Hearts Aglow

The names Tahiti and Bora-Bora may telegraph romance, but on a cruise around French Polynesia, Naomi Tomky and her daughters discover these islands also make for the ultimate playground.

- Naomi Tomky

CROUCHING BENEATH the surface of Bora-Bora's impossibly blue lagoon, I watched as stingrays and black-tip sharks swam calmly around me. Emerging, I looked up just in time to see two enormous humpback whales simultaneously breaching in the distance.

"Did I you see that?" I gasped. Tove and Jordana, my six- and eight-year-old daughters, clutching a kickboard next to me, answered with wide eyes and wider smiles. "You are the luckiest beans on earth," I said, hoping they wouldn't become too accustomed to their princess lives in paradise.

It was day five of our seven-night cruise aboard the Paul Gauguin around French Polynesia. As the only kids on that morning's "Sharks and Stingrays" excursion, they lapped up attention from our guides. These two enthusiastic Tahitian men dragged my girls around on a kickboard, hoisted them into the primo sunny spot at the front of our snorkeling boat, and gave them each a small bottle of vanilla-scented monoi oil to take home.

Most people come to Tahiti and its surrounding islands to celebrate a honeymoon, or a milestone birthday. They come for scenes like the double rainbow stretching onto the black sand of Plage Lafayette that greeted us on our first morning, or the sweet scent of tiare, the tropical gardenia blooms we tucked behind our ears. But you know who else adores pretty flowers, silky sand, and bathwater-warm ocean? Children.