The next morning, I roll out of bed with an epiphany. It's not that I can wade two hundred yards into the lagoon and still be only waist-deep in water. It's not that the French somehow managed to improve the experience of waking up in paradise by introducing pain au chocolat and café au lait. It's not even that my biggest worry for the moment is which SPF to use.
It's that my wife and I have time. Together. Without Dora the Explorer. It's been a while. And I'm suddenly seized by the knowledge of all the things Ruth and I can do to relax. We can feed the rays and snorkel coral bays. We can go on a Jeep safari up a ridge on the island to see the old naval guns left behind after World War II. We can take a Jet Ski to a restaurant on a private motu for the local seasickness cure: poisson cru, raw fish marinated in lime and coconut milk.
Or not. Which is exactly what we decide to do. For a good half-hour the next morning, Ruth and I quietly check out the fish swimming under our sprawling overwater villa at the Bora Bora Nui Resort & Spa, the next hotel we visit. There are glass panels in the floor, alongside the marble bath — everywhere — and the fish seem to smile up at us from all angles.
Set on a small remnant of the old sunken volcano that gives Bora Bora its flower-shaped form, the hotel has long white sand beaches, natural banyan forests with waterfalls and hilltop lookouts from which the blue edge of the world is visible. But we mostly just lounge on the private outdoor deck of our room, which doubles as a diving platform and a place to watch white puffy clouds. Suddenly there's a knock and someone enters with fresh pineapple, mango and jackfruit. An hour later a spa attendant comes to escort us to our couples' massage in the Balinese-style pavilion at the crest of a hill. After a late lunch, there's napping, there's singing, there's laughter — so caught up in the spirit of the place are we.
Would it be too boastful to say this is how we spend the next several days? In and out of water, in and out of bed, in and out of treatment rooms where the only goal is to achieve a kind of pruny state of Nirvana. At one point, with her in the water and me sipping the latest vanilla-rum concoction from room service, my wife looks up with an expression I haven't seen in a very long time. "This," she says, content as a dolphin, "is so easy to get used to."
It turns out that Vongerichten is something of a Paradise Man himself. Back at the St. Regis, he tells us he first came to Bora Bora two years ago, on his honeymoon, staying on the private motu owned by makeup artist François Nars, and now he can't keep away. "The attraction of swimming every day, the solitude," he says, grinning, as he heads back into the kitchen, "is as far as you can go from a place like New York or Los Angeles. You feel peaceful, you feel away."
