Tahiti

"While the other reviews pretty much cover the comfort of staying in one of Raphael's houses, I would like to add that this island and this location makes for a truly different kind of vacation. A relaxing one. As a family (we were 2 parents, 3 children and a grandmother) it would cost us quite a bit to stay in even the most reasonable hotel in French polynesia. Staying at the Villas Bougainville which offered us a car, a small boat and a three bedroom air conditioned house made this fun vacation very affordable. a great spot for 3 couples or a group of friends. Why should you go to a small island like Huahine instead of one of the big resort islands? it is a matter of preference but we like to travel and see how the people who actually live there do. Huahine is a lush garden of an island with most of its industry being farming and fishing. the few small hotels cater to only a few dozen tourists at a time. In staying at the Villas we were living in a house alongside local people ( with plenty of privacy on the 70 acre grounds, often eating out at the local food trucks and sometimes cooking at home with the abundant supplies of the local market ( warning, like the Tardis, it is bigger on the inside). There is plenty to do on Huahine for a week's stay and all of it is easy to get to and close. There are very few cars on the roads and they are polite drivers. we visited the Marae, the sacred eels, beaches that we could only get to by boat ( along with the multimillion dollar yachts) and still had time to come back for leisurely afternoons playing on the dock, taking a hike in the rain forest, or being given a personal tour of the vanilla plantation and being shown how they are pollinated by hand. We have never had such a relaxing time. Raphael was beyond accommodating as we changed our time of arrival and extended our stay for 4 extra days. You will wish you could too."