This Is the Reason to Travel All the Way to French Polynesia

T.J. Olwig/Virtuoso

Moorea’s Mount Mouaputa. A reef off Bora Bora. The star of the show.

Rachel Moore Rachel Moore Rachel Moore

Snorkel up and dive in with Tahiti’s gentle giants.

Stout South Pacific trade winds rocked our boat as we drifted out of Opunohu Bay, a tropical inlet flanked by lush jungle, volcanic leftovers, and Jurassic Park geology on Moorea’s north shore. Off the port side, a pod of spinner dolphins did their thing, flipping and flopping in an impromptu aerial display. Not to be one-upped, a glide of flying fish took flight to starboard, defying the laws of accepted aerodynamics as our ten-passenger vessel broke for the open sea.

“We are lucky to see them,” Captain Tama said while scanning the outer reef for the star attraction. Suddenly, he pointed to a distant parallel in the choppy blue waters: “Right there, right there – he popped up right in front of them!” A male humpback whale had breached at 11 o’clock, what I hoped would be but the opening act of our outing. Not that I was worried. This was French Polynesia after all, where mana, the ever-present spiritual force that connects all living things from the mountains to the valleys to the sea, reigned supreme. Kicking back in the stern, I trusted the sacred thread to sew us some aquatic magic.

The Four Seasons Resort Bora Bora.

Courtesy of Four Seasons Resort Bora Bora

It might have been just the fourth day of my inaugural visit to French Polynesia, a collection of 118 islands and atolls scattered across a nautical area more than half the size of Europe, but it was already living up to – and in many ways, exceeding – the idyllic vision I’d had after first glimpsing it on a magazine cover many a year ago. It didn’t hurt to begin the trip on sun-drenched Bora Bora, which felt like a mic drop by the island chain before the show had even started.

Moments after landing, my jet-lagged body underwent an about-face alongside a handful of other lei-wearing travelers en route to the Four Seasons Resort Bora Bora. From the bow of our mahogany-trimmed yacht, we cruised across the most ethereal lagoon I’d ever laid eyes on to a palm-dotted motu 15 minutes away. So impressive was the ocean’s hue that one guest raised his sunglasses for a nonpolarized double take. “Don’t know if I’ve seen water this blue,” he said in disbelief. Behind him, I’d rerouted my gaze to Mount Otemanu, an extinct volcano topped with a green peak that had the look of a rock-ribbed church steeple stretching for the heavens. I’d soon come to learn that Bora Bora’s ancient appellation was pora pora mai te pora, which meant “created by the gods” in the Tahitian language, a fitting name tag if there ever was one.

In just 48 hours’ time, I’d dived with manta rays and pufferfish and hawksbill turtles, grafted coral with a WiseOceans marine biologist, lounged beachside over a salt-worn French novel from the poolside library, and had a few long-haul knots ironed out of my back during a taurumi-style massage designed to align my body with the flow of the ocean, or moana, as the Polynesians say. My greatest coup, inarguably, was the cannonball master class I put on for the neighbors from the deck of my overwater bungalow, launching Olympic-worthy splashes again and again into the balmy atmosphere. To the journalist who labeled French Polynesia’s trademark thatched-roof abodes “cliché” and “annoying” (a quip I read while prepping for this trip, and one that, I admit, made me chuckle): I hereby sentence you to the aforesaid water pastime. – Sincerely, The Cannon-Balling Writer in Bungalow 423.

Moorea’s sole port and harbor, Vaiare.

Rachel Moore

One night, in between sips of a bubbly rum sundowner and bites of red tuna tataki at the resort’s Vaimiti restaurant, chatter from a nearby couple boarded the sunset breeze and landed on my table. “We saw 13 whales today!” the overjoyed woman told the waiter. “I swam with them too!” The spirited gossip was a timely setup that reconnected me to my forthcoming adventure off Moorea, where I was going to spend my next few days in the islands: humpback whales, the seasonal spectacle that had lured me to French Polynesia in the first place. While whales can be spotted throughout the archipelago, Moorea, the heart-shaped island ten nautical miles from Tahiti, churns out one of the highest success rates.

