Yet another morning when I woke up at 6am… why do I even bother setting
my alarm clock when I always wake up before it goes off anyway?! Meanwhile, DH has managed to sleep until at least 7am every morning!  I snuck out of the bedroom and took my usual spot on the porch to jot down a few notes in my trip journal.  I could already tell the weather today would be the best we had seen in Moorea… the sky was bright blue and the air was crisp and not humid at all.

The water looks so eerie this early in the morning when the low tide allows the coral to rise above the surface.

Just as the sun rises above the mountain, the tide starts to rise, and that’s when we see the beautiful blue water show its true colors!

Promptly at 7:15am, I went down to the lobby to pick up our order of coconut bread, and brought it back to the bungalow to enjoy on the porch with some brie cheese and pineapple jam.  I have never eaten as much brie as I did over the 17 days of this vacation!  It has always been my favorite cheese, but I have never been able to eat it every single day (…sometimes multiple times per day!)  It’s the little things in life!

The tiki sculptures at the base of the palm trees around our hotel always made me smile

We didn’t really have anything specific planned for today.  We knew we wanted to return to Belvedere because the weather was much better than when we went on Saturday.  The PG was anchored in Opunohu Bay, so we hoped to sneak a peak if it was clear enough from the overlook point, and maybe we’d also see it as we were driving around the island.  We also wanted to check out some of the other shopping areas on the island, and basically do everything we had not yet done since this was our last full day in Moorea.  

As we were getting ready to leave for the day, we ran into Elvis.  He asked if we had tasted a fresh coconut yet.  We said no, so he used one of his tools to pick a coconut fresh from the tree in the middle of the hotel.  He whipped out a machete (where was he hiding that thing?!) and quickly sliced open the coconut and handed us a straw so we could drink the milk.  

When we were done, Elvis sliced the coconut into quarters so we could eat the fruit from the middle.  What a great start to our day!

Here is our car parked in front of the lobby of Moorea Fare Miti.  Notice the cute tiki sculptures in the lawn!

Our first stop of the day was to go straight to Belvedere while the skies were still clear.  We didn’t want to miss our chance at seeing the view without clouds! The drive was very easy and there were plenty of signs along the way.  There is a turn off towards the mountain side of the road at the south end of Opunohu Bay, and the road was paved for our whole drive up to the lookout point.

It wasn’t a big surprise that Belvedere was much more crowded today versus when we were here on Saturday.  I think at least one third of the 330 PG passengers were taking cruise ship excursions that brought them up here to enjoy the views with us.  That made it a little tricky to get a photo with no other people in it, but that’s okay, at least we could see the top of the mountain peak in front of us!!

Notice the PG peeking out from the lower left side of the middle peak in Opunohu Bay (the bay on the left)

This is one of my favorite photos of the entire honeymoon:

There are several hiking trails that pass through this overlook point (I posted the map already when we were here on Saturday). We were wearing flip flops, so we couldn’t really take advantage of the hikes, but we did try walking just a short distance on the trails to see what it was like.  

On the drive back down the mountain, we stopped at one of the archeological sites (called marae in Tahitian) along the road. The sign explained that they used to play archery here, with the aim of shooting further than 240 meters through a cleared area in the forest.

We spent a few minutes reading the signs, then continued on our way down the mountain and back out to the main road.

We turned right onto the main road and drove along the east side of Opunohu Bay until we reached the public beach called Ta’ahiamanu Beach. This gave us spectacular views of the PG anchored in the bay, with the mountains of Moorea in the background.  We were so excited to get an up-close look at the ship we would be boarding tomorrow!!

While we were taking photos, another couple drove up. We saw that they were also taking photos of the ship so we stopped to talk to them.  It turns out that they were on the current sailing on the PG and were exploring the island on their port day.  They told us that we were very fortunate to be cruising the week after them, as they had had horrible weather for their entire cruise.  The seas were very rough and it was cloudy and raining every day, and many people (passengers and crew alike) were sea sick.  They said we were lucky because the bad weather system had finally finished and we were expected to see beautiful weather for the duration of our cruise.  We asked them a few questions about their time on the ship, and then they continued on their tour of the island.

Side note about driving in Moorea:  As I already mentioned, there is basically just one main road that goes around the perimeter of the island. There are some roads through the inland section but except for going up to Belvedere, you are not likely to drive through there.  The man road is approximately 60 kilomters (36 miles) long, and I had read that it is marked with a PK sign at every kilometer. The distances are measured between the intersection of the airport road with the main round-island coastal road, and the village of Haapiti on the west side.  In other words, the distances written on the PK signs increase from the airport in each direction (going both north and going south), and reaching 30km near Haapiti. The problem was, we could never seem to find any of these rumored PK signs!  I was on directions duty as DH was the driver, and all of my notes told me PK numbers for all the restaurants and tourist spots we wanted to visit, but I could not find a PK sign anywhere and I often relied on the map I had created to find places based on their general location between other landmarks. Fast forward to today, the 5^th day we were on the island, and I FINALLY spotted one of these PK signs!! It was sitting opposite the public beach and I saw it as we were walking back to our car.  I figured out why I never saw them when we were driving… these signs face out towards the road instead of being positioned perpendicular to the road, and they are only about 18 inches tall, so it is very hard to see it when you are driving by at 40 or 60km/hr (those are the 2 speed limits depending on if you are in a town center or between towns).  So for your reference, in case you opt to rent a car in Moorea, this is what the PK signs look like!

It was still a little early for lunch, so we went back to Moorea Fare Miti for a little while.  This was one of the few times we were here at high tide and wow, what a difference that made!  The water was so beautiful with the sun shining down on it!  I just couldn’t resist taking a few more photos, knowing today was the last chance we’d have to see the beach look like this since we had to check out tomorrow morning.

At around 12:30pm, we left the hotel for the 10-minute drive over to Snack Mahana, located just a little east of the Intercontinental.  This small restaurant gets a lot of positive review both from the active posters on this forum on Cruise Critic as well as on Trip Advisor.  The restaurant is very casual, with only outdoor seating on plastic tables and chairs, but the charm is that they are right on the water on the North coast and the tables are shaded by a single giant tree so you feel like you are eating in someone’s backyard (which, actually, I am pretty sure is exactly what you are doing since there is a little house on the property too! Haha).  They are only opened for lunch on select days of the week, and they close by around 2 or 2:30pm, but if you time it right, you are in for a treat.  

The menu features both hot and cold entrees, priced around 1700-2100 XPF, plus a few burgers, drinks, and desserts.

The one thing I will warn you of is that service here is extremely slow. Based on the time stamp in my camera, it took 55 minutes between when I took the photo of the menus (which was probably about 5 minutes after we were seated since I read over the menu first before taking the photos) and when our food was delivered (I took the food photo immediately when the food was served).  I understand that things move a little slower in FP than we are used to in America, but that was much slower than we expected.  It didn’t help that the entire time we were there, there was a strong wind blowing.  It was a nonstop, continuous wind, so much so that I had to change the side of the table I was sitting on so the wind would hit me differently because I couldn’t stand it blowing in the same spot of my head any longer!  The views are definitely lovely, but you tend to stop enjoying it when it is so windy that you have goose bumps on your arms and you need to hold the silverware and tablecloth so they won’t blow away!

When the food did arrive, it was delicious.  I ordered the tuna sashimi with rice and thought the fish was very fresh and the portion was generous.

DH ordered the grilled mahi mahi with pepper sauce and fries (if you are in a French territory, do you call it French Fries, or just “fries”? hehe)

When all was said and done, we were at Snack Mahana for nearly 2 hours. Luckily, we didn’t really have a set schedule today so we were not in a rush, but keep this in mind if you plan to come here on a port day from the cruise ship.  We were seated at a table next to a couple who was on the current sailing of the PG, so this was the last day of their cruise. Hi Jayhawk2000, if you are still reading along!  It was great getting to chat with them and hear about their experience on the PG, and getting some extra behind the scenes pointers about their experience on the cruise.  

After lunch, we continued our tour of the North side of the island.  This mountain peak near Cook’s Bay looks like a woman’s face looking up to the sky. Can you see it?  Her forehead is on the right, then her nose, lips, and her chin is on the left.

We got a kick out of this sign on the side of the road.  Does this mean that you cannot repel along this stretch of road??  Hehe

We continued driving along the road, passed the town of Maharepa, and the signs for the golf course, until the road goes uphill to a scenic overlook. There are places to pull over and park your car along the side of the road so you can step out and check out the incredible views of Temae Beach (the larger of the 2 public beaches in Moorea), the Sofitel Hotel, and Tahiti off in the distance.  This place is definitely worth a stop if you rent a car and have a way to get here because the views are so beautiful!

