Blogs from Moorea, French Polynesia, Oceania - page 5

Bonjour to all... So, life here in the islands of French Polynesia isn't too bad! It's 7 pm Friday evening, and Candice and I are hanging at the bar, reading/internet at our resort here in Moorea. We had an absolutely gorgeous day...we had a boat take us to a small motu (island) and drop us off for a few hours of the best snorkeling I've ever been a part of. Absolutely no one else was around. We could stand or just float in the water, and we observed thousands of the most beautifully striped/colored fish! Overall, our experience here over the last three days has been great! We rented a tiny subcompact car, and have found that you can zoom around the one road encircling the island in all of two hours, and that's going slowly. ... read more

The thing about French Polynesia is that you have to plan and book well ahead and do your research thoroughly...apparently...so it's a bit of a shame that we didn't read this until we were in Tahiti. The islands were a stopover on the flight to south America and we hadn't really thought about what we'd do while we were there. We knew Tahiti would be expensive and had tried to budget accordingly but when basics like food and accommodation are heinously expensive there isn't always a lot you can do. There was no low cost accommodation or camping on Tahiti so we spoilt ourselves on the first two nights at the really good value (but still pricey) Radisson Hotel. We had planned to just take a boat to nearby island Mo'orea and camp trying to keep ... read more

Lovely Island just off Tahiti Heard about it from Celine, lives in Kingston, she was on the World Cruise of 2006 with us, took a year off and cruises every year now Morea Did not get there 17 km west of Tahiti, ferry ride was 80$ Cdn for both of us allez-retour, why tour, when we can enjoy an expensive hotel room and pool right here in Tahiti People who went there said that the snorkeling was great And the streets were much less congested than Tahiti We will see enough islands ... read more

January 21st Daniel, Katherine and I woke at 5am because today was the day we wanted to make a push to visit the island of Moorea. We left the lodge at 6 and were on a bus 15 minutes later once we had realised that we needed to flag the buses down. It is one of those lessons one forgets at this hour, fun though. The bus ride was a new experience for us; there were people with no shoes but who had a mobile phone and an ipod. Katherine had noted earlier that the economic disparity here is small, so I guess that these are the people who buy the best gadgets or just drink their money away. We arrived at the ferry dock and bought our tickets just in time for the 0725 ... read more

We arrived in Papeete (Tahiti), near to Midnight on the 8th December and our first impressions of the place were: "oh my god, it's HOT!" We were taken to a small Pension/b&b for our first night in paradise, there had been a bit of a drought in the region and rains were hoped to clear the stuffy atmosphere. The following morning we had a quick look around the town (well, not much to be said about it other than the fact that the price of Nutella almost gave us a heart attack! We later found out that Nutella wasn't the only expensive thing there). We hopped on a ferry to the nearby smaller island of Moorea which is supposed to be much nicer than Tahiti island itself. We had read that the cheapest stay option is ... read more