Luxury Holidays in the South Pacific

Bora Bora’s lagoon is one of those places that doesn’t disappoint in person — the water really is that color, the coral gardens really do teem like that, and the manta rays really do move with that kind of unhurried grace. From there, a yacht out of Raiatea carries you through the Society Islands, stopping at Taha’a where vanilla scents the air, and at tiny motus where traditional Tahitian feasts are laid on the sand. Off Moorea, humpback whales surface between July and October. French Polynesia asks very little of you. Just time, and a willingness to slow down.

More than 300 islands, and the overwhelming feeling on most of them is that the rest of the world is very far away. Fijian hospitality is not a tourism concept — it is simply how people are here, in the villages, on the water, along the reef. Dive the soft coral walls of the Bligh Waters, kayak through mangroves as the light changes in the late afternoon, or do very little at all on a stretch of white sand with no particular reason to move. Fiji is the kind of place that recalibrates your sense of what a day should feel like.

15 islands scattered across two million square kilometers of ocean, with a combined population smaller than most market towns. Aitutaki’s lagoon is widely considered one of the most beautiful on earth — shallow, warm, and impossibly clear, ringed by tiny uninhabited islets you can walk to or paddle between. The pace here is set by the tides rather than any clock, and the locals seem entirely at peace with that. Come to snorkel, to fish, to hike the volcanic interior of Rarotonga, or simply to be somewhere that has no interest whatsoever in rushing you.