Is Bora Bora Safe?

Bora Bora sits in the Society Islands of French Polynesia, about 230 km northwest of Tahiti. What you see today is the worn-down remains of an old volcano: the twin peaks of Mount Otemanu and Mount Pahia rise out of the middle, and a ring of coral reef and small sandy islets called motu wraps around a wide, shallow lagoon. That lagoon, running through every shade of blue and green, is the main reason people come. The island has only about 10,000 residents, most of them Polynesian, and daily life centres on the little main town of Vaitape. American forces built the first airstrip and roads here during World War II, but the modern story really began in the 1960s when the first overwater bungalows went up and turned the name Bora Bora into shorthand for a honeymoon escape. There is no long list of sights to tick off. You snorkel, you dive, you take a boat around the lagoon, and you watch the light shift across the water. It is genuinely beautiful, and genuinely expensive, since almost everything has to be shipped or flown in.