That shadow off at the horizon, below the clouds, is Tahiti

This map was painted on the side of the hill across the street from the overlook.  If you look closely at the right (east) side of the map, there is a white line along the northeast coast.  That is where the airport is located. Just south of that is a small white dot- that’s where we were standing at the overlook point.  It is hard to miss it if you are driving along the main road because you will see other cars pulled over here, and there is a large statue here too (I forgot to take a photo of it though).

Had we continued a little further east in the direction we had been driving, we would have ended up back at the ferry terminal, so instead we made a U-turn and went back to check out the shopping in Maharepa Village.  This is the largest shopping area in Moorea, with many stores selling jewelry, clothing, souvenirs, a grocery store, and a few restaurants.  We stepped into the bakery Carameline and were amused to learn we could buy a divorce for just $4 LOL  That was more than we bargained for on our honeymoon, so we skipped it.

We spent about an hour looking at the black pearls and the pareos and all the other goods.  By the time we were done, it was a little after 4pm and we were getting tired.  The weather was absolutely perfect today so we wanted to try having dinner at the Hilton again.  We thought about driving all the way back to Moorea Fare Miti, but it didn’t really make sense since we would pass the Hilton, and it was a good 30 minute drive between our hotel and the Hilton.  Luckily, we had brought along a change of clothes in the trunk of the car so we decided to just go straight to the Hilton now and relax there until the restaurant opened for dinner.  

When we arrived at the Hilton, it was 4:30pm.  We checked in with the concierge and she said the restaurant doesn’t open until 6:30pm, but she was able to make a reservation for us and told us we could wait at the bar in the lobby.  We used the restrooms in the lobby area to get changed into fresh clothes, and then took a seat outside at the bar, with a beautiful view of the water, the beach, and the over water bungalows.  We had the most incredible view of the sunset while we waited for dinner.  It was made even more spectacular when we saw a boat appear on the horizon… it was the PG heading back to Tahiti!  I am sure the passengers on board were sad to be sailing by, but we wanted them to dock back in Tahiti ASAP and pack up their belongings so we could start our cruise tomorrow!!  Haha

The timing worked out perfectly, and just as the sun finished setting, it was time to walk over to the crepe restaurant for dinner.  As I mentioned the other day, the restaurant is located out on the pier in the middle of all the over water bungalows, so it is raised above the water.  

We arrived promptly at 6:30pm and had our pick of wherever we wanted to sit, so we opted to sit in the middle of the section to the left of the kitchen area so we would have a little shelter under the thatch roof in case the wind picked up (luckily, it didn’t) but we’d also have a great view of the water beneath us.  The waitress brought us some menus and we took a few minutes to read over all the different options of crepes that they offered.  The menu was quite extensive considering they only serve crepes!

We were shocked to see that they had wine as inexpensive as $5 per glass, so we ordered 2 glasses of wine and 2 crepes.

While we waited for them to prepare our meal, we were visited by a few sharks and sting rays swimming below us.  They light up the water so it creates a romantic atmosphere and you can see as the fish swim under the pier.  

With a full moon lighting up the cloud-free sky, and the perfect temperature in the air, we were so happy we did not try to tough it out in the wind on Sunday night as this made for a perfect last dinner in Moorea.

After dinner, we went back to our bungalow for one last night in Moorea Fare Miti.

After not sleeping on the redeye flight, and then waking up at 5am on Saturday and Sunday, it felt like I got to sleep in when I woke up at 6am today.  Of course, it was still before sunrise so I took my seat out on the porch with my iPad and the sounds of roosters crowing in the mountains. Faby had told us that she cannot get coconut bread on Mondays because that bakery is closed, so we ordered 3 baguettes for today.  We shared one of them for breakfast (with our usual brie cheese and pineapple jam), and we made sandwiches with the other baguettes to bring as a picnic lunch.  I had packed a cooler bag and a small ice pack in our luggage with the intention of using it today so we could eat lunch since I wasn’t sure what other food options there would be.

We left the hotel around 8am and drove around the Southern end of the island, passing the messy construction site again, and driving through a few small towns where the locals live.  

It took about 30 minutes for us to reach our destination.  The Lagoonarium is a small motu off the east coast of Moorea.  They have ropes in the water surrounding a coral reef where there are hundreds of fish, and also a few sharks and sting rays.  They do have a website but there is not a ton of information on there.  Based on the excellent reviews on Trip Advisor, we knew to expect a fantastic snorkeling experience, especially when they do the feedings.  

When we arrived at 8:30am, there was only 1 other car in the parking lot.

We went inside this little building to pay our admission fee of 3400XPF per person, which included a boat ride to get to/from the motu, a locker, use of one of the eight little huts to store our belongings and get some shade (if there was one available), coffee/tea/hot chocolate/water, and a bathroom with a shower.  

We waited about 10 minutes, and then we saw this boat coming our way.

There is no dock for their boat so we had to wade out into the water to board (carrying our beach bags and lunch cooler overhead!).  This guy would be our guide for the day, but he never introduced himself so I do not know his name.

From reading all the reviews on Trip Advisor, I was expecting our guide would be Wilfred, but this was definitely not him. In fact, I just went back and looked again and I could not find a single photo of this guy.  Sadly, I do think that impacted our experience today because this guy was not a very good guide.  Maybe he doesn’t normally work here and was just covering for today?  

Anyway, another family arrived just as the outrigger boat was coming to pick us up, so we waited for them to climb on board and then set off for the 5 minute ride to the motu.

We weren’t surprised to see that there was a dog on the boat… this is still Moorea, after all!  There were actually 3 dogs that we saw on the motu. They left us alone for the most part, but they did come over when we took out our food for lunch.

It was a little tricky getting out of the boat because you can see the water level was much lower than the dock (we tied up next to the white buoys). We had to climb up on the seats of the boat and then push ourselves up onto the dock, which was doable but would probably be difficult if you have mobility problems.

Once everyone was out of the boat, the guide gave us a brief tour of the island.  

He showed us the bathroom…

…and the kitchen area where we could make ourselves a cup of coffee, tea, hot chocolate, or just get some water.  

There was a seating area in the shade where we could eat our lunch

That staircase leads upstairs to another seating area, and there are some great views from up there too!

(DH wore that shirt because today was Labor Day. Every time we met an American couple, he wished them a Happy Labor Day, and they all gave him the same quizzical look at first.  Once you are in vacation mode in a paradise like FP, it’s hard to remember the day of the week let alone that it’s a holiday back at home! Haha)

There are 8 little huts on the island that are available on a first come, first served basis.  These are very basic shelters, but it was nice to have a place to keep our beach bags and to have a place to sit in the shade.  There was only one other party who arrived before us, so we had our pick of the huts (some are reserved for larger parties, but the guide let us pick between the smaller ones for the 2 of us).  Had we arrived when all the huts were occupied, we could have sat on the chairs or at the tables scattered around the island, or we could have stayed near the dining area, but I don’t know if we would have liked that as much as having our own space.  The island felt secure (especially considering you can only access it after you have paid for admission, and if someone tried to steal something, they would have to wait for the next boat back to Moorea before they could escape so it was unlikely anyone would try to steal anything), but just in case, we opted to lock our car keys and extra cash in the small lockers located behind the bar in the kitchen.  These lockers were very small, just big enough for a few items, but you could probably fit your camera in there if it’s not waterproof and you didn’t want to leave it out while you are in the water.

This is overlooking the roofs of all of the huts:

This was our hut for the day:

There were 2 long benches inside where we could put our bags, and 2 plastic Adirondack chairs outside.

The hut did have a window but there was no way to keep it open.  It got a little warm in there as there was no way to get a breeze unless the wind blew at just the right angle.  As the day went on, we actually appreciated that it was warm in there (spoiler alert: these blue skies didn’t last all day!)

These huts were towards the back of the island. The first one is for staff only. The one behind it is 2 stories tall and is reserved for very large parties.  We saw a big group get settled back there sometime mid-day, so perhaps it was an excursion through one of the hotels?

This shows how all of the huts were lined up side by side, with a path running in front of them, and then there was a long narrow sandy area with extra tables and chairs for the people who didn’t get a hut (or if you just wanted to sit out in the sun).

At the back end of the sandy area, basically right across from our hut, there was a funky seating area with benches and a coffee table.

After we finished our brief tour, we asked the guide where we could go snorkeling.  He said that there was no snorkeling now, and we should just relax until it was time for the first feeding at 11:30am.  What?!?  Really?? I thought this place was supposed to have amazing snorkeling!  It was barely 9am at this point so we had a lot of time to kill.  DH spent the time reading while I wrote in my trip journal, and then we went out into the water near where the boat dropped us off.  The water was just so clear and it was only waist deep so we felt like we were in a swimming pool.

