Round the Bend in Bora Bora by Maureen Barry
Featured Hotel in Bora Bora
Bora Bora Lagoon Resort
See all hotels in Bora Bora >
A bike and a budget aren’t the first things that pop into the imagination along with the magic word Bora Bora. Honeymoons, escapism, lotus-eating maybe - but hardly roughing it. Not to be deterred by horror stories of ‘the most expensive islands on earth’, I was determined to fulfil a lifetime’s jumbled fantasy of Gauguin, Rousseau and B-movies rolled into one, a land of reclining natives and swooning sensuality.
The budget was a necessity, we were closing the circle on an already cheapie round-the-world trip - and the bike ride was my idea: who needs a jeep on this drop in the ocean anyway?
We were holed up, quite literally, in a round palapa-thatched Polynesian hut at Chez Nono on fabulous Matira Beach, one of the world’s most glorious strips of sand. Chez Nono shares Matira beach with the Hotel Bora Bora, which is spoken of in hushed tones on the cult hotel circuit. Nono’s however, while Hotel Bora Bora’s fare on stilts over the lagoon will set you back a night. The staff were very sweet at the Hotel Bora Bora and were delighted to show us what we were missing at Nono’s, which seemed to be making their fare look identical on the outside to ours, granted somewhat larger, yet making the inside look just like a shot from Interiors.
Superlatives run out when trying to describe Bora Bora’s enduring appeal. Ransack the thesaurus for a range of blues or greens and you still couldn’t do justice to the visual assault of the lagoon, the blinding whiteness of the powder sand and the jungle lushness of its volcanic bumps.
Matira Beach is on the southernmost tip of the island, so we reckoned an anti-clockwise burst of energy would get us round to the westerly Yacht Club (best food on the island) in time for lunch. French Polynesian food is excellent in all price ranges. Tahitians seem to live to eat; stand next to your average Tahitian lady and you’ll feel thrillingly slim, and as most of the food is imported from France, a visit to a Vaitape supermarket is reminiscent of your day trip to Boulogne. In the main hotels the food is so unrelentingly French that it’s a relief to eat native and inexpensively - Chez Pauline has an excellent restaurant frequented by island entrepreneurs for her poisson cru, slow cooked pork with yams, rich beef stew with taro, chicken with cornmeal and coconut curries.
We were armed with a buccaneer map of the territory, as Bora Bora’s so small, 32km in circumference, every known watering hole is marked. We pushed off after breakfast with never a thought for the rain god hovering vengefully over Mount Otenamu, ancestral home of tupa’pau Tahitian spirits of the dead. We’d just pushed our bikes over a volcanic hilly bit when the gods let us have it, we were clinging together waiting for a sign of the dove with an olive branch when the sun burst out just as quickly again and our mangled bikes emerged like a detail from the Marie Rose.
Wild orchids gave off exotic scents after the rain at Taimoo Bay, where we stopped for a swim in water so clear we could see the fish nibble the coral without our snorkels on. Now the Yacht Club really is impressive, and of course we were too late for lunch, but the Breton chef rewarded us with glasses of ice-cold white wine. This is the definitive bamboo and palm-thatched bar perched on stilts over the lagoon, from which so many copies have sprung. Rainbow-coloured fish came and nibbled crumbs below our feet and a riot of vegetation tumbled through the bar over ancient yachting memorabilia.
Heading for home now, it was a quick career round Poofai Bay, where part of a giant movie set was built for the movie Hurricane. Perched halfway up a mountain here is Chez Ato, an affordable Tahitian dream of a hideaway run by lusty host Ato, he will also personally guide you up Mt. Otemanu.
No trip to the island would be complete without a visit to Bloody Mary’s, the legendary island hangout. Names of famous visitors are etched on a board outside: it’s the Valhalla of the show-biz world and although drinks are expensive it’s well worth the detour.
Just before sunset the place to be is the jetty of the Hotel Bora Bora for the fish feeding, which may sound twee but isn’t. For the limpid quality of the water here, the colour of the coral and variety of fish as they thresh the water in their hundreds of thousands, it’s the place for your final sundowner, breathtaking and unforgettable.
Sold on Matira Beach? Check out availability at the Hotel Bora Bora.
Or see all our beach hotels in Bora Bora.