Moorea, French Polynesia

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We went to Moorea, Bora Bora, and Rangiroa for our honeymoon. I would recommend French Polynesia to pretty much just couples or scuba divers. There is little to no night life, the islands are very relaxed, but the snorkeling and diving was amazing.

We arrived at our hotel, Moorea Pearl Resort. Walked down the road and went to a few shops and got food at the grocery store. Made noodles with tomato sauce in the coffee maker for dinner, awesome! Be ready to either do this or spend a ridiculous amount of money on food. Over $100 US dollars for the hotel buffet dinner.

There are many options to see the island. We opted to rent a little 4x4 Suzuki “Jimmy” (Sidekick) and went exploring. There was a short cruise along the shoreline road and we made a left onto the road that takes you to the interior. It is the road on the way up to Belvedere View Point. We went through jungle with steep green cliffs in the background (there is always steep green cliffs in the background of everything). We went through some pineapple fields, up a small paved winding road to the Belvedere View Point, a main attraction where you can see both Cooks Bay and Opunohu Bay with Mt.Rotui in the middle. I honestly enjoyed the drive up there more then the view itself. There was also some “ancient ruins” we stopped at that consisted of rocks piled on top of each other, nothing too exciting. Back down the road and continuing around the one main road that circles the island. Stopped at a few shopping stores with native and non-native souvenirs to buy. We went on to the Afareaitu waterfalls, that was an adventure. We had little to no directions, there was no signs and the trails looked like no one had traveled them in awhile. It turns out our little “4x4” actually did quite good through the muddy, rocky, river crossing road we drove to get to the waterfall. After a few wrong paths we finally found our way to the base of one of the waterfalls and it was worth the effort. Needless to say there was no one around, it was about 150 foot cliff face with water cascading down into a small pool with tropical flowers and lush green all around. I won’t mention the mosquitoes though cause that would ruin the picture perfect place. But it was really fun. We finished the rest of the day exploring local communities and Temae beach, that is supposedly a good snorkeling beach, but the wind was blowing about 25-30 MPH all day, some gusts at Belvedere view point had to have been about 50 MPH. We explored the whole island of Moorea in less than 7 hours.

We spent the rest of our 2 days relaxing by the pool and snorkeling out in front of our hotel. It is possible to break it up and take 2 halfs days or so to explore the island, but that is more expensive.

I would say renting the little Suzuki was the best way to go. The island is very easy to navigate, minus finding the waterfall. The guided tours are expensive. There was another cool looking buggy thing to rent which seemed really fun, but you could see more from the jeep being it a rag top, and it was much less noisy.

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Photos

Moorea Pearl Resort
This was our room. We got the Garden Bungalow here, very nice.

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Stopped at the pineapple fields on the way up to Belvedere View Point

Little hint at the ancient ruins.
If you follow the trail all the way down you can find this cool little stream. Most people stay at the top and never see down here.

Afareaitu waterfalls
The trail to get to the falls.

Comments

[petrpetr]

hi guys,just wondering,how much did you pay for one day rental?thx for any info.