We are kneeling on our knees in this photo, just to show how shallow the water was!

I liked the effect of the sun made when looking down into the water

At around 10:30am, we needed a break from the sun so we went back to our hut for some Hinanos… hey, it’s 5:00pm somewhere!

Then, at 11:30, the guide rounded everyone up and said it was time for the first feeding.  We grabbed our snorkels and masks and jumped back in the water.

The guide brought out a big tub of baguettes and fish for the feedings. Within seconds, hundreds of fish emerged along with a few sting rays and reef sharks.

Notice all of that coral down there?  I was kind of annoyed that the guide lead us to believe that there was nothing to see in the water before the feeding because I would have happily gone out to explore the coral in the 2 and a half hours we spent essentially killing time.  We paid for admission to be here and wanted to make the most of our time, but I felt like this guide did not really know what he was doing.  Maybe the owner just told him to spend his day shuttling people back and forth from the motu on their boat, and throwing fish and bread in the water at feeding time, but did not tell him anything else??  We did enjoy our time here during the feeding, but would have appreciated if the guide gave us correct information about being able to snorkel with just the coral (and any fish who may live in that coral) earlier in the day.

It was a breezy day, and the current tends to be rough over on this side of the island, so there are ropes set up in the water to give us something to hold on to so we don’t have to fight the current and can relax in the water.

Like Rai did yesterday, the guide used one of the sting rays to tow him around the water.  This time around, he did not encourage us to participate, just to watch him do it.  That was fine by me since I did not want to try it again anyway!

My snorkel came with a GoPro attachment on the end of the mouthpiece, and I thought the Lagoonarium was the perfect use case for this! I knew the current was supposed to be strong and I did not know if I could be able to take one hand off the rope to take photos, so I attached my GoPro to the mouthpiece, set it to take one photo every 5 seconds, and hoped for the best!  As it turned out, I was able to hang on with one hand while I took photos with the other hand, so the GoPro was not needed, but it was fun to have the option!

The feeding lasted about 1 hour and there were a maximum of 20 people there with us so it wasn’t too crowded.  Unfortunately, there was one lady who was very pushy and she literally pushed DH out of her way when he was trying to grab hold of the rope at one point.  This sent him down into some coral where he scraped up the top of his foot (we were wearing water shoes but this was just above that point on his ankle).  I had no idea this happened, but when I got back to our hut after the feeding, I saw DH sitting in his chair with blood all over his foot.  I didn’t see any coral left behind in his skin, so I grabbed a roll of toilet paper from the bathroom and used that to apply pressure and stop the bleeding. Luckily the cut wasn’t very deep and I did not think he needed stitches, but I still worried about him getting an infection.  I found the guide and explained what happened, and asked if they had a first aid kit or bandaids or anything to help.  I wasn’t sure he understood me with the language barrier as he spoke minimal English, but he met me back at our hut with some berries in his hands. Umm, what’s that for?!  He squeezed the juice from the berries onto DH’s wound and explained that there was a natural antiseptic in the berry.  We weren’t sure we believed him, but hoped it wouldn’t cause any damage and continued to apply toilet paper to keep the wound covered up.  It was not even 1pm and we knew DH shouldn’t get back in the water so he could let the cut close up.  We thought about just heading back to the car now, but decided to hang out a little longer since we paid to be here all day, and DH didn’t want to deal with the wet landing to get off the boat back onto Moorea.  

We opened up a few more Hinanos and ate our sandwiches in our hut, then spent some time reading and journaling.  Apparently we left a few crumbs behind from our baguettes because a bunch of birds found their way to our hut.

I loved how beautiful the water was here, with so many shades of blues and aquas.  This photo shows the waves breaking over the reef- we were surprised that we didn’t see any surfers out there!  You can also see the horrible sunburn on my right leg.  That was another souvenir from the jet ski tour yesterday, since I was never dry enough to reapply sunscreen.  I am actually fairly certain I ended up with sun poisoning because this burn went on to blister and ooze and do all sorts of gross things as the week went on.  It is now over a month after we took that jet ski tour and I still have a large patch of dry skin where that sunburn was!  I wish I had thought to wear a rash guard pants/leggings in addition to my shirt! That was actually the only day I got a sunburn on the entire 17 day vacation, but boy did it leave a lasting mark on my legs!!  If you look very closely, you can also see the fresh wounds on DH’s right ankle. This trip was really beating us up, but we were so grateful that we thought to pack the bottle of liquid bandaid!!!

You can also see Tahiti in the background!

And then, as if someone flipped a switch, the weather pattern completely changed at about 1:45pm.  We were sitting in our hut and I was debating if I should hop back in the water for the 2pm feeding (DH knew he had to sit that one out).  All of a sudden, the skies got very dark, the wind picked up, the temperature dropped by at least 10 degrees, and it started to rain.  I was so bummed because I really wanted to go snorkeling again, but you could tell the current was much stronger now, and I was still quite tired from the snorkeling before lunch, so I didn’t feel safe going out there again.  Meanwhile, DH took advantage of the shelter in our little hut to hide from the rain and stay warm in the cooler temperatures.  That hut really came in handy!

Looks like I’m not the only person who wants to watch the feeding from the shore!

This photo really tells the story of a day at Lagoonarium… The guide is standing in the water throwing out pieces of bread and fish to bring in the black tip reef sharks and sting rays.  The snorkelers are holding onto the rope so they don’t get swept up in the current and end up back in Moorea without taking the outrigger canoe!  There were a bunch of birds flying overhead, hoping to get their share of the bread. All with a view of Moorea in the background.

Despite the cloudy sky and rain, the water was still clear enough that we could see the sharks, sting rays, and fish swimming below.

Check out those waves crashing over the reef!

The 2pm feeding also lasted one hour.  Since the guide can’t drive the boat while he is running the feeding, there is no way to head back to Moorea until he is finished.  The next boat back was leaving at 3:15pm and every seat was filled, so I guess we weren’t the only ones who were ready to leave!

Overall, I would say that the snorkeling at the Lagoonarium is great during feeding time with the sheer volume of fish that are swimming around you, so that makes it worth the cost of admission.  However, going back and reading some of the reviews on Trip Advisor when Wilfred was working does make me feel as if we missed out by going the day we went.  I was not very impressed with the guide we had, and I suspect we would have gotten more out of the experience if we went on a different day.  If you are going to go, make sure to arrive early so you can get a private hut as I think that was a nice feature but it is not guaranteed to everyone.

We got back to the hotel by 4pm, and got showered and ready for dinner.  I forgot to mention this earlier, but when we checked in on Friday, Faby explained that they do not clean our bungalow daily, but instead, they come in every 3 days to change the sheets and towels.  We had been doing our own dishes and making our bed all weekend, and we hung our towels up and put them back on the towel bar each time we used them… oh, the hardship! Hehe Elvis was due to come in today to change our sheets and towels, but we were surprised to see that he also did our dishes and reset the bungalow to how it looked when we checked in.  It was a pleasant surprise to come home from a long day in the sun and to see our bed looking like this:

Our plan was to go to the Intercontinental to see the show tonight, but since it had been raining all afternoon, we had a hunch that our evening would not go as planned.  DH went down to the office to exchange our beach towels for clean ones (we had them with us at the Lagoonarium so Elvis didn’t replace them yet). While he was there, he mentioned our plans to Faby and she offered to call the Intercontinental for us to confirm if the show would be inside or outside tonight.  Sure enough, the rain forced them to move the show inside tonight, so we could not go see it.  We could have paid the $100 per person to have dinner there, and then we could have seen the show, but the one part we really wanted to see was the fire dancers, and that would not happen tonight.  We knew they had similar shows in the evenings on PG so we did not want to pay to see the show here in Moorea when it would be free for us to see a few days later.  The one difference was that there would not be fire dancing on the PG (we all know a fire is the worst thing that can happen on a cruise ship!), so we were sad that we missed out on our only opportunity to see fire dancing on this vacation.  

Side note:  The Intercontinental also has shows on Wednesday nights and Saturday nights. We missed those 2 shows because we were not staying in Moorea on Wednesday night (that was the day we would board the PG), and we already had our sunset catamaran scheduled for Saturday night.  As we already saw, it rained on Saturday night so even if we didn’t have our scheduling conflict, I am sure they would have cancelled the outside show then too.

