Adventures in Tahiti: More Moorea please!

View from Pape’ete Ferry Terminal on Island of Tahiti

Having spent the last few months blogging about one of my favorite countries, New Zealand, I figure it’s about time I move on to some other amazing travel destinations! Our honeymoon this past May consisted of 16 days in the kiwi nation, 10 of which were spent hiking a total of approximately 85 miles, followed by 10 days in French Polynesia. Flying the ~4 hours from Auckland on Air Tahiti over the international dateline, we left on Thursday afternoon and arrived on the island of Tahiti Wednesday night to begin the relaxing tropical portion of our vacation.

View of Moorea from ferry boat

After a night on the main island of Tahiti, we took a short ferry ride across the ocean to the island of Moorea, where we would spend a total of 3 nights. Usually preferring to book trips and travel accommodations on our own, we actually ended up using a travel agent to book the Tahiti portion of our honeymoon as they had access to a number of discounts we were unable to get on our own. As such, all of our transfers were included making our time in French Polynesia very easy and carefree.

 

Beach at Les Tipaniers

A small van picked us up in the port of Moorea along with a number of other tourists and honeymooners. Two by two they were dropped off at their respective resorts, eventually leaving us alone in the van as we made our way further around the island. Moorea itself is about 10 miles wide, and has a main road running 35 km (22 miles) in a loop around the island, marked at each kilometer. About halfway around the island, we were dropped off at the Les Tipaniers resort.

Slightly more budget friendly than the Hiltons and Marriotts, this resort was french run and a little bit more laid back. We were ushered to our private garden bungalow, finding beautiful flowers laid out on the bed and tables. Though a bit dated, the bungalow had everything we needed, including a fridge and kitchenette. The supermarket was a bike ride away (free bikes to borrow from the resort!), allowing us the flexibility to make our own meals and drinks and avoid the typical resort prices. A waterfront restaurant served very reasonably priced meals and even sandwiches for take out. While the beach front was quite a bit smaller than we had hoped, the sand and water were incredible – white sand and clear aqua water.

Recovering from our extensive hiking adventure in New Zealand, we spent the next 3 days relaxing by the beach, reading our Kindles and hopping back over to our bungalow for a snack or a drink every now and again.  The area was also good for kayaking, though we ended up cutting our kayak outing short as the wind caused the water to be a bit choppy the day we tried it. We did manage to see two massive manta rays while out with the kayaks however. The water was shallow and warm, perfect for sitting in to cool off when the sun got too warm.  Every evening we would eat at the hotel restaurant up by the main road, which had friendly wait-staff, reasonable prices, and delicious fresh meals, which was quite a nice change after a couple weeks on the trails.  The highlight for us was the homemade Tahitian vanilla ice cream – we can safely say this was the best vanilla ice cream we have ever had!

One evening we decided to take an evening “sunset cruise” which left from the beach at our resort.  As we were the only people who had booked, this ended up being a private cruise on a tiny motor boat.  The guide was very knowledgeable, and pointed out fish, turtles and other ocean life as we cruised along, sipping rum punch out of plastic cups.  He explained how (like many islands in French Polynesia) Moorea is surrounded by a lagoon with a number of inlets/outlets to the ocean.  Good waves for surfing can be found near the inlets/outlets according to our guide. As Moorea has multiple outlets, this brings in fresh, cool nutrient rich ocean water which regulates the water temperature in the lagoon and helps the coral life to thrive.  This makes the island much more suitable to snorkeling than some of the others, though we didn’t do any serious snorkeling here.  In contrast, the lagoon around the French Polynesian island of Bora Bora only has 1 outlet to the ocean, which can cause the lagoon water to warm beyond a temperature that allows coral to grow and so aquatic life in the lagoon is not as prolific. See the comparison of these 2 islands below:

Turning the boat around to catch views of the setting sun, I climbed out to sit on the front end of the boat.  A few minutes later I saw a huge dark shape swimming directly towards the boat, and I managed to stammer out “shhhark!” as we excitedly watched it pass under the boat and out on the other side.  It must have been about 8 feet in length!  Tyler later saw a couple of sea turtles which I somehow managed to miss, but we both caught great glimpses of various stingrays in the clear water.

 

 

Our captain took us slowly back to our resort as we finished up the rum punch and let the beautiful sunset views sink in.  In a place known for high end resorts, this little no-frills boat cruise was refreshing and perfectly our style, a great way to end our time on Moorea.