Patti's trip to Moorea 2006

Our latest trip to French Polynesia was in many ways better than our first. We completely loved the island of Bora Bora last year, but I think we actually had a better time on the island of Moorea this year. They are about a 45 minute flight from each other. Moorea is about 5 or 10 miles across the Sea of the Moon from the main island of Tahiti, Bora Bora is about 100 miles to the NW. Bora Bora is really all about the lagoon, Moorea is all about the island. Both are very beautiful. But the majestic peaks of Moorea really do bring visions of “Bali Hai”. But the colors of the lagoon of Bora Bora are beyond comprehension!

Our trip out was relatively uneventful. We got to McCarren International Airport here in Vegas way too early (as usual!) I actually paid attention to where I parked the car this time. I always know the general area, but always seem to forget to look at the exact row. This time it was easy….2-P…all I had to do was remember the phrase….to pee or not to pee….it worked great!

Going through security was a breeze. We had to remove our tennis shoes. (remember this point for later in this report). We didn’t have our bags searched or anything unusual. Our flight to LAX on Southwest was on time and a breeze, as it usually is. When we got to LAX, we have about a 15 minute walk from terminal one down to the Tom Bradley International terminal. We could take the shuttle bus. But we always look forward to the walk, considering we just sat on a plane for an hour and have an 8 ½ hour flight ahead of us.

Checking in at Air Tahiti Nui was a breeze and we headed for the International security line. When get to the front of the line, they tell us we DON’T have to take off our sneakers. I guess they don’t worry about someone blowing up a pair of sneakers on the way to Tahiti as much as they do on the way to Los Angeles?????? I will NEVER figure out these TSA guys.

Our flight boarded quickly and easily. The plane was probably no more than 40% full. That left lots of extra room for people to spread out. The planes have a 2-4-2 configuration. Most of the middle section 4’s were empty. Shortly after takeoff, people grabbed whole center rows to stretch out and sleep on the way. Looked tempting, but I can never sleep on a plane and it was in the middle of the afternoon, so it didn’t bother. Although to have the same opportunity on the return (red eye) flight would have been great!

I love flying Air Tahiti Nui. They have great food and International flights mean free booze! I had some champagne, Paul had beer…and beer….and more beer…. Also each seat has it’s own individual TV monitor. So we could watch our choice of 4 movies, play video games, track the flight progress, and some other stuff I didn’t check out. The seats also have a foot rest. That comes in real handy for me cause my damn feet never touch the ground when seated in a plane. The flight was long. I get REAL ANTSY after about 2-3 hours of flying. Well, after 8 ½ half hours….I am REALLY REALLY ANSTY! I love looking out the window to see what’s going on. But when you’re flying over several thousand miles of ocean, there’s nothing to see. It’s mostly just clouds, plus they make us keep the shades down so people can sleep and watch movies.

Our arrival in Tahiti was interesting. The weather was great. Not a cloud in the sky, unlike last year. Still pretty humid though. You have to deplane on the tarmac. Walk down a huge flight of stairs and walk to the terminal. They don’t have the lovely little gates that stretch out to the planes exit door. Walking down the stairs after sitting in a plane for 8 ½ hours is a bit of a challenge. Hell, walking down a flight of stairs is a challenge for me anytime. There was a trio of Tahitian musicians playing ukaleles and singing greeted us at the entrance to the airport. I don’t remember if they were there last year or not.

There are 4 immigration station. 2 for French citizens, 2 for others. We got in line at the first others. There were about 10 people in front of us. I have no idea what the hell the guy at our counter was doing, but he was the slowest person on the face of the earth! After all the French citizens cleared, they opened up those 2 lines to everyone. Many behind us in our line moved over. They and all except 2 couples were finished before we ever got up to the counter! We were probably in the first 25-30 people off the plane and in line and were literally among the last 4 people to get though immigration!!!! Paul was livid. He’s so damn impatient anyway. All in all, it really didn’t matter, because we still had to wait for our luggage. So it was a matter of waiting in one place at the airport or another. Going through customs was a non event. They don’t even look at you as you walk by. Go figure.