Moving on to Plan B, we waited until the rain stopped, then took a walk to Le Petit Village.  We were hoping to go to one of the restaurants near where we ate dinner last night, and then go to one of the bars there after dinner, and we didn’t want to deal with driving.  The walk only took about 15 minutes.  Unfortunately, our bad luck continued tonight because all of the restaurants were closed! I thought things were supposed to be closed on Sundays, not Mondays?!?  It was completely silent, dark, and deserted, so we turned around and walked back to the hotel.  Apparently we would need to take out the car after all, so we wished we had just driven in the first place.  We ran into Faby in the office on our way back to our bungalow and she said that a lot of the restaurants are closed on Mondays.  She said there might be one place opened if we went just a little further up the road from where we turned around, but I wasn’t so sure considering how quiet and dark it had been.

We got in the car and started driving back towards Le Petit Village, and sure enough, a minute or two after we passed the place where we turned around, we found ONE restaurant that was opened.  Le Motu was a small, casual restaurant with a lengthy and inexpensive menu.  We ordered 2 of the pizzas to go, and waited about 15 minutes for them to bake them fresh for us.

We brought the pizzas back to our hotel and enjoyed them on the porch with the bottle of sparking wine we had bought at Super-U on Friday morning.

As much as I loved being on the porch in the early morning hours, I didn’t love the porch at night because of the mosquitoes. When we turned on the light on our porch, it felt like every mosquito and insect in Moorea joined us.  The bungalow did have mosquito coils that we could burn to help control the bugs, but I don’t think it helped much and the smell wasn’t very pleasant.  I did end up with quite a few mosquito bites over my time in Moorea, but then again, I tend to attract bug bites wherever I go so why would FP be any different?  I just wished there was a screen surrounding the porch to protect us.  Despite that, we spent the rest of the night out on the porch until it was time for bed.

 Today was just like yesterday.  After a solid night of sleep, I woke up at 5am and couldn’t fall back to sleep so I went out to the porch to spend a few hours checking emails and social media.  At 7:15am, I went down to the office to pick up our order of coconut bread, and brought it back to the bungalow so we could enjoy it with some brie and pineapple jam.  

We left the hotel at 8am and stopped at a supermarket to pick up a baguette for lunch but they were sold out!  At 8am?!?  Wow!! Most restaurants are closed on Sundays and the supermarkets would be closed before we finished our jet ski tour, so we wanted to get a fresh baguette now to make sandwiches for lunch. Apparently we missed our chance, but at least we had some left over baguette from yesterday.  It was a little stale, but it would have to do!

We continued on our way to the MAC office as we needed to arrive by 8:30am for our jet ski tour.  When we arrived, Benjamin greeted us with another big hug and introduced us to our guide Rai.  They split us into 2 groups- one with a French-speaking guide and our group with Rai who spoke English.  We had a total of 3 jet skis in our group, each with 2 people on it, so there were 6 of us all together.  

The jet skis are all ready to go!

This was the MAC office, with a little seating area on the deck for people who wanted to eat lunch here between morning and afternoon tours.  You can also see the couches where we hung out yesterday after our tour.

The weather was much better this morning than it had been yesterday, so we were looking forward to a beautiful day out on the water!

Rai gave a briefing about the day’s itinerary, then showed us how to work the jet skis.  They are seemingly brand new Sea-Doos, and they can move forward and backward, they have brakes, and they have 2 dry storage compartments where we could stash our belongings.  I wouldn’t recommend bringing anything that can’t get wet though.  We were wet for the entire 3 hour tour, so if we needed something from our compartment, we were reaching our wet arms in there to dig through our bags, so everything got at least a little wet by the end of the tour. Luckily we didn’t need to bring much with us since we could leave things in our car.  

We did bring a bottle of sunscreen with us to reapply, but since we were never dry, there was no opportunity to put on new sunscreen!  You can see that we are wearing long sleeve rash guards, and these were a great idea. They helped protect us from the sun, so while we did have sunscreen on our arms, it wasn’t a big deal that we couldn’t reapply it as the morning went on.  The rash guards helped make it more comfortable to wear the life vests and protect against chaffing.  They also helped keep us warm!  Despite the warm sun, it was quite cold when we were all wet and going upwards of 50mph on the jet skis.  I would have been freezing without my shirt, and I actually ended up taking it off while I was in the water so it could sit out in the sun and dry off, and then I could put it back on when we sped off on the jet skis to the next stop.

Once the men felt comfortable with how to operate the machines (since none of the women had any interest in driving haha), we launched the jet skis into the water and set off out of Opunohu Bay, turning left to go west along the North coast.

I want to intermix the photos that Rai took in with the text of the review, but I also want to give him credit for taking them. As a disclaimer, if there is a photo taken of DH and I together that is not obviously a selfie, then it was taken by Rai.  Some of the photos have the MAC logo on the bottom corner, but sometimes I had to crop it out because the photos were taken at a distance and I wanted to zoom in to see us better.

Sorry about the blurry spots… sometimes I had water on the lens!  Oops!

Notice how our sunglasses have water splashed on them? Definitely wear an old pair of sunglasses as they act as goggles to keep the salt water out of your eyes!!

We rode the jet skis for at least 45 minutes along the North coast, then turning south when we reached the 2 motus at the northwest corner of Moorea (we would return here later), and we went all the way down the west coast to reach our first stop.  We actually did stop briefly 2 or 3 times along the way to let everyone catch up and so Rai could make sure we were all doing okay, but our first real stop was the coral garden.  He said we could take off our life vests, put on our snorkels, and hop into the water to spend about 20 minutes exploring.  

We continued a little further down the west coast to a point where Rai said they had the best surfing on the island.  We could also see Tahiti out in the distance, so I know we must have been down near the southern tip of Moorea, but I didn’t get any photos down here.  Unlike the ATVs which felt stable and moved relatively slowly, I did not feel comfortable letting go of my grip with one hand to take a photo while the jet ski was moving.  In fact, I was gripping around DH’s waist so tight that I had bruises on my fingers after the tour! Haha  

Eventually, Rai said it was time to turn around and head back up to those 2 motus we had passed an hour earlier.  These are visible from the beach at Les Tipaniers hotel and many tours come here for the coral garden and to see the sting rays. Rai took us to a beautiful clear blue canal between the 2 motus, with water that is shallow and sandy enough to stand in.

He hooked all our jet skis together so we could jump in, and he gave us some pieces of bread to attract the fish.  We spent a while here observing all the beautiful fish and coral.  While there were a few other tours here at the same time, it never felt crowded because there is just so much to see and we were all spread out.  I never enjoy snorkeling in over-crowded areas because I am more concerned with getting kicked in the head than with looking at the fish, but that was not a problem here and I was able to slowly float around and enjoy the moment.

I think this coral looks like cauliflower!

I really liked this little guy…

A few of us took a little break from snorkeling and were standing on a sandy spot and chatting when we felt something slide up along our legs!  What was that?!  We all jumped and looked down to see 2 sting rays swimming around us!  Rai had some fish to help attract them, and he captured some fantastic photos of us playing with the rays.

They were pretty big sting rays… this guy fills nearly the whole bottom of this photo!

Rai encouraged us to touch the sting rays, and they were all so friendly and kept jumping up on us that we couldn’t avoid touching them even if we wanted to!

Rai showed us how we could hold the fish on our palm and hook our fingers under so when we fed it to the sting rays, they would tow us around under water.  Unfortunately for me, they seemed to want to eat my finger more than the fish and the sting ray clamped down on my finger and bit me!  I immediately relaxed my hand to release the fish, hoping he would release my finger, but that didn’t work.  I eventually was able to pull my finger free, but not without that ray leaving a mark.  It’s hard to see because my fingers are still wet and pruney, but you can see the bite marks on my middle and ring finger.  

It actually started bleeding a little bit after I took this photo, which worried me most knowing that we would be swimming with sharks at our next stop!  Rai said not to worry and that the sharks don’t know what human blood smells or tastes like, and that they wouldn’t bother me.  Luckily, we packed a jar of liquid bandaid, so I was able to tend to my wounds and it didn’t become infected.  That sting ray left me with a scar on my middle finger, so now I have a permanent souvenir from our jet ski tour in Moorea!  

Anyway, back to the fun photos… DH mastered the fish trick and got the sting ray to tow him for quite a while!

Rai showed off so we could see how it’s really done…

After all that excitement, we got back on our jet skis to head off for our last stop.

We rode for less than 5 minutes to a spot out on the north coast a little closer to the Intercontinental hotel.  For whatever reason, it was extremely windy at this spot. All 6 of us had been eager to jump in the water at every stop, but we all looked at each other and hesitated when we got here because the wind made the water very rough and choppy.  Rai kept waving at us to get in the water and come join him, so eventually we all obliged. We made our way over to where Rai was standing as he tossed fish into the water.  Within seconds, at least 10 black tip reef sharks swam over and were going crazy to get their lunch!  These sharks had zero interest in us humans!  It was such a surreal feeling to be in the water with sharks and not need to panic and get away from them.  

