Matira Beach: Bora Bora's one great public beach, and how to do it right

Overview

Almost everything photographed on Bora Bora — the overwater bungalows, the impossibly graded blues — sits on private resort islets that you reach by boat and, mostly, by booking. Matira Beach is the exception, and that is the whole point of it: a long curve of white sand at the southern tip of the main island, open to anyone who walks onto it. It is routinely called the island’s only true public beach, and while small pockets of sand exist elsewhere on the ring, none of them is remotely comparable in length or in water. If you are staying in Vaitape or in one of the pensions rather than on a motu, Matira is where the postcard version of Bora Bora becomes something you can actually stand in, for free.

The sand and the water

The sand is fine, white and genuinely soft — coral sand, not imported — backed by palms and pandanus that throw usable shade at the top of the beach for most of the day. The water is the real event: the lagoon floor here is sand rather than coral rubble, the entry is barefoot-easy, and the shelf is so gradual that you can wade out a long way and still stand. That makes it one of the rare famous beaches that genuinely works for non-swimmers and small children, inside the reef and out of the swell. Do not come expecting an aquarium at your ankles, though: over sand there is little for fish to hold onto, so snorkelling straight off the beach is modest — the coral gardens and the ray and shark sites that fill every excursion brochure are boat trips out on the lagoon, not something Matira gives you from shore. The beach faces west, which means one concrete, plannable gift: the sun sets over the water, and the last hour of light is the best hour of the day here.

Local tip: the beach is at its emptiest in the early morning, before the day-trip circuit reaches it — and at its best in the last hour before sunset, when the day visitors have gone back to their boats and the light turns.

Getting there

Matira sits at the island’s southern tip, about eight kilometres south of Vaitape along the coastal ring road — the island’s only road, so there is no navigation to get wrong: follow the coast south and the beach announces itself. There is no scheduled public transport on Bora Bora, so from Vaitape it is a rental — bicycle, scooter or car — or a taxi, which is arranged rather than hailed: ask your accommodation to call one, ideally the evening before. Bicycles come from rental points in the village and from many of the pensions themselves, at roughly 1,500–2,000 XPF for the day, and the ride down is mostly flat and takes around half an hour. Several of the island’s pensions cluster around Matira Point itself, and if the beach is the centre of your trip it is worth weighing a stay there instead of the village — the trade-offs are in the Vaitape guide. Access to the sand is free and unticketed: like the rest of French Polynesia, the shoreline is public.

Practicalities

Bring what you need, because the beach itself provides little: there are no loungers or umbrellas to rent and no lifeguards — a towel, water and sun cover are your kit — though public toilets and showers sit just off the sand near the beach entrance, alongside a few picnic tables. The cluster of roadside snack stands and pension restaurants around the Matira area covers lunch without a trip back to the village, at main-island prices rather than resort ones; cash in XPF is the safe assumption, as it is everywhere outside the resorts. The water inside the lagoon is calm and shallow enough that the usual reef hazards barely apply on the sandy stretch, but the sun is a Pacific sun — the shade line of the palms matters more than it looks, and a reef-friendly sunscreen is the courteous choice in a lagoon this alive. The dry season, May to October, is the reliable window, exactly as for the island as a whole; in the wetter months the beach is still usable between downpours, and noticeably quieter. Time your visit around the light: mid-morning for the fullest turquoise, the end of the day for the sunset the west-facing sand exists to serve.