Best lagoon in the Pacific? We’ve found a winner

I’m being attacked by butterfly fish. They have a black stripe across their eyes like Zorro’s mask. Their black and white body stripes look like camouflage, yet the fish taper off in flamboyant yellow. Their tails are fine as Spanish lace and have a see-through, fluttering fringe.

Palm-tree perfection … Taha’a, French Polynesia. Credit: iStock

I’m not sure if the assault is defensive or seductive but, for such small creatures, these fish are determined and fearless. A co-ordinated shoal of them nibbles at my legs with pointed mouths.

I wonder what these elegant fish make of my monstrous hairy appendages. Human legs must be the ugliest, most monochrome things that butterfly fish have ever seen. Even the lumpen sea cucumbers that loll on the seabed manage pale blue stripes.

I’m off a small motu or sand islet in Taha’a lagoon, where everything is beautiful. Fish compete to be the gaudiest and most improbably striped. Lemonpeel angelfish have blue-rimmed eyes on orange faces. Clams have big blue yawns. Corals are phosphorescent purple, lava-lamp orange and lipstick pink.

I’ve been all over the Pacific and several times to French Polynesia, but I’ve never seen a place like this. In truth, I hadn’t even heard of Taha’a until I signed up for a cruise excursion from neighbouring twin island Raiatea, which is so close it shares the same lagoon.

Flamboyant butterfly fish.Credit: Getty Images

Our boat anchors off the motus that sprinkle its north coast. We wade ashore, walk a few hundred metres under coconut trees, and return to the water for a drift snorkel from the outer reef back into the lagoon. From the moment I duck my head under, it’s magical.

The first time I saw butterfly fish was in a pet shop as a child. They were too expensive, so I had to be content with buying neon tetras and angelfish. Still, my aquarium was a window into a world of tropical colour that seemed wondrous to me in cold, grey Europe.

A shoal of blue fish and cauliflower coral.Credit: iStock

Now like Alice in my own wonderland, I feel as if I’m swimming through a giant aquarium of blue water, fine white sand and flitting fish. The unreality is reinforced because I’m not really swimming at all, but floating.

As the current propels me along between banks of corals, it feels more like flying. The fish could be parrots, but no trees are coloured like these corals, or as peculiarly shaped. The coral here is brighter and more varied than almost anywhere else in the Society Islands.

Every now and then an open patch of sand appears like a glade in the coral, and I can put down my feet and pause to marvel at the clownfish lurking in trailing yellow tentacles of anemones. The occasional wrasses are so ridiculously coloured they look like kindergarten paintings.

Coral garden, Taha’a.Credit: iStock

The underwater world steals the show but, drift snorkel complete, I realise that above the water, the view is just as outstanding. It seems too beautiful, too saturated and too cliched to be anything but AI generated, except that I’m standing right in the middle of it.

The lagoon is electric blue swirled with ribbons of white sandbanks. Palm trees lean. In the background, Taha’a raises jungly hills. In the other direction, the two jagged volcanic plugs of Bora Bora are emblazoned between blue sky and electric-blue water.

The drift snorkel takes only 20 minutes, and sometimes less depending on the current. It’s so quickly over that it seems like a dream. But no matter. I do another lap, and then another.

The competition for best lagoon is fierce in the Pacific, but let me make a call: this is surely the most glorious corner of any lagoon I’ve ever seen. Better than Moorea, or Bora Bora, or Aitutaki. But you won’t believe it’s real until you’ve seen it for yourself.

The details

Cruise

Oceania Cruises has many itineraries in the South Pacific, including trans-Pacific, French Polynesia and New Zealand cruises. Regatta’s sister ship Nautica sails three 10-day cruises round-trip from Papeete in January and February 2025, and Regatta does similar itineraries in August and September 2025 that visit Raiatea, the port for adjacent Taha’a. From $3955 a person twin share. See oceaniacruises.com

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The writer was a guest of Oceania Cruises.