Note that I did not use the zoom on my camera for these photos… the sharks were within touching distance (although we were warned not to try to touch them as you never know if that will upset them!)

Touching the sting rays was still fair game though!

Here is a video that I took when we first arrived after they started throwing fish in the water.  I apologize for how shaky it is, but the water was really choppy so it was tossing me around a bit!

Once all the sharks swam away, we had a few minutes to play in the water, and Rai was kind enough to take a few photos of us with the shoreline of Moorea in the background.  I wish there weren’t so many water spots on the lens though!!

After a thrilling but exhausting 3 hours, it was time to head back to Opunohu Bay to return our jet skis to the MAC office.

Overall, we loved this jet ski tour and we thought Rai was a great tour guide.  He kept us informed of what was happening, where we were going next, and how long it should take to get there.  At the start of the tour, he assigned us an order to be first, second, or third behind him, and then he encouraged us to change up the order after each stop.  He had a waterproof camera and he took several hundred photos of us throughout the 3 hour tour.  Since we all took turns being up front, he got great shots of everyone and he also always seemed to be looking over his shoulder to make sure everyone was safe and keeping up with the group.  In fact, if I have one complaint, it would be that he sometimes drove a bit too fast.  That might be fun for some people, but I found it very hard to hold on (especially after we made our first snorkeling stop because my bathing suit was wet and slippery!), and I felt like I might fall off the jet ski at any moment.  I definitely had a fun morning on the tour, but I think I may have enjoyed it a little more if we went just a smidge slower.  

Once we got back to the MAC office, they had an outdoor shower so we could wash off the salt water.  They also had a restroom for us to use.  We dried off a bit and were then rewarded with some more Tahiti Drink. Since we had no other plans for the rest of the day today, we hung out on the couches and chatted with Benjamin and Rai and the other people on our tour.  Every time we finished our cup of Tahiti Drink, they refilled it!  Such a great way to end a fun tour!  If you are ever in Moorea and looking for a thrilling, memorable, active excursion, do not hesitate to book with Moorea Activities Center!  These were 2 tours we will never forget!

On our way home from the MAC office, we stopped by the Intercontinental to ask about their evening shows.  They told us there was a show scheduled for Monday (tomorrow) night and we could either pay $100 per person for the dinner buffet, or we could sit at the pool bar and enjoy a drink and watch the show from a distance. The only exception was if the weather was rainy or too windy, then the show would be moved indoors and we could not watch from the bar.  

The concierge said it was okay if we wanted to walk around the hotel grounds.  We were still wet from the jet ski tour so we didn’t stay long, but we did walk out towards the over water bungalows to take a few quick photos.

When we got back to the hotel, we toasted the 2-day old baguette on our stove top, and that made it taste good again so we could make sandwiches with some turkey and cheese.  We really took advantage of having that porch to eat our meals in the shade with a beautiful view!  

DH hanging peering out from our porch:

Moorea Fare Miti looks so pretty in the afternoon light when the sun shines on all the bungalows.

After lunch, we borrowed one of the kayaks from the hotel lobby so we could paddle out towards the little motu. Unfortunately for us, it was almost low tide, so all of the coral was very close to the water surface and our kayak kept getting stuck.  Faby was actually sitting on the beach while we were launching our kayak, but she did not warn us.  Once we got about 30 feet out from shore, she saw how much we were struggling as we got stuck on rocks and coral at every turn.  She yelled out to us that there are paths cleared on either side of the motu and that is where we should have gone, instead of down the middle. Wouldn’t it have been more helpful if she told us that before we put the kayak in the water?!  She was sitting right there and surely she knew that we would run into this problem!  Anyway, after a little more paddling, we made it to the clearing and then it was no problem to get out to the motu.  The water here is so incredibly clear that we didn’t need to get in the water to snorkel- we could  just look down at it from in the kayak and see everything underneath us!

There’s our bungalow on the beach!

We made it to the motu!  I wasn’t wearing my water shoes though so we couldn’t get out to walk around.  It didn’t look like there was much to see on land… just a bunch of trees and sand.

The west side of the motu

We stayed out on the kayak for about 30 minutes, then headed back to the bungalow to get showered for dinner.  Tonight we would finally see a pretty sunset from our bungalow!

I couldn’t resist walking down to the beach to watch the sunset.  This was what we had dreamed of when we booked this hotel!

All of the debris you can see in the water is actually the coral rising above the surface with low tide.

Selfie at sunset!

After the sun went down, we headed out to dinner. This may have not been the best plan as by 6:30pm, the main road around Moorea was completely dark.  They don’t have many street lights and the roads are very narrow with no shoulder.  On top of that, the stray dogs had zero sense of personal safety and roamed around in the middle of the street, but we couldn’t see them in the dark.  It was a terrifying 30-minute drive from Moorea Fare Miti to the Hilton, where we planned to have dinner.  DH said he didn’t mind the drive, so maybe it was just scary to me as the passenger, but I wished we had driven there before sunset!

The Hilton in Moorea has a crepe restaurant outside on the pier with the over water bungalows, and the food is said to be as good as the views so we wanted to eat here tonight while it wasn’t raining.  Unfortunately, when we arrived, it was so incredibly windy that we could not justify staying there.  It’s amazing how different the weather was here on the north side of the island compared to back by our hotel on the west side, but there were seriously gale-force winds and we knew it would not be pleasant to eat outside in weather like that.  Very disappointed, we left the Hilton and drove back to Le Petit Village to find somewhere else to eat.  

We found one of the smaller, more casual restaurants called La Paillote.  I am fairly certain we were the only non-locals dining here, but that was just fine with us!  

We ordered our food at the counter and were directed to find a seat in the sandy-floored dining area.  We ordered 2 dishes to share: Poisson Cru (yes, again!) and a chicken and cheese crepe.  The food came out in about 10 minutes and both dishes were very good.

Some people at a neighboring table got the chicken special, and that looked really good so I wanted to return here later in the week to try it out, but we never did get that chance.  After dinner, we went back to the hotel and relaxed until it was time for bed.  With all of these days waking up at 5am, I found it hard to stay up late at night.  Luckily, there really isn’t much night life in Moorea and things really quiet down after the sun sets.

After an amazing 9 hours of sleep, I woke up at 5am to the sounds of roosters crowing in the distance.  Literally!  Luckily, we could not hear them inside our room and they are not what woke me up, but once I stepped out onto the porch in the early morning light, I could hear them loud and clear!  They continued to crow for quite a while out in the distance (in fact, we could pretty much hear roosters crowing all day long… not just in the mornings!)  It was still too early to pick up our breakfast, so I spent some time on the porch catching up on notes for this review and enjoying the beautiful view.

Our bungalow:

Side note: Moorea (and many other French Polynesian islands) has a bit of a problem with stray dogs.  While driving around the island, we were constantly on the look out for stray dogs wandering out into the street (seemingly unaware of oncoming traffic, so it was shocking that we saw adult dogs… you’d think most wouldn’t have survived to live beyond being puppies!)  Most of these dogs were not aggressive, they just wanted food.  There were 3 dogs that we frequently saw at our hotel… they would be right there to greet us when we stepped out of our car coming home each day and would follow us right up to our porch.  We got to the point where we quickly had to open our gate on the porch, run through, and close/lock it behind us or the dogs would have come up onto the porch with us.  Faby shooed the dogs away whenever she saw them, so clearly they are not welcome at the hotel, and there was even a sign inside our bungalow asking us not to feed the dogs.  One dog came out to greet me as I was taking photos on the beach this morning.

At 7:15am, I walked up to the lobby to pick up our baguette and coconut bread. Faby kept a tally of what bread we purchased throughout our stay, and told us to pay in XPF cash when we checked out. She also had some jam and butter stocked in the fridge that we could purchase if needed.  We enjoyed our bread on the porch paired with the brie we picked up yesterday at Super-U.  When we finished, we quickly finished getting ready and left a little after 8am for our tour.

Back when I started planning for our time in Moorea, I knew I wanted to take an ATV tour on our first full day here.  Moorea is a volcanic island with lush green peaks rising up from their deep blue lagoon, and I knew an ATV tour would be a fun way to see the sites while getting the lay of the land. There are a few companies that offer ATV tours, but we pre-booked online with Moorea Activities Center (MAC for short).  They offer 3 ATV tours of varying lengths, so we booked their longest tour which was 3.5 hours including a trip up to Magic Mountain at the end of our tour.  MAC also offers jet ski tours, and if you book both an ATV tour and a jet ski tour through their company, you can combine them for a discount.  They give you the option of doing both tours on the same day or splitting the tours onto 2 days.  There was a couple on our tour who did both tours in one day, but I would not recommend that unless you have very limited time in Moorea.  We had 5 full days here pre-cruise, plus 2 days again at the end of the cruise, so no need to rush things and we split the tours onto separate days.  I sent several emails back and forth with MAC’s owner, Benjamin, and he was always extremely fast to respond and answer all of my questions (sometimes within 7 minutes of when I sent my email!)  The 2 tours together for the 2 of us sharing 1 vehicle cost $320 USD (so $80 per person per tour), and Benjamin asked us to pay in cash on the day of our tour (note- he charges 10% higher rates for paying by credit card).  

