Crouching beneath the floor of Bora Bora’s impossibly blue lagoon, I watched as stingrays and black-tip sharks swam calmly round me. Rising, I seemed up simply in time to see two monumental humpback whales concurrently breaching within the distance. 

“Did you see that?” I gasped. Tove and Jordana, my six- and eight-year-old daughters, clutching a kickboard subsequent to me, answered with extensive eyes and wider smiles. “You’re the luckiest beans on earth,” I stated, hoping they wouldn’t turn out to be too accustomed to their princess lives in paradise.

It was day 5 of our seven-night cruise aboard the Paul Gauguin round French Polynesia. As the one children on that morning’s “Sharks and Stingrays” tour, they lapped up consideration from our guides. These two enthusiastic Tahitian males dragged my ladies round on a kickboard, hoisted them into the primo sunny spot on the entrance of our snorkeling boat, and gave them every a small bottle of vanilla-scented monoi oil to take dwelling. 

Most individuals come to Tahiti and its surrounding islands to have fun a honeymoon, or a milestone birthday. They arrive for scenes just like the double rainbow stretching onto the black sand of Plage Lafayette that greeted us on our first morning, or the candy scent of tiare, the tropical gardenia blooms we tucked behind our ears. However who else adores fairly flowers, silky sand, and bathwater-warm ocean? Youngsters.

I introduced Tove and Jordana to French Polynesia as a result of I needed my very own honeymoon with them: an unhurried time to get to know my ladies higher. Much less declaring the mess of their room, extra declaring the octopus resting on the underwater rocks. (My husband, the ladies’ father, stayed dwelling in Seattle to bond together with his mountain bike and our canine, Ezra.)

All through our 10 days within the South Pacific, I watched them fall in love with Polynesia — with the dancing, the ocean turtles, and, sadly for my future trip finances, the tender lifetime of room-service french fries dipped in chocolate ice cream.

I received a preview of the week forward on Air Tahiti Nui’s mercifully straightforward direct flight from Seattle to Papeete, when Tove forewent her traditional cartoons to observe hours of movies about Polynesian tradition. She stepped off the airplane obsessive about the haka, a ferocious warrior dance that consists of rhythmic stomps and fearsome facial contortions.

One main attraction of Paul Gauguin Cruises is that its single 330-passenger ship spends most of its time in French Polynesia. Not solely is it designed particularly for the area’s shallow waters, however the onboard expertise can be closely influenced by Polynesian tradition. Tove squirmed with pleasure once we boarded the Paul Gauguin and he or she noticed the haka dropped at life by Les Gauguines, the cruise line’s singers, dancers, and cultural liaisons. The troupe additionally leads craft workshops, teaches dance classes, and runs trivia occasions for friends. (Let the file replicate that Jordana led Staff Lynx Pups to a few consecutive victories within the latter.) 

After our first night time aboard, we awoke to search out ourselves anchored simply off Huahine, a quiet island northwest of Tahiti. The duties of the Gauguines included ushering us onto “Le Truck,” a white and blue bus that introduced us from the pier into the center of Fare, the island’s largest city. There, only a block from the primary drag, we got here to a stretch of sugar-soft sand wedged between crystal-clear water and a jungle of timber.

We slipped our sandals off on the seaside and hooked up our snorkels, getting into the ocean and sliding into an underwater world. An eel poked its head out of a hidden cave, frilly-edged clams shimmered from their coral perches, and colleges of small fish swam by, unruffled by our presence. We adopted a puffer fish for a bit, then floated previous the seaside to the stretch of shore the place the city begins. Simply above us, a restaurant served prospects tropical cocktails, however we saved our heads down, recognizing a big octopus because it waggled its eight arms and disappeared into the rocks.

Afterward we walked again via Fare, pausing to observe a vacation parade. Dancers in outfits as turquoise because the water carried out within the plaza. Floats lined the streets, adorned with leaves in each shade of inexperienced, dripping with fireworks of flowers with names like pink ginger and orange lobster claw. 

“Visitors see a variety of the scenic, lovely islands of Tahiti, however we’re additionally right here to symbolize the Polynesian individuals,” stated Hei Ura Peyroux, one of many Gauguines. “We’re sharing our means of dwelling.”

As we sailed away from Huahine that afternoon, Tove begrudgingly napped for the primary time in years — my situation for letting her keep up effectively previous bedtime for the Gauguines’ night efficiency. She arrived early to assert a spot within the entrance row of the theater-style Grand Salon, the place she turned entranced by the Tahitian songs they carried out and the sway of the pareos wrapped round their waists. After the primary few numbers, the group introduced volunteers onto the stage to do a haka with them. The group roared as Tove received up and shyly wiggled her knees. The second instantly turned (and, final I checked, nonetheless is) the spotlight of her life. 

