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Lemaire bid goodbye to his restaurant career during the pandemic and started working this lush land, which once belonged to his grand-grandparents and was still a “big forest” when he began. He speaks of sustainable, self-sufficient living and supplying produce to neighbours. “Banana, papaya, avocado — we try to have everything here,” says the former chef.

Beyond our small group of travel writers, there are no other guests in sight, only ducks roaming by a pond. This isn’t exactly a tourist attraction — we’re here on a rare private tour — though Lemaire expresses vague ambitions to welcome more vacationers someday. Island time has no deadlines.

Our group has been granted access through our tour guide, Naiki Lutz, founder of and a friend of the couple. Besides running her company as practically a one-woman operation, Lutz has the cortisol-calming manner of a yogi, massage therapist or meditation teacher — in fact, she’s all of the above. She leads travellers on wellness-themed excursions around Raiatea, which is home to about 13,000 inhabitants and remarkably free of tourist crowds when we visit.

���� , we don’t have white-sand beaches or bungalows over water, so we’re not interesting for most people coming here and searching for ‘the postcard.’ But what we do have is authenticity,” Lutz says. Raiatea is a spiritually and archaeologically important island that’s home to sacred marae, the open-air temples of ancient Polynesia. These include the UNESCO-recognized , considered the largest and most significant marae of all.

French Polynesia has an aspirational, trip-of-a-lifetime reputation, luring honeymooners swooning over luxury villas perched above the bluest lagoon. But there’s more to the destination than famous Bora Bora. And it’s still easy to find untrampled places on the quieter islands, as well as countless small (if not tiny) businesses sharing a taste of the local culture and history.

After all, encompasses 118 islands (Tahiti is just the largest), scattered across five archipelagos. Last year, this overseas collectivity of France saw around 262,000 tourists. That’s a drop in the ocean compared with its northern “neighbour”: More than 9.6 million people visited the Hawaiian Islands in 2023.

Historically, French Polynesia has favoured a slow tourism approach. In 2022, the Ministry of Tourism laid out a strategy to cap tourist numbers: no more than 280,000 per year as a “sustainable threshold.”

But that was before Moetai Brotherson, the current President of French Polynesia, came to power and declared a new goal: to welcome 600,000 tourists annually by 2033. It’s an about-face that seems directly at odds with sustainability. How can you more than double the visitors while preserving a place?

The hope is that travellers will spread across all five archipelagos, boosting lesser-known locales. Currently, Tahiti, Bora Bora and Moorea hold more than 70 per cent of the tourist accommodations and activities, so naturally they’re the most popular. Meanwhile, the island of Raiatea, where I visit Faora Lab, is often overlooked, despite being a 20-minute flight from Bora Bora.

From Raiatea, we boat over to our accommodations on , its little-sister island with a similarly tranquil feel — as well as coveted overwater bungalows, set on a nearby motu (islet). I check into one at , once I stop gawking at the blacktip reef sharks, small and harmless, swimming in the crystal waters around my suite. The resort is part of a fully Polynesian-owned hotel group — the only one, in fact.

Home to just about 5,500 people, �ղ���’a specializes in one particular commodity, so that’s what we set out to see: “The main activity you can find on the island is vanilla plantations,” explains Yvann Mama, a genial guide with . Tourism, meanwhile, isn’t yet big business. “�ղ���’a is not very known in the world,” says Mama, estimating that they have only about 15 guest houses and two small hotels.

Taking us on a 4x4 road trip of the island, Mama brings us to a little operation called La Vallée de la Vanille, one of the many purveyors of the spice. Here, we get a crash course on the high-maintenance needs of Tahitian vanilla, prized by gourmands the world over.

Each flower must be painstakingly pollinated by humans, as the bees here won’t do the job. Then, for best results, each bean is treated like it’s on vacation, too: suntanning for months, while getting regular massages. “One by one. The process is only by hand,” says Vainui Maiarii, who works at La Vallée, easily convincing us to buy the fragrant souvenirs before we go.

The last stop on our Tahitian itinerary is , where most of the swanky, big-name resorts are located, for reasons that become obvious. Judging by sheer natural splendour alone, with water the shade of gems and dreams, it’s unmatched.

We get a full immersion in the beauty, quite literally, on a private excursion with Pierro Taati of , a small, family-run company. Aboard his boat, with his teenage grandson Kenji as an assistant, he takes us on a loop of the island, entertaining us with his ukulele on the way. We stop periodically to take dips in the lagoon and look for sharks, stingrays and coral reefs. I catch sight of huge cruise ships looming by the shores, perhaps the only distraction from the postcard image.

Lunch is right in the sun-warmed water. After pulling up to an empty stretch of beach on a motu, Taati arranges a plastic table and chairs, then barbecues a feast on a basic, old-school grill, piling our plates with surf and turf. As I dine on some of the best lobster I’ve had, with fish tickling my bare legs, I peer at Bora Bora’s verdant mountains, just across the way.

Admittedly, this experience does feel like a novelty tailored for tourists. Still, it’s hard not to be dazzled by the hospitality, the local flavours, the dramatic views. From this vantage point, we don’t see any other travellers, so it’s possible to pretend — for this moment, if not forever — that this is still a secluded paradise.

The writer travelled as a guest of Tahiti Tourisme, which did not review or approve this article.