We were met by our transfer company and got our flower leis. While waiting for our driver, I went and exchanged our money. WOO HOO! Last year the exchange rate was horrible! $400 US got us $335 Pacific Francs. This year $500 US got us $475 Pacific Francs. Man, what a difference! I wore long pants this year, partly because I always get cold on planes, but mostly ‘cause my legs got eaten alive at the airport last year. No bites at all at the airport this time. Too bad that didn’t hold for the whole trip.

We stayed at a different hotel for our one night on Tahiti. Lat year we stayed at the Intercontinental, which is the best hotel on the island. This year we stayed at the Royal Tahitian, which is the…..well….well….probably not in the top 5. It was okay. It was clean and much cheaper than the Intercontinental, and we were just there for one night. It seems silly to spend over $200 a night for a room that we just sleep in for 7 or 8 hours. The room was pretty dated. It looked like a 1960’s style motel room. The drapes and bed covers have seen better days, as had the furniture. But it WAS clean and safe. And that’s all we really needed. We checked out the hotel grounds the next morning. They are really quite beautiful. They are still very well maintained and you could tell that in it’s hey day it was quite a spectacular hotel. It was on a black sand beach, and had a beautiful little creek full of lily pads running through the grounds. Gorgeous flowers and plants everywhere.

Our Transfer to the ferry was supposed to pick us up at 7:30 for our 9 am ferry to Moorea. When we went to the lobby at 7:15 he was there waiting for us. So we left immediately. We arrived at the ferry docks in time to take the 7:30 ferry, so we did. The ferry was cool as hell. We could have flown to Moorea, it’s less than a 10 minute flight (around $75 round trip) well, the fast catamaran ferry is $9 and takes 30 minutes! That worked for us. It was spectacular! I loved the ferry. It was quite spacious and very nice. I though it’d be kinda cheesy and run down. OMG was I wrong. It was close to brand new with state of the art seating, and other facilities. A snack and a bar on board, a movie salon on the lower level. Clean to the point it was almost sparkling.

We arrived on Moorea a half hour later. It was very smooth ride and watching the approaching island was cool. We got off the ferry and attempted to figure out how to find our transport. I figured we might have a problem because we were now 1 ½ hours EARLY! Yep, no Torea Nui transport to be found. We asked an Albert’s Tours Transport guy how we could find the Torea Nui people. He called them for us and they said they couldn’t send anyone yet as they weren’t expecting us this early. So the Albert Transport guy said he’d take us to the main Torea Nui desk at airport and Torea Nui could take us from there. So he piled us in his van along with his other passengers and made a quick stop at the airport to drop us off. You gotta love these guys in Tahiti. They are so helpful! After meeting up with the Torea Nui guy at the Moorea airport, he drove us to our hotel. I felt kinda guilty though. We are not supposed to tip in Tahiti. But I do know some of the transport guys are getting used to it and are starting to expect it. Well, after he left, both Paul and I realized we really should have tipped the guy considering how he went out of his way to help us. Oh well, live and learn.

We checked in at our hotel at about 8;30. Mind you official check in time isn’t until 1pm. Going during the off season does have it’s advantages. We asked about upgrading to an over water bungalow for cheap, like we did last year on Bora Bora. But it was a no go this time. They wouldn’t cut us a deal. But it was really not a problem, ‘cause the over water bungalows there weren’t near as wonderful as the ones on Bora Bora were and the water in Cooks Bay was not even close to the water in the lagoon at Bora Bora, so we really didn’t miss anything. Our Bay View room was fantastic. We had a beautiful view of the majestic peaks surrounding Cooks Bay. Our room had a kitchenette in it. A fridge, a 2 burner stove, microwave, and all the pots & pans, dishes, and silverware. It's not a fancy hotel at all. It's pretty basic, but very clean and comfortable. Nice poo, and grounds. The rooms were nicer and updated more than the hotel on Tahiti. But still not at all elegant like our room was at the Intercontinental Tahiti last year.

