Le Tahaa Island Resort Review: Part 2

Considering a trip to to Tahiti? I’m sharing every detail of our adventure to French Polynesia in part 2 of my Le Tahaa Island Resort review.

I’m back to share part 2 of our amazing trip to French Polynesia. Specifically, Le Tahaa by Pearl Resorts, aka PARADISE ON EARTH. If you are new, start with part 1 of my Le Tahaa resort review. 

Le Tahaa Island Resort Review: Part 2

If you gathered anything from part 1 of this review it’s that we had one thing on our mind for this trip and it was to kick back and relax. I was working part of the time, but I went into it with the mindset that I’m doing something I absolutely love and felt so abundantly grateful for the opportunity that I wasn’t going to stress about a single thing.

Most of our days were spent waking up early, catching the sunrise, getting in a good workout (running for me and yoga for Dane), heading to breakfast, then our toughest decision of the day…pool or beach? To me – this is vacation. While I love a good adventure, I think sometimes you need trips where you just kick back. Can you spot the trio of rays in the photo below? They live in the waters surrounding the resort and watching them play around was a total trip highlight!

Le Taha’a had a small pool in the center of the resort with a swim-up bar attached to it. I didn’t hate that part at all! They hosted happy hour there every day from 4:30-5:30 and I think we capitalized nearly every day we there.

On Thanksgiving, when we were feeling a little sad to be away from family and home, we treated ourselves to a few extra drinks and met some fellow Americans who were vacationing on a dive trip (hello to our new Atlanta-based friends if you’re reading!) and cheers-ed to the holiday. Those double person loungers you see below were AWESOME! I spent many afternoons there reading a book or simply gazing at the beautiful turquoise beach just a few feet beyond the pool wall.
The photo below was snapped on our very last drone flight of the trip. We were trying to get some wide angle video of the resort and found one ray swimming, so we had the drone follow it about a mile out from the resort property, only to discover he/she was meeting up with friends! I loved watching them on the screen dance underwater so gracefully.

It’s rare to see such beautiful animals doing their thing in nature, so being able to capture this shot was AWESOME to me! Like I said before, seeing the rays in the wild was a total trip highlight for me.

It felt like we had just gotten there, when it was time to bid adieu to our newfound island home. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so sad to leave a place in my entire life. We enjoyed time on our bungalow deck right up until our porter came to collect our luggage. In fact I was still showering when they first arrived since I tried to prolong sun and drink time for as long as possible. Whoops! Some of my favorite photos and highlights below.

Le Tahaa Resort Highlights

Some of my favorite aspects of the resort and trip as a whole:

1. We rarely saw anyone except for at meals the whole trip. This might sound weird, but it was positively wonderful. We could be in total relax mode and not have to worry about interacting or coming off as rude.

2. The breakfast each morning was delicious! I’ll be dreaming about those chocolate croissants for a long time to come…

3. They made up our room at least 2-3 times per day with fresh towels, their shampoo, soap and local moisturizing body oil. There was a little turnstile right outside our hut’s door (you can kind of see it in the photo above) that had three markers – a flower, a pillow and a broom. The flower meant hello(“we’re good”), pillow (“sleeping” and Do Not Disturb) and broom meant “needed cleaned”.

4. The less commercialized aspect of this smaller, boutique resort. A lot of the more popular islands like Moorea and Bora Bora boast huge resorts with many, many more rooms and bungalows than Le Taha’a. I really liked the smaller, more intimate vibe and I definitely didn’t feel like I was being slighted by not seeing a larger, more popular (by name) motu.

5. The frozen BBC cocktails each day at the pool are something I’m working on recreating at home. Bailey’s, Kahlua, bananas (which I’m usually not wild about) and coconut all blended together into creamy, delicious and refreshing perfection.

6. Our waiter at Le Vanille at night knew our wine order after day two and would bring it out almost immediately. This was another great aspect of being at a smaller resort, you got to know the staff pretty well and in return – you built a sort of relationship with them that you might not get at a place that’s larger.

7. I forgot how much I really freaking like kicking back and reading books. I read 4 on this trip alone!

8. I don’t think I’ll ever get over how beautiful the water (and fish that swim in it!) are. EVER.

I’ve said it about 100 times here and countless times via text and in person to people I’ve chatted with about our trip, but it was hands down the prettiest and most relaxing place we’ve ever been to. We keep repeating to one another – BEST. VACATION. EVER. And it was. I’m already trying to plan our trip back and perhaps visit some of the other islands in French Polynesia. I’ve never been to place where it was simply impossible to take a bad photo, but even now looking back – the photos just don’t do it justice. Magical is the only real word that comes to mind.

In the coming weeks I’ll be putting together a post about tips I have if you’re headed to French Polynesia, but in the meantime, I’ll just be over here combing through photos and wanting to relive every single minute. Thanks for following along on my trip with me on social media and then letting me relive it all here for the past couple days 🙂 My parting word of advice is if you ever get the opportunity to go – TAKE IT!