This wouldn’t be my first waltz with cetaceans. In years past, I’ve watched sperm whales in Dominica, gray whales off California’s Monterey Bay, belugas in the Saint Lawrence River, orcas on a bear-viewing excursion near Vancouver Island – and let’s not forget the afternoon I spied a blue whale, the biggest animal to ever live, from the deck of my Hermosa Beach rental. Those moments etched indelible marks on my wildlife-loving soul – the mystery, the awe, the grandiosity – and yet, the closest I’d come to a humpback was through the words of poet Mary Oliver. “Carrying their tonnage of barnacles and joy,” she wrote of the enigmatic mammals, “they leap through the water, they nuzzle back under it / like children / at play.”

But I hadn’t traveled 26 hours, some 5,000 miles, and four time zones to watch whales from a boat; like that Four Seasons’ guest, I was here to play too. My tropical raison d’être? To become one of the snorkelers bobbing beside the 80,000-pound bachelor that Captain Tamu had spied.

Snorkeling with blacktip reef sharks nearby.

Rachel Moore

The first rule of swimming with humpback whales in French Polynesia, one of a small number of places in the world you can do so, is that you don’t – they swim with you, if you’re lucky. Protected by marine sanctuaries and strict government regulations, humpbacks travel thousands of miles over multiple months from their summer feeding grounds in Antarctica – where they fatten up on krill – to give birth, rest, and nurse their young in warmer waters between July and November. “They sing, too,” Oliver penned in her ode to the gentle giants. “And not for any reason / you can’t imagine.”

Famous for their loud underwater ballads, which can last half an hour and include rhymelike melodies passed down from generation to generation, male humpbacks can be heard for miles beneath the sea. But the timing wasn’t right for us to plunge in, what with another boat on the scene. Instead, Tamu hurled a hydrophone overboard to keep us entertained. Five seconds later, a collective hush fell over the boat, and I was head to toe in goose bumps, arm hair reaching for the sky. As if awaiting his vocal sheet, our guest of honor reverberated the in-boat radio with a thrum and sonic massage that will forever inhabit my bones. Sooner than I wished, the concert faded and we were on the move, buzzing across the bay.

“If you want to swim, now is the time,” Tamu said as our boat slowed to a stop, no whale in sight. Per regulations, watercraft aren’t allowed to park within 100 yards of a humpback, nor can swimmers approach them. Call it excitement or selective listening, I forgot all about the lecture involving another local resident, the oceanic whitetip shark, which raised more than a few eyebrows during orientation. Goggles and mask on and a GoPro secured to my wrist, I was the first to jump in, happily splashing into the 3,000-foot-deep abyss sans lifejacket but filled with zest.

Head down and fins kicking sideways, I trailed Tuhea, our in-water guide, unfazed by the cooler-than-normal marine temperature and the yo-yoing surface that had already sent one panicked swimmer back to the boat. After a fervent ten-minute search, I pulled my head from the water for a snorkel break and a moment of gratitude for this one-shot opportunity, where, no matter the outcome, I already felt like I’d won. And then, unexpectedly, something jerked my arm, rerouting me to the task at hand. It was Tuhea, pointing down – like, way, way down.

More than a hundred feet below me, a faint white shadow began to twirl upward, slow to reveal its shape. Growing in size, the cloudy creature rose and rose like a Whitney Houston high note, but it wasn’t alone. It had company in tow: a calf, who trailed its school-bus-size mother. Together, the duo split the sunlit surface for a lungful of air – and another – spraying an audible spurt of mist less than 50 feet in front of me before vanishing into the deep. Heart pounding out of my chest and a je ne sais quoi tingling through my veins, I fist-bumped Tuhea, childlike smiles painted across our faces. Out of breath, a fellow passenger crashed our ocean celebration, exclaiming “My life is complete!” Not mine, I thought – my dance with mana had only just begun.

The enchanting allure of French Polynesia awaits....

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