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kinda left things off in the middle of nowhere. Anywho…
The Airport in Tahiti can be pretty brutal. I don’t remember if we had access to a lounge the last time we came through, but being that we were flying in coach without any super cards we had no access this time. The only place to really comfortably sit is a little cafe that has a little enclosed room with seating next to it. Don’t be fooled though, even though when you enter the cafe you’re hit with a cool breeze that feels indescribably refreshing, the seating area next to it deceptively is just fan cooling. Still nicer than sitting out in an open terminal.
We finally boarded our plane to BOB. Instead of taking the expensive hotel shuttle, from the airport, we opted to take the free airport transfer boat to the main island. This also gives you an opportunity to get a picture of the classic BOB airport sign
We had arranged beforehand with the hotel to be picked up from Vaitape instead of the airport, as this saved us a decent amount of money.
When we arrived we were greeted in somewhat standard fashion (meaning similar to the Hyatt Maldives
) with half the hotel crew and a few mid-level managers welcoming us. Even though its standard its still a nice greeting, and we were ushered onto a buggy that drove us around the property giving us a brief tour.
The brought us to some attached rooms that are close to the main area that they were using for short stays. Don’t know if they are using them for paid stays at this point. The room was nice, spacious, and head a decent view of the Ocean, but the rooms were attached in a complex which I’m not a fan of for this style of vacation, and they had a kids club and workout space on the bottom floor which also would make me a little wary. Still it was peaceful, and even though we were only there for a couple hours, they still made sure to have a crib in the room, a baby bath, and even a bottle warmer which was perfect because we are to put our daughter down for a nap for a bit. A few hotels like the Park Hyatt Sydney and here seemed to go out of their way to be baby friendly, and it certainly is something I find is a nice touch (even if we didn’t need a baby warmer).
We finally got transferred to our real room for the rest of the stay, which of course was OWB.
***One of the main reasons I booked this hotel was that though some careful sleuthing I knew the Garden Rooms were still all under construction, and according to FT everyone was getting complimentary upgrades to the OWB as those were the only rooms available. When we got placed in the ‘hotel’ rooms at first I was a little worried, but alas, OWB is where we would be. I could finally relax.
Looking at pictures of other places online, and it makes sense these at the time of writing being the most recent construction, these rooms blow every other hotel out of the water. They are modern, new, beautiful, and have most of the amenities you would expect of a hotel this caliber.
We went to breakfast the next morning which was included in our stay (don’t remember if I had status match at the time, or if it was just standard), but this was a huge bonus. We love going early to breakfast, just looking out at the water, and enjoying our fruit/cereal/coffee/tea/or whatever. Everyone has to do what they’re comfortable with for their level of kashrut, but there were a lot of very decent options available. More so that at places like the Maldives, were everything seemed like it was imported from Muslim countries and more difficult to discern kashrus, etc.
When we got back to the room, I fired off the drone. This I believe was the Mavic 2 Pro at the time, which all around is pretty darn solid. I’ll say a couple things about flying in places like this. 1) The winds can be pretty intense, especially when you get away from the shielding of the island itself, so make sure you’re very comfortable with flying the drone in general, you don’t want to be experimenting for the first time over open water. 2) Try to be respectful of the other guests. The last thing you would want is a drone flying off your neighbors back deck and hovering over to where you’re trying to relax. Whenever I launched from our OWB, I would try to shoot out straight a few hundred feet to get out of peoples way, respect their privacy, and to get the noise from the drone out of their area. When I started to get more concerned I would take the bike out to somewhere a little more isolated and launch from land away from the rooms.
We spent a fair amount of time at the pool still, which was really nice. We kept our child in a folding sun-tent which was perfect for them. It was an enclosed area to play in, and made sure despite the shifting sun that we had somewhere safe for them. Of course, be mindful of hydration/heat.
We called up room service and asked them to deliver number item 43, which was two individual servings of ice cream
. Much more reasonable at ~1 each from Fresh compared to the ~12 or so per serving the hotel charged.
A word about activities:
We didn’t feel comfortable at this stage (unfortunately) leaving our infant at home, but that didn’t mean we wanted to be stuck at the hotel the entire time. They told us they had some babysitting system in place, but turns out they really didn’t. They did tell us the person who babysat was an employee, who was well trusted. We arranged with the hotel to pay her though Hilton so it just came out on our bill (didn’t really have/want to deal with cash), which worked out perfectly. I’ll admit it was a bit of a risk, but she turned out to be fantastic, and we ended up using her a couple of times to get away from the hotel for a few hours, which allowed us to do some water activities which were amazing.
The activities available are were I think BOB blows MLE out of the water. Almost anywhere you go in the Maldives you are on a small island and there is usually nothing around you for miles. The hotel can charge whatever they want for activities, and you can either take it or leave it, but they’re usually darn expensive. In BOB, the hotels list activities on their menus, but they almost all subcontract through local providers, that you can usually find with a little browsing through trip advisor. I contacted a few companies and settled on two. The freedom to chose companies though that aren’t at your hotel means that there is competition so the prices are MUCH more reasonable, and you can tailor things to what you want to do with a lot more specificity.
The first thing we did was a Jetski tour. The operator came out to our hotel, which is a little bit of a schlepp from the main area, but picked us up at the main hotel dock. You can each get your own Jetski but we just chose to share and took turns driving. Jetskiing around the lagoon was insane, and if you go to BOB I highly recommend it. Especially staying at the Conrad where you don’t get the same lagoon views/feeling, this really made us feel part of the real BOB experience. We went although towards the North atolls, and parked on a private beach owned by the Jetski company They offered us cold drinks, prepared some fresh cut fruit, and demonstrated their traditional opening/preparation of a coconut for us.
When we got back we were pretty exhausted, but it was so much fun. We had them deliver number 19, some homemade pizza, and enjoyed on our patio.
More to come soon...