MAC has a small office on the west side of Opunohu Bay, about a 10 minute drive from our hotel, and they asked us to arrive by 8:30am for our ATV tour.  There is a small parking lot across the street from their office where we could park our car (be careful though!  We watched another car back up into the pole for their sign and crack her back tail light on her rental car!!)  

When we got to the office, Benjamin greeted us with a huge smile and he knew who we were even before we introduced ourselves. We chatted for a few minutes, then he explained how the day would work.  There were 4 couples booked on our tour and we needed to be fitted for helmets from the storage shed in the parking lot.  Our guide Olivier had bottles of water for us and the admission fees to all of the stops on the tour were already covered in our tour price. Once everyone was ready to go, Olivier showed us how to operate the ATVs.  DH was more than willing to be the driver, so I hopped onto the back seat and we were all set.  

I was happy to see that these ATVs had back rests so I didn’t feel like I was falling off the back when DH drove faster on the main road around Opunohu Bay to reach the turn off towards Belvedere Lookout.  

After just a few short minutes, we left the main road and spent most of the rest of the tour on dirt roads.  It was mostly flat and even surfaces, and even when it was a little more rocky and rugged, we didn’t notice it because the ATVs had great shocks to absorb the impact.  Unfortunately, these low clouds plagued us through the entire tour.

Every so often, we came across a little river that we had to cross to continue on our path.  It made for a little more excitement, but we didn’t get nearly as wet as I thought we would.  We were in Moorea during their dry season.  I can only imagine how many more puddles and how much deeper the rivers get during their rainy season!

Our first stop was at a field of pineapples overlooking a beautiful view of one of the peaks.  We had a few minutes to stop and take some photos, and Olivier told us a little about the process of growing pineapples.

Next, we continued on our journey up to Belvedere Lookout.  Moorea is shaped like a heart and there are 2 big bays along the North shore, separated by the green peak of Mount Rotui.  Belvedere is one of the most scenic spots in Moorea and offers panoramic views of both Cook’s Bay (on the right) and Opunohu Bay (on the left).  While there is a paved road that cars can use to access the view point, Olivier took us the back way through the jungle on a dirt road.  We went up and down hills, and around sharp hairpin turns.  You definitely couldn’t take a rental car along the path we drove!  We also passed through small farming villages so it was interesting to see how some of the locals live.

We had a few minutes to hop off the ATVs once we parked up on Belvedere.  It was overcast most of the day and there were low clouds hanging over the mountain peak, so the view was a bit washed out.  We were glad we took this tour on the first day of our trip so we still had a few more chances to return on a clear day.  For now, here are the views we could see on this day.  

Maybe this is one of the roosters I heard this morning??

DH thought it was really funny every time I had to put on a hair net before putting on my helmet after each pit stop (he had to wear one too!)

After we took all the photos we wanted, we rode our ATVs back down the mountain just a short distance to the agriculture school where we were able to taste 5 of their jams.  

I have no idea what fruits they were but they were all so delicious that we couldn’t resist buying a jar.  It was hard to pick one just flavor, but we opted for the pineapple.  The ATVs have 2 small compartments to hold our belongings so we stashed our treat in the compartment and continued on our way to the next stop.

We drove for quite a while into the middle of the island to a beautiful spot deep in the valley with panoramic views of Mount Tohivea.  This dormant volcanic peak is the highest on the island of Moorea, and is actually featured on the back of the 100xpf coin in FP currency.

After a bit more driving, we ended up back at the main road opposite the Super-U where we bought our groceries yesterday.

Our next stop was at the Rotui juice factory, which can easily be accessed by cars as it is located just off the main road on the northwest corner of Cook’s Bay…. Just look for this sign:

The juice factory is open for tours every day except Sunday, so it is worth a stop if you get a chance.

They have a bar at the back of the store where they pour samples of a few of their drinks.  First we tried the pineapple flavor of Tahiti Drink.  It was very similar to the regular flavor that we had back at the hotel.

After that, we tasted samples of the pineapple rum and coconut rum.  Both were good but I preferred them mixed with juice versus just a straight shot.

Interesting factoid:  The Tahitian word for “pineapple” is “ananas”… very similar to the English word “bananas” just minus the “B”.  On the first few days of our trip (including when we bought jam at the agriculture school), I heard people say “ananas” not knowing it meant “pineapple” haha  Personally, bananas are my least favorite fruit while I LOVE pineapples, so I was happy to learn that “ananas” and “bananas” were different!

I don’t remember exactly where we were on the tour when I took this video, but this will give you a good idea of what it was like to ride on the ATV.  Even when we were on unpaved roads, you can see that it was very level (likely from all the ATV tours on the days before us haha) and it was a fairly smooth ride…

After driving around for a few more minutes, we went back to the MAC office to drop off one of the couples who only paid for the 2.5 hour tour.  Now it was time for the grand finale of our tour: the ride up to Magic Mountain.  The road was steeper and windier than the places we went earlier in the day, but it was paved for most of the time as we made the climb to the top.  

Once we parked our ATVs, we hiked up a short but steep path (probably a 45 degree incline, so definitely steep!) to reach the overlook point.

Magic Mountain offers amazing 360 degree views of the water and the mountains.  Olivier gave us 20 minutes to take photos while he turned the ATVs around down where we parked them.  I can only imagine how beautiful this place must be on a clear and sunny day.  Unfortunately, we did not have an opportunity to return here on a day with better weather so we had to make due with a cloudy, overcast view…  At least it wasn’t raining!

The drive back down the mountain was much more direct and we were back at the MAC office 10 minutes later.  Overall, I really enjoyed the tour in that we saw a lot of the inland part of Moorea and we saw beautiful views as we sped along both the paved and dirt roads, but I did not find Olivier to be a great tour guide. He spoke very little English so it was hard to ask him questions, and he did not give us much information about what we were seeing.  

MAC includes photos that they take of you during their tour in your pricing. They post the photos on their Facebook page each day so you can download them and have some great action shots that you can’t possibly take for yourself (even with a selfie stick! Haha). Unfortunately for us, we were third in line on our ATVs and Olivier did not encourage us to rotate our order so we are in the far distance for most of the photos. Try to be in the first ATV if you want good clear photos taken of you!  Also, Olivier did not take many photos (perhaps because it was hard for him to stop on the narrow roads?), so we only ended up with 7 photos of us at the end of the tour.  I had looked at some of the albums from other days of this tour and they had many more photos than we did.  Here’s the best of the 7 photos we ended up with…

The photo I used at the intro to this day of posts is also one that Olivier took of us.

Once we got back to the office and returned our helmets and got washed up a bit, MAC provided free drinks of juice with rum (or without if you preferred).  We relaxed on the couches at their office for a little while, enjoying the luxury of not being in a rush.  It was fun getting to chat with the other couples on our tour since we were all on our honeymoon.  Here is everyone from our tour (minus the couple who left after the first 2 hours), and our guide Olivier is on the right.

After we had our fill of free cocktails, we headed back to the hotel to eat sandwiches for lunch on our porch with the baguettes, turkey, and cheese we purchased from Super-U.  We had about 3 hours until our evening activity so we lounged around on the porch drinking Hinanos and gazing out at the beach.  

Tonight’s activity was a sunset catamaran sail that we pre-booked online about a year ago with Voil’a Moorea.  The boat holds a maximum of 8 people, and the 2 hour tour was scheduled to take us along the North coast of Moorea, first going east towards Cook’s Bay, and then turning back to go west as the sun sets.  The group tour cost 5500xpf per person, and included roundtrip transportation from/to our hotel.  We were told to meet our driver in the lobby of Moorea Fare Miti at 4pm, and about 2 minutes later, a lady drove up in a 4×4 truck.  We drove 15 minutes to a dock (which turned out to be where PG boards their tenders!) just as our catamaran arrived.

Our guide’s name was Jerome, and he explained that while we paid for a tour with up to 6 passengers, we were the only 2 who signed up so we would have a private tour!  After some introductions, we took off our shoes and stepped on board. Jerome encouraged us to sit anywhere we felt comfortable on the boat, so we settled in on the padded cushions up front and Jerome brought us a “mai tai” (I say that with quotation marks because we were pretty sure it was just Tahiti Drink with grenadine haha)

We motored East towards Cooks Bay and enjoyed the views of the mountains and hotels along the North coast. Every so often, Jerome popped up next to us to tell us about what we were passing (a rock formation in the mountains or which hotel it was or whatever), but otherwise he left us to enjoy a romantic evening.  

