Wedding Blog

The second stop on our three-island honeymoon trip was Bora Bora! It’s a short plane ride from Moorea to the island of Bora Bora, and they serve fresh pineapple juice on the flight! We had been told in advance to sit on the left side of the plane, and were rewarded with views like these:

The airport is located on its own private “motu” (island), and so transportation to your hotel is by boat. Another island, more welcome leis (and the shell ones were the goodbye leis from Moorea!):

You’ll have to excuse the photo quality from here on out—we had big time camera issues during our trip, including breaking our normal (non-zoom) digital SLR camera lens, finding out that our “waterproof” digital camera wasn’t, and a non-functioning memory card.

Since we had stayed on land in Moorea, we decided to spring for one of the famous “overwater bungalows” in Bora Bora. We were psyched to find out when we arrived at our hotel (The Bora Bora Pearl) that we had been upgraded from a regular bungalow to a “premium” overwater bungalow! Apparently this isn’t as common as you would hope for honeymooners in French Polynesia, as a good majority of the guests there are in fact on their honeymoon.

The view from the porch looked like this:

Mr. Tiramisu goes for a swim after our ice bucket lid flew off the deck into the water:

Mount Otemanu from our porch:

I took this one lying on the bed!

The Pearl Resort is part of a project to install artificial reefs throughout the Bora Bora lagoon. Together with a marine biologist, they have created a coral nursery system called Toa Nui (”big coral”) that runs underneath all of the bungalows. Apparently this serves to re-establish the endangered coral population (coral is able to grow on the artificial reef). Pulling back the glass top on our coffee table revealed our own personal coral garden, which attracted gorgeous fish at all hours of the day.

Here’s a view of Mr. T through the coffee table:

A few of our visitors:

Here you see a Clown Fish (left) and a Puffer Fish (right) fighting over a piece of strawberry bagel that I threw them:

I was happy to spend a lot of time here, just checking it out:

We were gifted once again with a bottle of champagne, which we enjoyed on our deck before heading to dinner.

For dinner on our first night in Bora Bora we had made reservations at Villa Mahana. I had read amazing reviews about the food here, and it did not disappoint. Mr. T had the best Mahi Mahi he has ever eaten, and I had filet mignon with red wine vanilla sauce and the most amazing gorgonzola gnocchi. We both agreed that the dessert of homemade coconut ice cream was one of the most delicious things either of us had ever tasted. We made our reservations via email months in advance (damien@villamahana.com), as there are only six tables and they fill up quickly!

Bora Bora offers so many things to do to fill your time… we spent one afternoon paddling around the lagoon in one of the resort’s sea kayaks, and doing a little snorkeling:

(Is it just me or do these pics taken with our disposable underwater camera make it look like we honeymooned sometime in the ’70s?)

The highlight of our adventures in Bora Bora was definitely our SCUBA dive! Neither of us are certified, but we had each done a few intro SCUBA dives in the past. This was our first dive together!

It was definitely the coolest dive either of us had been on. I’m really glad that it wasn’t my first, and that I was feeling pretty comfortable underwater, because not long into the dive we were greeted by a whole herd of these guys…

*Cue JAWS theme song.*

Of course Mr. Tiramisu had to swim on over and take a closer look. Here is a photo of my new husband… and a shark. (Eeeeek!)

This was as close as I cared to get:

They were all just harmless reef sharks… Black Tip, White Tip, and Lemon sharks… but it is still a little daunting when one decides to swim straight towards you!

This dive was enough to convince us that we really want to get SCUBA certified!

Anyone else spend a good portion of their honeymoon underwater?