French Polynesia · Bora BoraPalm Lagoon
A volcano more than three million years old is slowly sinking, ringed by a reef that holds a turquoise lagoon.
What you’ll hear
- Gentle surf
- Palm breeze
- Seabirds
In the 3D scene you can change the time, season and weather, or follow the local time.
About this place
Bora Bora lies about 260 km northwest of Tahiti. The main island covers just 30 km² or so, the eroded remnant of a volcano more than three million years old, topped by 727 m Mount Otemanu. As the island slowly subsides, a barrier reef and its sandy islets enclose the lagoon, with a single pass to the open sea. There are only two seasons, dry from May to October and wet from November to April, barely two degrees apart.
Behind the beach grow coconut palms, pandanus and beach naupaka, and an outrigger canoe is drawn up on the sand. White terns build no nest and lay their single egg in the fork of a branch. Reef herons wait for fish in the shallows, and Pacific golden plovers fly in from Alaska and Siberia to spend the winter. Ghost crabs come out at dusk and after dark, and young blacktip reef sharks and rays cruise the sand flats. The island’s first overwater bungalows went up in 1970.
Through the year
A rough guide from published sources, not monthly measurements.
Month by month
- JanuaryWet season: about 245 mm of rain
- FebruaryWarm, humid and showery
- MarchWarmest month, averaging about 28.6°C
- AprilRains ease; plovers head north mid-month
- MayDry season begins with cool south-easterlies
- JuneShortest days, about 11 hours
- JulyAbout 62 mm of rain; the Milky Way rides high
- AugustCoolest month, averaging about 26.4°C
- SeptemberGolden plovers arrive from the north
- OctoberLast month of the dry season
- NovemberThe rains return and cloud builds
- DecemberWettest month, ~250 mm; 13-hour days
Four seasons
Mid-July · Dry season
Dry and clear, a south-easterly in the palms, and the Milky Way rising behind the mountain at night.
Mid-January · Wet season
Warm, humid and cloudy with passing showers, and wintering plovers feeding along the beach.
Best moments
The lagoon at noon
Jul 15 · 12:15 · Clear
Noon in the dry season: the shallows at their brightest turquoise, palm shade across the sunbeds.
Early morning
Jul 15 · 06:50 · Clear
Before seven the sun is low, the lagoon calm and the mountain veiled in soft light.
The beach under the stars
Jul 15 · 22:00 · Clear
At night the torches are lit, the bungalows glow and the Milky Way rises behind the mountain.
Glowing surf
Jan 15 · 22:00 · Cloudy
On a cloudy wet-season night the breaking surf glows blue.
Turtle shallows
Jul 15 · 12:15 · Clear · Shore life
At the water’s edge, a turtle and small fish swim through water clear to the sand.
Overwater bungalows
Jul 15 · 12:15 · Clear · Overwater huts
Out on the lagoon by the bungalows, the jetty running into turquoise water.
Lagoon and mountain
Jul 15 · 12:15 · Clear · Lagoon peaks
Looking back from the lagoon with the mountain standing over the whole sweep of water.
The beach, bungalows and sunbeds are an imagined resort, and the mountain is modelled on the outline of Otemanu rather than surveyed terrain. The blue glowing surf at night is artistic license, and the lapping water and seabird calls were recorded elsewhere.
In the 3D scene you can change the time, season and weather, or follow the local time.
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