Over water bungalows at the Hilton

After a while, we moved up to sit on the net way out in front.  With all of the boat tours I have taken, I have never been on a catamaran so sitting on the net was new for me.  

Make the grey clouds go away!!

We spent a few minutes floating around in Cook’s Bay, and then Jerome decided to put up the sail.

Unfortunately, the weather just was not cooperating, and a few minutes later it got very windy and started to rain.  Jerome had to roll the sail back in and we headed back towards the dock near Opunohu Bay.  While I am sure there was a beautiful sunset somewhere in the world, we did not get to see it tonight.  It was so cold, wet, and windy that we spent most of the ride back hiding under the shelter you can see behind us in the photo above (which is probably used to provide shade from the sun most of the time!).  It’s amazing that even in bad weather, the water is still an incredible color!

We returned back to the dock at 6:15pm, very happy to see our driver
was waiting for us so we could hop into her car to get dry and warm. Obviously Voil’a Moorea can not predict the weather, and we were actually worried that they may cancel our tour because it had been raining on and off most of the afternoon, so we were happy with the tour they provided.  Sure, it would have been better if the weather cooperated, but Voil’a Moorea does provided a solid tour at a great price.  Similar sunset catamaran sailings in Bora Bora cost three times the price!

When we got back to Moorea Fare Miti, we got in our rental car and drove back towards Le Petit Village to find somewhere to eat dinner.  A bunch of the restaurants have outdoor seating areas, but we wanted to stay dry with all the rainy weather, so we decided to go to La Plantation.  They have a large indoor dining room as well as an outdoor patio if you’d prefer to dine al fresco.  

We were the only people eating at the restaurant. We took a look at the menu and both ordered the large Poisson Cru (which included rice and a side salad, as opposed to the small which just had the fish).  Poisson Cru is the most popular dish served in French Polynesia and consists of raw tuna with fresh coconut milk and lime juice.  It is similar to ceviche, and we knew we wanted to try it after learning about it when I was researching for the trip.  

The service at this restaurant was incredibly slow. Like I said, we were the ONLY people dining here, but it took a really long time for our waitress to take our order, and even longer for the food to come out.  When it finally did arrive, the food was delicious!

We really enjoyed the Poisson Cru and hoped to have it again during our 2 weeks in FP.  When we finished eating, it again took a really long time to flag down our waitress for our check because she was busy doing the dishes.  Maybe she just wanted to give us some space and let us enjoy our dinner at leisure, but we just wanted to get back to the hotel after a long day.  Once we returned to the hotel, we relaxed with a few drinks on the porch until bedtime.

About one hour into the flight, the flight attendants handed out immigration forms.  I guess it is better to fill this out early on in the flight while you are still somewhat lucid, instead of waiting for the end of the flight after getting nearly no sleep and not remembering your own name!

Next, the flight attendants started food/beverage service.  “Dinner” (can you really call it dinner when you eat it at 12:45am??!) was surprisingly tasty, although the portion was tiny.  They served a vegetarian pasta salad with feta cheese, olives, and tomatoes, a roll, a wedge of spreadable brie cheese, fruit salad, and a small cup of red velvet cake (which was 75% frosting and 25% cake haha)  We were literally the last row on the plane to be served, so I am not sure if other rows had a choice of entrees, but we were happy with what we got.

They also served drinks, including wine, so we opted for sparking wine to continue the celebration.

I usually change the time on my watch to match the local time of my destination to help ease the process of jet lag.  The 8-hour flight passed quickly, despite my inability to sleep, and before we knew it, it was 3am (in Tahiti… it had been over 5 hours since they served “dinner”) and they were serving breakfast!  This time around, we knew for sure that we were missing out on something by once again being the LAST row on the plane to get our food.  We saw the flight attendants ask the rows in front and behind us which they preferred (eggs or pancakes), but when they got to our row, they just handed over 2 trays and walked away.  We ended up with one of each, so I took the eggs (which was really a cheese omelet with ham and potatoes), and DH took the peach pancakes.  Both trays were lukewarm but edible.  Luckily we packed a few Clif Bars in our carry on bags as a back up!

We asked if we could have champagne to make mimosas with our orange juice, but were told that they stop serving wine one hour after dinner is served.  Oh well, by this point we were nearly done with our flight and we landed in Tahiti a few minutes early at 4:45am.

Once we landed in Papeete, we exited the plane down a flight of stairs to the humid pre-dawn morning air.  We were officially in French Polynesia!!

We walked along the outdoor corridor to the airport entrance where we were greeted by 4 Tahitian singers (wow, they have an early shift for work today!)

We waiting on a short line and were through customs, immigration, and claimed our luggage by 5:30am.  It felt so good to finally not be in a rush after all that running around we did in LAX!  Now we had a few errands to run in the airport prior to leaving.  I have an ATM card through Charles Schwab bank which allows me to take out money from any ATM worldwide, and they credit me back for any fees charged.  PPT airport has an ATM down on the far right side where I was able to withdraw cash in their local currency (XPF).  They also have a currency exchange desk so you can use that if you don’t have an international ATM card.

A side note about currency:  At the time of our vacation, the exchange rate was very easy to convert… $1.00 USD = 100 XPF.  All we needed to do to convert prices listed in XPF into terms we could understand was to move the decimal point over by 2 places.  Most vendors would take USD but not everyone took them at a 1:100 rate because some vendors (especially in the more remote islands) didn’t have much use for USD and preferred to be paid in their local currency so they charged more if we wanted to use USD.  Since the exchange rate was so easy, we opted to spend XPF cash whenever possible.  We also had a credit card with no foreign transaction fees, so we used that to pay for our hotel, car rental, grocery shopping, gas for the car, and a handful of restaurant meals. Here are photos of the front and back of the denominations of XPFs… I thought they were so cute and colorful and loved the pictures printed on the bills!

Our next errand was to buy a few postcards and stamps to mail home to our families.  While we were spending most of our time in Moorea, we wanted to get a postcard that said “Tahiti” on it (let’s face it, most people don’t really know where Moorea is, but everyone has heard of Tahiti lol).  There is a small gift shop at the airport where we could buy postcards for 100XPF ($1) and they also sold stamps for the same rate as the post office.  The cashier was even kind enough to ask me where I was mailing my postcards so I would have the proper postage (spoiler alert: we are back at home now, 3 weeks after mailing the post cards, and everyone received them this week!  Not too bad for mailing something halfway across the world!)

Trying to fight off the jet lag, DH bought some coffee at the one place to buy
food.  We planned to also buy something for breakfast here but there were slim pickings and the baguettes looked stale.  Instead, we shared a Clif Bar and told ourselves we could eat a better breakfast once we boarded the PG! Also of note, the airport does have wifi available, but it is not free and we did not want to pay for it (we would have free wifi once we got to our hotel in Moorea) so I’m not sure about the prices.  

We waited until after 6:30am to get a taxi so we could avoid the overnight surcharge (I think it ends at 6am but we wanted to play it safe since we were in no rush at all).  There was no line at the taxi stand immediately outside the front of the aiport, so we walked right up to a taxi and were told it would cost 2100 XPF ($21) to get to the ferry terminal including the fee for our luggage.  The taxis in Tahiti do not have a meter, so it is always wise to discuss the price before getting in the car.  Our taxi driver was very friendly and answered a few questions during the 20 minute ride.

When we arrived at the ferry, we were greeted by a man from the tourism board and he explained how everything works.  He said the dock workers do not speak English so he was there to walk us through the process of getting our tickets, finding the waiting area, and knowing which ferry to board.  

As we stepped out of our taxi, he the dock workers placed our large suitcases in huge bins that would be loaded onto the ferry and returned to us once we arrived in Moorea.  As it happened, we were the last bags thrown on the top of the pile, so I could see them when the bins were lined up in the loading area (ours are the big blue bags on top of the further bin)

The next ferry was with Terevau at 8:10am and cost 1150xpf ($11.50 USD).  I was able to buy both of our one way tickets with my credit card.  I did not buy round trip tickets because there are 2 ferry companies that run the ferries for different prices and we didn’t know which ferry we would take on the return trip.  

