira Point. We used our fidelity points to get two free nights, and paid an upgrade to get an over-water bungalow. That was very expensive but bloody amazing. The bungalows were big and looked brand-new, including a private ladder to go and swim in the crystal clear lagoon, a huge bedroom and even a glass table which we could open to feed the underneath fishes.
We also used paddle/kayak for free to explore the coral garden in front of the hotel. Let’s face it, it’s luxury, but it’s a real treat. The good part of this hotel is that we were still on the land, so we could still go out for dinner and avoid to pay the crazy resort prices for everything.
The last evening, we went to watch the epic sunset with the local kids at Matira Point.
Restaurants 🍲
There’s some roulottes on the island, mainly around the Vaitape harbour. For a more fancy dinner, we found the following:
- Bora Bora Beach Club: We been there two times on four days, they do the best half-cooked red tuna we ever eaten, for 3200XPF. They also do plenty of other dishes, a bit fancy, but try the tuna.
Hope this was helpful, you can ask us any questions on Instagram.