I used to be completely satisfied to listen to that our cruise director, Hinanui Ina, had began as a Gauguine earlier than changing into the primary Polynesian to carry her place. “It’s a pathway,” she defined. For the present members of the troupe, interacting with children is a serious spotlight of the job. As Peyroux later instructed me, “It’s like our internal little one desires to be with them typically, and mess around. They gentle up our faces.”

And vice versa: “I’ve seventeen buddies on the ship,” Tove declared proudly on the finish of the cruise. Seven of them have been Gauguines. Her favourite waiter, Ian Ramos, was one other. They met when he reversed a jet-lag-induced meltdown beneath the dinner desk by making her a balloon poodle. All through our journey, he additionally introduced her the tuna poke she preferred from the upstairs restaurant to the downstairs one; tiny breakfasts — full with espresso in just a little espresso mug — for her stuffed animal, Lamby; and a tiare flower to tuck behind the lamb’s ear, “So she is usually a Tahitian lady.” Tove rewarded him with the unfettered giggles and missing-teeth grins solely younger children can ship.

Once we disembarked on Paul Gauguin’s personal motu, one of many small islets made from sand and coral fragments that ring the island of Taha’a, Ian introduced the ladies two tiny hermit crabs in a plastic cup. He confirmed them how to attract circles within the sand to race the creatures towards one another, and so they did this endlessly, taking breaks solely to sip from coconuts and decide bougainvillea flowers so as to add to the palm-leaf headdresses I made for them.

Earlier than we set off on the cruise, the ship’s small swimming pool and lack of child-centric leisure had apprehensive me. There are not any waterslides or arcades, solely elegant wooden paneling and old-world craftsmanship. However in apply, the one actual situation was that my often-hangry youngsters struggled with the inflexible French angle towards mealtimes. 

The meals on the Paul Gauguin could be very French in all the perfect methods — fresh-caught native fish, an array of smelly cheeses at each meal — and likewise utterly lacked snacks. Fortunately, teatime saved us: whereas many contemplate Tahiti itself to be paradise, consuming three desserts shortly earlier than dinner seems to be exactly my youngsters’s concept of heaven.

On our third day, we moored on the island of Raiatea. The second largest of the Society Islands after Tahiti, Raiatea was as soon as the cultural and religious middle of the Polynesian individuals. The city of Uturoa greeted us with a smattering of rain, so we ducked into the native market and shopped for vanilla and souvenirs. Fortunately the solar had come out by the point I set off on a kayaking tour up the Faaroa River that afternoon. The paddle took me alongside this tranquil, ambling waterway, plagued by sea hibiscus flowers in numerous levels of their each day transition from pale yellow to crimson. I floated serenely between banana timber and coconut palms, stopping because the information identified land crabs, taro crops, and the three,337-foot Mount Tefatoaiti, the height of which was obscured by mist. 

Most significantly, the timing of the kayak outing lined up with the schedule of the ship’s instructional youngsters’s group, the Moana Explorer Program, which is run by a neighborhood conservation group referred to as Te Mana o Te Moana, or Spirit of the Ocean. Within the morning indoor classes, which ranged from 60 to 90 minutes, Tove and Jordana performed video games and watched movies to study native flora, fauna, and environmental points. The 2- to three-hour afternoon classes concerned a visit to the seaside or a snorkeling tour. 

“We aren’t a children’ membership,” naturalist Mai Manceau defined. “Our objective is definitely to make youngsters love nature.” Manceau and his colleague Doris Marcheau lead this system, which is offered on particular sailings throughout summer time and winter college breaks. They don’t seem to be babysitters, nor have they got any expertise in early training — the remainder of the 12 months, they each work as snorkeling and marine-mammal tour guides. 

For Te Mana o Te Moana, the objective of the Moana Explorer Program is to unfold their conservation message to youngsters, whether or not they be locals or guests. The strategy has been working, Manceau stated: children go the teachings on to their households, and thru them, the group has been profitable in altering attitudes towards turtle poaching in French Polynesia.

I noticed this system’s outcomes on our sixth day of the cruise, throughout a stroll round Vaitape, the primary metropolis on Bora Bora. As we walked previous pearl store after pearl store, Tove insisted on always stopping to choose up litter. “Now we have to do that,” she defined to me with urgency. “It helps the animals, and it helps us. I wish to decide up each single piece of trash within the ocean.”