Side note:  There are 2 ferry companies that transport tourists and locals (along with commercial trucks filled with shipments like gasoline and produce) between Tahiti and Moorea.  Terevau runs a smaller, older ferry which costs slightly less money at 1150xpf per ride, and is a faster moving ferry with about a 30 minute journey.  Aremiti runs a much larger, newer ferry, equipped with free wifi and a snack booth, but it moves a bit slower and takes about 45 minutes to travel the same journey.  Both ferries have bathrooms on board, and both have websites where you can look up the ferry fares and schedules.  For some bizarre reason, they often change their schedules so make sure to check the times in the week before you leave because the time of our ferry changed by about 30 minutes at some point along the line (Albert’s had warned us this was likely to happen and that we should reconfirm our timing with them in the week before our trip). Another weird issue is that the two companies run their ferries at nearly the same times! They only run a few ferries per day, so it would be more helpful if they spread out the times so passengers could catch a ferry when needed.  Instead, they cluster their times so there are a few ferries in the morning, and then again late in the afternoon, with nothing in between. We took an 8:10am ferry on Terevau, and the Aremiti ferry was at 8:30am that day.  Had we missed those ferries, the next one wouldn’t be until several hours later. Definitely check those schedules and plan accordingly!

The tourism guide then lead us upstairs in the elevator, and showed us the shops and restaurant where we could wait since we still had about an hour until boarding time.  We ordered a couple of croissants and made use of their free wifi while we waited to board the ferry.

Boarding started around 8:05am and we were on our way shortly after that.  

You can see a small outside seating area at the back of the boat.  If you can bare the wind, lack of shade, and occasionally getting splashed with water, then I would recommend sitting out here for beautiful views of Tahiti for the start of your journey.  

The ferry ride was extremely choppy and windy. People were stumbling all over the place as they tried to see the view from one of the sides of the boat. Luckily, we had great seats at the back and could enjoy the views safely from our seats!

That’s Moorea in the distance to the left of the ship:

We arrived in Moorea around 9am and walked off the ferry to be greeted by Sandy from Albert Tours.  We had pre-arranged to rent an automatic car for the duration of our time in Moorea (it’s been years since DH has driven stick shift so we were happy to pay the added cost for the convenience of an automatic car), and that included the transfer from the ferry to their office. We assumed it would just be the two of us, so we were a little surprised to see a large bus waiting to pick us up!  It turns out that Albert also provided transfers for about 10 other people on the ferry to some of the hotels on the island.  Once we were all loaded on the bus with our luggage, we made the 15 minute drive to their office.  

Our rental car was a nearly-new Hyundai hatchback with less than 500 miles on it.  Kaha was very helpful in getting all the paperwork completed and showing us around the car.  He even mentioned that we are not allowed to pump our own gas in Moorea and the attendants will help us when we need to fill up.  These photos were taken in the parking lot of the Lagoonarium, but this was our rental car:

Within a few minutes, we were off on our way to start our Moorean adventure.  Our first stop was a supermarket.  We had originally planned to go to Carrefour as it is very close to the ferry terminal and we assumed that Albert’s office was near there too.  When we saw how far we drove to reach Albert’s office, we asked Kaha to direct us towards a different supermarket, and he recommended the Super-U on the south end of Cook’s Bay.  That was on our way to our hotel so it worked perfectly, and we arrived within about 10 minutes.

Super-U was a great find!  We spent over an hour walking up and down every aisle to buy some breakfast, lunch, and snack food and lots of drinks. While I speak nearly no French, I found the market easy to navigate and we stocked up on baguettes, cheese, local juices, bottles of Hinano, and a few other snacks.

After we finished food shopping, we continued along the main road to our hotel.  Moorea Fare Miti was a bit hard to find as their sign was a little small and we didn’t see it until we passed it, so we made a U-turn to get back to the entrance.

Fabienne (Faby) greeted us at the reception desk and quickly found the reservation we made through Booking.com.  She introduced us to Elvis, who cleans the grounds and the bungalows at the hotel.  Our bungalow was already cleaned and ready for us even though it was before 11am.  She told us to drive our car along the road behind the bungalows, to park behind the last unit and she would meet us there.  The bungalow was exactly as pictured online, sitting directly on their private beach with an over-sized thatch roof and wrap-around front porch. The main room features 2 daybeds that were set up as couches since we only had 2 of us staying in the unit, but they would have been set up as beds if we had 4 people in our party.  There was also a coffee table and ceiling fan.

The galley kitchen had a ¾ sized fridge/freezer, a glass cook top, a few dishes and cookware, a kettle, and a small coffee pot.

Down the hall was the bedroom with a full sized bed with a mosquito net, a closet with a hanging bar and shelves, and a safe.

The large bathroom had a stall shower, another closet with a hanging bar and shelves, and a door that lead outside to where the car was parked (but we did not have a key to open that door from the outside so we had to enter through the sliding glass doors into the living room).

Faby gave us the password to the free wifi, and asked if we would like some fresh coconut bread and/or a baguette for breakfast. We requested one of each, and she told us we could pick them up in the lobby at 7:15am tomorrow.  She also showed us the binder on the coffee table which contained lots of tourism info.  After she left, we unloaded the car, put away our groceries, unpacked and got settled.  We hadn’t eaten since our small snack at the ferry terminal so we made some sandwiches and enjoyed them outside on our porch.

We spent a few hours relaxing at the hotel, settling in and getting the lay of the land.  This was our beachfront bungalow:

To give some perspective, this is a screen capture of the Google satellite image of Moorea Fare Miti, and our bungalow is the one circled in red.

There is one other beachfront bungalow on our right, but it is actually privately owned and rented out as a vacation rental unit when the owners are not there, so it is separate from the Moorea Fare Miti hotel.  The 7 other units in our hotel are situated side by side progressively further back from the beach, but they are all angled so I think they can all see the beach from their porches.

The section of beach in front of our bungalow actually stretches pretty far north and south of the hotel so it wasn’t quite private, but there were very few people using the beach whenever we were there. In fact, I only saw two or three people there who weren’t guests at our hotel, and they were just taking a walk along the shore.

The view sitting on our porch looking out towards the beach:

Here’s a few other photos from the grounds of our hotel…

By around 2pm, we were ready to get up and do something, mostly to keep awake and void the jet lag urging us to sleep all day.  It was raining on and off so we could not take advantage of the beach at our hotel, and we didn’t really want to use the kayaks in the rain.  Instead, we drove up to Le Petit Village to explore the little shops and restaurants.  There were a few small stores selling souvenirs, black pearls, jewelry, art, and Tahitian pareos, as well as a small grocery store, gas station, and a few small restaurants.  Most of the products seemed more pricey than we wanted to pay, so we just looked around.

We weren’t quite hungry for dinner and it was still raining, so we went back to Moorea Fare Miti for happy hour on our porch. We bought a carton of Tahiti drink at Super-U and were curious to try it.

It is a pre-made fruit juice cocktail made with rum and it is 8% alcohol.  It was good but I think the pineapple juice and coconut rum drink we made with our lunch was better haha  They should serve Tahiti drink in single-serve juice boxes to take to the beach!  If anyone has traveled to Puerto Rico (or read my 2015 Carnival Valor review), this reminded us of Gasolina.

Thanks to the completely overcast sky, there wasn’t much of a sunset tonight, which was a shame considering our bungalow faces west over the water with the potential for an amazing sunset view (stay tuned to see if we ever got that perfect sunset!)  The rain did taper down to a drizzle long enough to capture this photo though!

We were starting to get hungry for dinner around 6pm, so we drove south from the hotel to look for somewhere to eat.  By now, it was raining again.  Not just a light drizzle… it was raining fairly hard. After about 5 minutes, we saw signs reflecting back in our headlights that looked like the road was closed.  We got a bit closer and saw that they were doing construction (perhaps on the pipes or sewers?) so traffic was being diverted off the road onto a dirt path along the side of the road.  With all the rain Moorea has had in the last few days, this dirt road was a muddy mess!  I thought I took a photo of it that night, but maybe it didn’t come out in the dark and I deleted it because I can’t find it.  Here’s what the construction site looked like when we passed by another morning. They really need to find a safer way to do construction because it was such a mess and likely just a matter of time before there is an accident here.

One of the restaurants on my planning list was called Pizza Daniel.  I had read several good reviews about this place on Trip Advisor and it was only 6km from Moorea Fare Miti.  After driving about that far, we still didn’t find it, but we did find it, but we came across a different pizza place which matched the descripton of Pizza Daniel. Perhaps they changed names?? This restaurant was called Pizzeria Mano Arii, and they had a bunch of options for thin crust personal sized pizzas for about 1500xpf ($15) each.

We ordered the Chevre-Miel and Vegetarian pizzas to go, and waited about 10 minutes while they made them fresh to order. We took the pizzas back to eat in our bungalow and washed them down with our first Hinano beers of the trip.

After a very long day that started at 7am Pacific time on Thursday morning, we fell asleep by 8pm on Friday night under the shelter of our mosquito net in French Polynesia.