I Visited the Little-known 'Vanilla Island' — and Found Neon Sunsets, Friendly Sharks, Overwater Bungalows, and Tree House Dining

On an unplanned adventure, one travel writer visits Bora Bora and neighborhing Taha’a island and falls hard for Taha'a, the South Pacific's Vanilla Island.

I wasn’t supposed to be in Bora Bora. I was supposed to be almost a thousand miles to the northwest, in a different French Polynesian archipelago. I was supposed to be on the hybrid cargo-cruise ship Aranui 5, sailing around the remote Marquesas Islands. But I'd tested positive for COVID-19 upon arrival in Tahiti and spent a week in quarantine, missing the Aranui's sailing while my friend Bailey (whom I'd lured away from real life with the promise of a tropical cruise) puttered around the nearby island of Mo'orea.

But sometimes unhappy accidents become happy ones. Once I was free to rejoin society, Bailey and I had an unexpected week to kill before the ship’s next sailing, and we found ourselves taking off from Papeete on one of Air Tahiti’s twin-propeller island hoppers, droning among cumulus billows over a white-capped sea, thrilling when Bora Bora’s iconic green witch’s hat of a central mountain, Mt. Otemanu, tilted into view below.

At Pearl Resorts’ freshly renovated 108-room property Le Bora Bora, wooden walkways studded with thatched overwater bungalows curve like fern leaves through the aquamarine shallows. The resort is built on Bora Bora’s barrier reef, and the deck of our bungalow hovered over warm, clear water, with a view across the lagoon to Mt. Otemanu. Some accident of time and geology has given Otemanu a silhouette so spectacular that it seems to mean something; it seems to have a message for you, if only you stare at it long enough. We watched the sun rise behind it and later, on an evening cruise, a full moon hover over the mountain. On a rainy day, we watched it vanish and reappear in the mist, its looming bulk black and ominous among flashes of lightning. Most of the time, we stared at it through clear, bright, tropical sunshine while lazing on our deck, occasionally dropping into the water for a snorkel around the resort’s coral garden.

Le Bora Bora has a very nice pool we never swam in, three restaurants, and a lovely spa — and you can kayak on the lagoon and paddleboard and see a Tahitian dance show. Pearl Resorts is the world’s only Polynesian-owned hotel collection, and almost all of its staff are Polynesian, many local enough to commute to work by boat. The bungalows and villas are luxurious in an understated way, with sprawling bathrooms and fun complimentary drinks in the minifridge. It’s all exceptionally, dreamily pleasant, but it turned out that, despite my infatuation with Mt. Otemanu, my heart belonged to Taha’a, the Vanilla Island.

To get to Taha’a, you fly to a different island, Raiatea. The two of them share a lagoon and are encircled by one barrier reef. You walk from the terminal directly down to a dock where the air smells like vanilla and a boat is waiting to take you north to Taha’a and then to a small islet, called a motu, just offshore. Here, at another Pearl Resorts property, Le Taha’a, our bungalow was charmingly old school, with lots of thatch and varnished wood. Beyond our deck was sheer tranquility: blue curacao water ending in a distant white line where surf broke on the reef. Later, I floated and drifted under a neon sunset, the only sound the nearby plunk-plunk of jumping fish. We’re in the middle of the ocean, Bailey and I marveled out loud. You really feel it on Taha’a, the way the planet bends away from you.

Le Taha’a’s restaurant is the giant thatched tree house of childhood dreams, and the large brass pineapple in which my cocktail was served was a more grown-up fantasy. I ate fish marinated in coconut milk and a local delicacy: korori, the muscle of a pearl oyster, touched with black truffle oil. It was pale and delicious, like a firmer scallop. There is a pool with a swim-up bar at Le Taha’a, and a coral garden for snorkeling. One breezy evening, we paddleboarded away from the beach, around another motu. There, on the horizon, was our old friend Mt. Otemanu, both far away and not far at all.

One morning, we took the resort’s boat shuttle over to Taha’a proper for a tour with Terainui Tours. Our guide, George Teihotaata, seemed utterly delighted to have spent his entire life in Taha’a except for a stint in the marines that had taken him around the South Pacific. “Here, we have no airport. It’s quiet. The lagoon is quiet,” he said about Taha’a. He tipped his head at distant Mt. Otemanu. “On Bora Bora, everyone is in a hurry.”

Winding along jungle roads in the back of a canopied truck, we visited a pearl farm, a rum distillery, and a vanilla plantation that has been in one family for four generations. Did you know that, except for in Mexico, where a native bee species does the work, vanilla orchids must be pollinated by hand? It requires a toothpick, a steady touch, and excellent timing. As rain clouds gathered, we boarded a small boat, and George steered us out into the lagoon. From behind the helm, he blew a conch shell to announce our arrival to the growing crowd of blacktip reef sharks following in our wake, eager for the chicken giblets George tossed them. On his days off, he said, he came to this same spot, to fish and to swim. The lagoon creatures knew him. When the feeding was over, we hopped off the boat to snorkel among the curious, harmless sharks. A sting ray appeared and flattened its belly against George’s back in a fishy hug. He said he’d named her Sophie.

“The definition of life!” George shouted as we motored away, heading for lunch on a tiny private motu he owned with his aunt. “It’s here! Taha’a!”

We tend to think of these balmy mid-ocean isles as respites or escapes from life, but of course they are life, both for we-the-visitors and the people who call them home. Though, there is still something special about the kind of life where you can pause and take a deep breath, and the air is sweet with vanilla.

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