Tragically our flight to our vacation destination for our Sixth Anniversary appears to have crashed. We woke up in what seems to be actual Heaven.
Here there is only sky, sun, palm trees and glass-clear water. Everything is always perfect. It is just how people on Earth have dreamed and hypothesized for centuries about what Heaven might be like.
From Los Angeles it is surprisingly easy to get here. Air Tahiti flies directly from LAX eight hours to Tahiti (PPT). Even in Economy cabin Air Tahiti offers unlimited champagne and wine.
Then Air Tahiti flies 45 minutes Tahiti to Bora Bora (BOB).
The hotel meets you at the airport in Bora Bora, and takes your luggage and puts you and your luggage on their private boat and you go directly to the resort. The luggage shows up in your room.
The boat ride itself from the Bora Bora airport to the resort initiates the vacation.
France took over the complex of Polynesian islands in the 1800s (a huge oversight by the United States), so there is a French vibe, and most of the service staff is French.
Apparently America occupied and fortified Bora Bora in World War II, but withdrew from the island after the war ended.
French Polynesia has been shut down because of the virus (there was a long shut-down starting last April, and a shorter one starting a couple of months ago), and the islands reopened only on May 1. As a result the hotels had deep discounts for the first couple of weeks in May, and the St. Regis here, covering three islands and 44 acres of paradise, is almost entirely empty. We are here with only about eight other couples in the entire place.
We feel very lucky that the unexpected and fortuitous emptiness of the St. Regis resort makes this a once-in-a-lifetime experience on top of the most amazing beach/ocean resort vacation we have ever experienced. There are four huge cabanas on the main beach area of the resort on a beautiful, warm sunny day, and three of them are empty. (We are occupying the fourth one.)
It feels incredibly luxurious and surreal to be in such a large resort when it is so empty. Tinka says "it feels like a giant private island."
French Polynesia has been shut down because of the virus (there was a long shut-down starting last April, and a shorter one starting a couple of months ago), and the islands reopened only on May 1. As a result the hotels had deep discounts for the first couple of weeks in May, and the St. Regis here, covering three islands and 44 acres of paradise, is almost entirely empty. We are here with only about eight other couples in the entire place.
We feel very lucky that the unexpected and fortuitous emptiness of the St. Regis resort makes this a once-in-a-lifetime experience on top of the most amazing beach/ocean resort vacation we have ever experienced. There are four huge cabanas on the main beach area of the resort on a beautiful, warm sunny day, and three of them are empty. (We are occupying the fourth one.)
It feels incredibly luxurious and surreal to be in such a large resort when it is so empty. Tinka says "it feels like a giant private island."
Tragically our flight to our vacation destination for our Sixth Anniversary appears to have crashed. We woke up in what seems to be actual Heaven.
Here there is only sky, sun, palm trees and glass-clear water. Everything is always perfect. It is just how people on Earth have dreamed and hypothesized for centuries about what Heaven might be like.
I do not know how to swim at all. I cannot tread water; I cannot dog paddle. Somehow, despite my parents sending me to sleep-away camp so I would come back knowing how to swim, I never learned how to swim.
Tinka loves to scuba dive. Yesterday I went scuba diving for the first time!
