Shameless Gushings on Le Meridien Bora Bora

If you want some advice on planning your trip to French Polynesia, I can let you in on a few hints. Pretty much every tourist there is on their honeymoon, and we talked to many of them about their plans. We were in the minority, choosing to stay for a long week in one location. Many folks would stay 3 to 4 nights, and island-hop to another exotic locale. I can't speak for what these other islands were like, but we were very content to set up our tropical home base and spend our time relaxing rather than catching planes and taxis, packing and unpacking.

Although I've never been to any hotel on Bora Bora other than Le Meridien, we did drive around, and boat around, enough to see many of the popular hotels. Le Meridien has by far the best location. The food, on the other hand, is another story, which I will discuss in more detail when we get to the food section. Le Meridien is very private and secluded, situated not on the main island, as many of the other luxury hotels are, but on its own private motu, facing the main island across the lagoon.

Pictured above is our room, a premium overwater bungalow. The best part of these rooms, as you can see here, is the glass floor. We liked to leave the outdoor light (beneath the floor) turned on at night to illuminate the water and create beautiful patterns on the ceiling and walls. Contrary to what some people might think, there is no reef directly below the floor. This means that you won't actually see a lot of fish swimming below. But a puffer or an infrequent other meanderer did occasionally swim by.

Pictured above is the bed, opposite the sofa in the previous photo. At this time of year (October), the mosquito netting is strictly for decoration, as there were no bugs, and we needed to run the air conditioner at night. True to what I had read in previous reviews of this resort, the bed is actually two twin mattresses pushed together, with king sheets on top of them. This may not sound great, but it is really not nearly as bad as some people claim, and didn't bother us at all. Note the glass floor just in front of the bed.

Pictured above is the view of our neighbors' bungalow from our balcony. All overwater bungalows have a staircase leading into the water, so that you can go for a swim or snorkel any time you like. There is also a showering platform (difficult to see here) to rinse off the saltwater before you go inside.

From our bungalow, room 238, we had a fabulous unobstructed view of Mount Otemanu. Every morning, we would wake up early, around 6 a.m. (the time change helped considerably with this). We would make instant coffee with our little electric hot water pot, and wrapped up in our hotel bathrobes and slippers, we would enjoy the morning reading books as Bora Borans commuted past in their outrigger canoes and motor boats.

The bungalows and wooden walkway connecting them, lit up at night, seemed magical. We were living in a fantasy village, where the stresses and worries of our hectic lives back at home could not touch us. The islanders of Bora Bora truly appreciate and understand what a paradise they have, and we were privileged to share it, if only for one very short week.