We get unpacked and ready to make the trek to the local market to stock up on beer and bread and cheese and stuff. Only to discover it’s SUNDAY!!! No beer sales on Sunday! Why didn’t that lovely little fact stick in my mind from last year? I thought Paul was going to cry. Here he is on vacation….ready to kick back with his toes in the sand, a beer in his hand and veg for the afternoon……and no beer. We solved the problem pretty easily though. We went to the restaurant at the hotel for a bite to eat and discovered we could buy beer from them and take it back to our room. Sure it was more expensive that way, but at least Paul could start his vacation with a beer in his hand.

The weather was great on Sunday. A cloud passing by here and there. Too bad it wouldn’t stay that way for the whole week. Sunday, Monday were great. Tuesday was a bit overcast and then it was pretty much downhill from there later in the week. Culminating with a all out huge rainstorm, wind and everything on our last night (Saturday) But even with all the rain in the latter part of the week, we still had a great time. I mean, we’re in paradise…what’s a little bit (or a whole lot!) of rain?

Sunday evening we spent Happy Hour chatting poolside with Muk. Muk is one of the 3 Bali Hai Boys who moved to Moorea from Southern California back in the early 60’s. They pretty much invented the idea of the over water bungalows. They are quite famous and have many great tales to tell. Only Muk and Jay are still living. Hugh Kelly passed on a few years ago. They still own the Club Bali Hai hotel . Their other hotel, the original Bali Hai was sold a few years ago and now the Moorea Pearl hotel sits on that site. Muk holds court every evening to chat with the guests and tell them stories about the good old days. He’s interesting, and a tad bit crusty and cranky, and I’m not quite sure all his stories are fact. He does seem to do a bit of embellishing (to say the least!) We also met Jay, he pretty much runs the office operations at the hotel. He’s quite a nice guy. The entire staff at the hotel are totally delightful. Much friendlier than the staff at our hotel on Bora Bora. Most of the ladies at the reception desk have worked for the Bali Hai for over 20 years. We had a great time chatting with them when the weather kept us under cover in the lobby area.

Monday evening at the hotel they have Tupa Crab Races. OMG! They are totally hysterical. The grounds keepers at the hotel round up a dozen Tupa Crabs. The crabs are fairly small, about 4-6 inches in size. They have a wooden track they dump 4 crabs in and which ever crab gets to the end of the course wins. Everyone bets $1 (Pacific Franc) on one of the 4 crabs. If your crab wins, you get the pot. I got to be the lucky person chosen to write the numbers on the crabs backs with a piece of chalk. Even though the crabs were being held down for me, I was terrified the damn crabs were going to bite my finger off. Plus it’s hard to write with chalk on the back of a wet crab! The winner of the first race goes up against the next 3 crabs, for a total of 4 races. It was so funny. Totally dumb, but still a blast. Everyone was just laughing their asses off trying to get their crabs to move. Some went backward, some wouldn’t move at all. Some of the crabs kept trying to crawl out of the wooden course. One actually made it over the edge and went crashing to the ground. Lost one of his smaller legs in the dive! Paul and I didn’t win any races at all. See why we don’t bother gambling here in Vegas?

On Tuesday we went on a Motu Picnic. The weather was a bit overcast, but it wasn’t any problem for us. The trip is about 6 hours long. We left the dock at our hotel about 9:15. There were about 20 in our group. First stop was for fish feeding. It used to be shark feeding, but the environmentalists are cracking down on the tours to get them to stop feeding the sharks. It was getting a bit out of control. 20-30 sharks were routinely showing up and they thought it was bad for the sharks. So….we fed the fish. The water was about 10-15 feet deep. Tons of gorgeous fish all over. I did much better snorkeling than I did last year.

