Our luxurious overwater bungalow room rate included a luxurious breakfast: all types of French bread and pastries, Polynesian poisson cru, hot items included the yummy hash browns, scrambled eggs, grilled vegetables, and varieties of fresh juices including our favorite Rotui brand mango juice and of course fresh fruits! Having breakfast with the view of overwater bungalows, turquoise colored sea, and blue sky was an enjoyment. Plus free wifi to get some work done so I won’t get welcome back from vacation by hundreds of emails 🙂
Those fresh sweet mangos were so good that I can finish that whole plate by myself; that was our favorite breakfast item!
We spent almost two hours to enjoy our breakfast; eating slowly, enjoy the view. Why the rush? We are on vacation, we paid $$$ so need to take the fullest to enjoy every single moment of it 🙂
After breakfast, Jason and I went around the resort to take photos while Evita stayed at down at the reception to use the wifi to finish her conversations. There are two pontoons of overwater bungalows, in the middle is the boat deck. Our overwater bungalow is in the pontoon near the beach and activity hut. We walked over to the other pontoon for photos; those overwater bungalows are facing the ocean instead of the Tahaa island.
When we were there, the wind blew those cone looking thing and so much that they covered the turquoise water, I felt bad for those who stayed at those overwater bungalow. We did saw the staff cleaning up those when they washed ashore in the early morning and afternoon.
We were planning to take photos at this picturesque deck area but there was a boat there grrr!
We passed by the reception area to “pick up” Evita haha.
Time for water activity! We went back to our room and changed. I went right into the water from our deck, can’t miss a photo with the overwater bungalows! The water level was shallow, up to my waist only and the water was warm!
We took the stand-up paddle boards from the activity hut and have Evita to try it out. I remembered I first tried stand-up paddling at Moorea, French Polynesia and ever since then, it is my favorite water sport! Evita had some trouble at first but quickly she figured out how to balance yay! We paddle to the little island in the middle of the lagoon; you can walk there as well as the water level is less than waist height! But if you walk over make sure you wear water shoe; there were lots of small and sharp shell pieces in the water!
It was so cool that they put chairs and table there haha! That was our little piece of paradise!
Just that view, well worth my splurge!!! It would have been perfect if there’s a glass of Rotui mango juice LOL!
Finally, a group photo:
We had so much fun taking photos and stand-up paddle but we did not forget to reapply sunscreen to protect our skin! Can’t let that ruin our vacation again (learned from the Cook Islands). Love that they have two pink stand-up paddle boards 🙂
They almost crash LOL!
We had a blast, I wouldn’t mind spending a vacation doing this every day with this view! We went back to our room, shower, changed, and rested before heading out again for dinner. Just before sunset, we had a walk to check out the “back” side of the resort…
Those cone-shaped sea grass? washed ashore which made the beach looked polluted. We did not see those when we were in Moorea and Bora Bora!
The lagoon has a lot of sea cucumbers like in the Cook Islands.
The lagoon in between our resort and the island next to it is where the famous “Coral Garden” located.
We continued to walk toward the back, hoping to see Bora Bora from the distance….we walked into the bushes. This time, we applied our insect repellent cream that we bought in French Polynesia last year and it worked much better than Evita’s all organic spray!
Those holes…I wondered if those are crab holes?
More sea cucumbers, this one was very long!
The road ended and we couldn’t walk further to the end of the island so we turned back. We went to La Vanille for dinner again. This time, we opted out the buffet and order a la carte instead. On the house tomato soup, it was okay:
I ordered the duck breast and it was disappointing; both the portion and taste! I wished La Plage (the restaurant at the beach) is open for dinner, their portion is bigger and cheaper!
Jason and Evita both ordered the shrimp risotto, okay but not great!
Dinner was 9990 xpf for three of us, not as bad as Bora Bora!
We walked back to our overwater bungalow under a sky full of stars! I set an alarm at 11 pm to catch the Milky Way and it was there. Milky Way with the Magellanic Clouds (only visible in the southern hemisphere) right from our overwater bungalow deck, it was magical!
There was no internet, no tv, we just chit-chat under the Milky Way!