On the final day, I joined my youngsters for the Moana Explorer Program’s snorkel tour to Ta’ahiamanu Seashore — and commenced to totally grasp simply how a lot they’d discovered on this journey. This extensive stretch of sand sits between twin bays on the northern coast of Moorea, Tahiti’s smaller, wilder sister island. Tove was the primary to identify a inexperienced sea turtle, which, she defined, received its title from the colour of its fats. Then, simply as I swam towards a fairly shell to choose it up, Jordana stopped me, explaining it truly belonged to a lethal toxic cone snail. 

Like many passengers, we prolonged our journey by spending three days on the idyllic St. Regis Bora Bora Resort after our cruise. The palm-lined boardwalks that linked our overwater villa to the remainder of the property seemed so excellent that, when the sundown dyed the sky behind them an ombre of purple and orange, it felt like we had stepped into the sample of a tropical shirt. The splash I heard whereas ingesting my espresso on the picket deck of our villa someday turned out to be a turtle poking its head as much as say hello. And, although I had paid precise money to swim with stingrays within the Bora Bora lagoon only a few days earlier, when a gaggle of them floated by throughout my morning dip in entrance of our villa, I made a decision it was time to get out of the water.

The St. Regis has a extra typical vary of actions for teenagers: The women made coconut-husk artwork and watched Moana whereas I loved some quiet time. However different experiences skewed extra instructional. One morning, a St. Regis naturalist guided us via the method of releasing juvenile fish into the resort’s lagoon and I listened, amazed, as Jordana answered the lady’s questions with the boldness of a Jeopardy winner. How Bora Bora was fashioned (by the exercise of a now-extinct volcano). The truth that sharks are fish, not mammals, and that coral will get its colour from algae. Over the course of a single week, it appeared Jordana had quietly absorbed a swath of data as huge because the Pacific Ocean itself.

On this journey, I noticed firsthand why Moana’s mother and father had instructed her to not transcend the reef: the protecting ring prevents the ferocious waves of the open water — the identical ones that created final 12 months’s Olympic browsing venue — from rolling as much as shore. Like a dad or mum aiming to make life simpler for his or her youngsters, Bora Bora’s reef absorbs the brunt of the hazard, making a protected lagoon and sheltered seashores for teenagers to play on.

However on our journey, my children have been extra than simply protected; they have been pampered princesses of Polynesia. I taught them the fun of ordering lunch to an oceanfront cabana, and find out how to take lazy afternoon naps to flee the tropical warmth. In trade, they launched me to the final word luxurious: seeing fully new components of the kids I assumed I knew so effectively.

I planted a coral backyard as a result of Jordana, my budding scientist, lit up when she heard it was an exercise on the St. Regis, and went to each single dance efficiency on the Paul Gauguin as a result of her sister couldn’t miss a present by “my buddies.” I relished the refrain of “Hello, Tove” that greeted my daughter all over the place we went on the ship — and was reminded of the truth that, regardless of what you would possibly learn on-line, individuals usually like youngsters. Mine discovered buddies, suckers, entertainers, and various folks keen to indulge their whims wherever we went.

We did miss out on a few of French Polynesia’s highlights — mountain climbing to Tahiti’s Puraha waterfall, say, or visiting the marae of Taputapuātea on Raiatea, the 1,000-year-old sacred grounds of the Mā’ohi individuals. However touring with children has a means of softening FOMO: these stone temples have been there for a millennium, and Tove will solely be a giddy six-year-old for a heartbeat. And there’ll solely ever be one “Mr. Coconut,” as the ladies dubbed the piece of coconut shell they discovered on the seaside and performed with for hours. 

Something I missed so as to make my daughters’ recollections as completely satisfied as doable appeared value it. As a result of as a dad or mum, nothing can fairly compete with watching the pure pleasure of a kid in her private paradise — even when that smiling face does occur to be lined in chocolate ice cream.

The place to Keep in Tahiti

Le Tahiti by Pearl Resorts

At Le Tahiti by Pearl Resorts, spacious ocean-view rooms with balconies overlooking Lafayette Seashore, simply 10 minutes east of Papeete, make an important pre- or post-cruise base.

Te Moana Tahiti Resort

Additionally about 10 minutes from Papeete and simply south of the airport, Te Moana faces west towards Moorea. House-style rooms, an infinity pool overlooking the ocean, and a gaggle of meals carts simply up the road make it excellent for households.

The place to Keep in Bora Bora

The St. Regis Bora Bora Resort

Anticipate paradise epitomized, with tender, white-sand seashores, roomy overwater and seaside villas, and butler service at The St. Regis Bora Bora Resort.

Learn how to Sail

Paul Gauguin Cruises

With a singular concentrate on the area and a sublime ship, this old-school luxury line integrates Polynesian tradition into each side of the expertise.

A model of this story first appeared within the February 2025 situation of Journey + Leisure beneath the headline «Hearts Aglow.»