honeymooning in bora bora

If you personally know my HUSBAND (have to put it in caps since I still get so excited using that word) and I, you know we might be the world’s most indecisive couple. From what toothpaste to buy, to where to go to dinner, to what to wear that day, back to where to go to dinner, making decisions for us is sometimes impossible. So we end up eating teriyaki nightly til Sunday hits, the teriyaki place is closed, and we are back to where we started. 

When Alec proposed to me, I knew we had lots of decisions to start making; one of the biggest (in my opinion because I just love vacationing) being our honeymoon. It took us roughly a month to pick a location, and from there we had to decide which resort to stay at…that took a whole other month. Once we had decided on Bora Bora (our other top pick was Greece), we spent hours and hours on our laptops researching the resorts. We decided on the Four Seasons Resort– mostly because we know the name and they have a great reputation world wide, plus I had stalked their instagram account for that whole month and was sold. Now, on to the details!

Where we stayed

As I mentioned, we stayed at the Four Seasons Resort. It actually has the largest grounds out of all the resorts in Bora Bora. Just walking around the grounds was a good little exercise after a big meal. Because it is a luxury resort, most everything is a little spendy from the actual stay, to the food, drinks, excursions, etc. So it is probably not a vacation we would ever do on a whim, it’s definitely a save up for and plan for type of trip. But with that said, it’s worth it. Every single angle you look, you have the most breath taking views. Your bungalow has glass view holes in the floor allowing you to look down and see wildlife, we didn’t see much other than fish, but other couples we met had seen a couple sting rays from theirs! The entire back of your hut opens, with three huge sliding doors, to your back porch; where you can lay and relax or jump off right into the lagoon. Your hut alone is so beautiful and relaxing, there were some days we would spend over half the day there! When you do decide to leave your little personal paradise bungalow and walk the grounds of Four Seasons, every single spot you go to is incredible. The resort has an infinity pool, a couple of beaches, and even it’s own snorkel lagoon where you can swim with some beautiful fish walking distance from your room. 

What we did

There is surprisingly a lot do there. Snorkeling, jet skiing, jeep tours, helicopter tours, skydiving, swimming with sharks and stingrays, paddle boarding/canoeing/kayaking. All you have to do to book an excursion is go to the concierge desk, and they handle it all for you. We spent a lot of our time on the beach or by the pool (we were exhausted from our wedding people!), but we did swim with the sharks and stingrays which was our favorite day! They offer you the whole or half day, whole day coming with a BBQ lunch…book the whole day. Our BBQ lunch was on a private island and just the two of us. We had our own buffet and bottles of wine, and got to spend the afternoon exploring our little island and eating delicious food. The whole day was a dream. And yes, swimming withe the stingrays and sharks was scary…but the guides make you feel so comfortable that you eventually relax! And I will admit, I was more afraid of the stingrays than the sharks!! We also went to the spa at our resort which was absolutely gorgeous, relaxing, and they gave us the best massages we had ever gotten! We booked the Polynesian massage which is what they are known for and it was heaven! There also was a festival going on while we were there called the Haiva, which occurs once a year and lasts for a couple of weekends. We were there for opening night which was really cool. It’s basically a dance competition between the different tribes of Bora Bora, so it was a total cultural experience and quite the show! 

What we ate

As you can maybe guess, most of their menus consisted of seafood. MY FAVORITE, not Al’s. haha. But he was a good sport and could always find something tasty on the menu!  He does like california rolls so he got lots of those! Our resort has 4 restaurants, and we only felt the need to eat at 2! The sunset bar sits right on the beach and always has good food, drinks and beautiful sunsets so most nights we went there. There was also a more ‘fancy’ restaurant we tried out one night which was delicious. We got scallops and lobster…yum. We also made the mistake of not doing enough research, and there were a couple nice restaurants on the main island we wanted to try but they were booked out a couple weeks so we weren’t able to get in. If you are planning your trip, book your dinner reservations!! 

How we got around

All transportation there is by boat and the hotel arranges it all for you. There are two ferries that go out to the main island, one during the day and one at night. They are about 25-50 dollars per person depending on the time of day. To be honest, you don’t do a ton of traveling around unless you are go to the main island which you’ll probably only want to do once or twice, the resort is much nicer to hang around all day than the main island in my opinion! To get around the resort, we did a lot of walking and occasionally grabbed a ride on their golf carts.

The People

Locals or vacationers, the people were our favorite part. The locals were honestly the nicest locals we have ever met while vacationing. They were so friendly and FUNNY, we loved chatting with them and hanging out with them every chance we got. Almost everybody there was either honeymooning, on their anniversary trip, or getting married! Which was really fun to be surrounded by so many couples. And many of the honeymooners date was June 11th like ours so it was fun to wedding talk with them and exchange stories and photos! We met a few couples that we friended on social media and will definitely be a part of our honeymoon memories 🙂 

Getting to Bora Bora

The flight times themselves weren’t horrible. Once you get to LA, it’s a 8 hour flight to the main island of Tahiti, then you jump on a hopper plane for a 1 hour flight to Bora Bora. Since we didn’t want to do all that traveling at once the day after our wedding, we stayed in LA for two nights and went to Disneyland, so that broke up our traveling a little which was nice on the way there! It did take us roughly 20 hours to get home though with all the layovers and delays so we were definitely happy to arrive in Seattle after all that! 

Ps. There are shoppable links up under certain images for the suits and swim coverups I wore all week! xx, karlie rae