Next stop was to feed the sting rays! OMG! It was AMAZING!!!! They were all over the place. Dozens of them! The water was about 4 feet deep so we could stand up or stick our face in the water and snorkel. The rays are totally not afraid of you. I had one swim right up over my back. I thought I had backed into another person until I turned my head around and saw this massive gray flap over slapped over my shoulder! Paul had one swin right up his chest and into his face looking for food. It was hysterical. Some of them are huge. Like 6 feet across.

Our last stop was at a private Motu (small island) for our picnic and more snorkeling. While we snorkeled, our guides cooked lunch. Grilled chicken and fish, a pasta salad, a rice salad, and the most delicious fresh sliced pineapple. The Tahitian pineapples are much smaller and MUCH sweeter than their Hawaiian counterparts. But you have to go to Tahiti to try them. They are not transported. They also made some delicious rum punch and had beer (Paul was a happy camper!), a non alcoholic fruit juice and water. The food was great. Considering the cost of food and especially of drinks in Tahiti, it is a real bargain to get 6 hours of entertainment and free food for $60 ( and we got a 10% online discount!) After we ate, the guides gave a coconut husking demonstration and then pulled a couple guys out of the crowd to try to do it. Totally funny! The Oral Gynocologist from San Diego was one chosen to do it. OMG, he is so damn funny. He’s really an oral surgeon, but tells everyone he’s an oral gynecologist….oh the visions that brings to mind! LOL! The fresh coconut we ate was also great.

On Wednesday evenings the hotel puts on a Tahitain dance show….for free! Woo Hoo! Free is good. Most of the places charge like $50-100 (with dinner) for the shows. Free, with no dinner works for me. It was a great show. They had to do it in the lobby area rather than out on the lawn because it had been raining. Because it was done under cover, they couldn’t do the fire dance. That would have been great to see, but it was still great without it. Towards the end of the show they come out into the audience and grab peole to go up to dance with them (or to make fools of ourselves!) Well, guess who got picked? Yep, me and Paul both! Do I get picked by some handsome muscular Tahitian hunk? Nooo…..I get picked by the little 9 year old boy in the dance troop. I’m sure he is directed to pick out the shortest one in the audience ……yep that would be me. So I’m out there trying to do my best Tahitian hip shaking wiggles with a 9 year old! Thank God I wasn’t sitting down watching this ‘cause I would have had taken some pictures of Paul doing his worst interpretation of the Tahitian leg wiggle dance ever attempted! As bad as I was, I KNOW Paul was worse! LOL! The guy seated next to me, picked up my camera and snapped a few pics of me dancing. Gee, what a nice guy! NOT! Thank God they are still shots, not video wiggle shots. Cause my hipshaking just ain’t close to what those girls are doing. I think he didn’t take Paul’s picture for fear of breaking my camera lens. I love him dearly, but man, he can not dance! I could only see him briefly out of the corner of my eye, but he looked totally hysterical.

We loved the Motu Picnic so much we opted to do it again on Friday. The second time you do it, it’s a 25% discount. So for $45 it was REALLY a great deal! The weather was overcast again. It had rained earlier, but it didn’t look like it would start up again any time soon. We were so glad we did it again. I had heard they would video tape the whole adventure and you could buy it, but no one was filming when we did Tuesdays trip. When we redid the trip on Friday they had the videographer. So we got to buy the DVD of our adventure. The other cool part of our second motu picnic is we had a couple sharks show up at both the fish feeding and the ray feeding. I was totally comfortable jumping in the water because I knew no sharks were going to show up, because they hadn’t on Tuesday. So I’m just snorkeling all around. I began watching the film guy because he was filming a really cool moray eel in a coral mound. So…what do I see out of the corner of my eye….a 6 foot black tip reef shark swim by!!!! I about shit my bathing suit! I totally did NOT expect to see one. Talk about being over confident from the earlier trip! I frantically pointed it out to Paul. He’s like uh huh, I see it, cool, huh? Yeah right it’s cool! NOT!!!! I wasn’t totally scared cause I know they really aren’t interested in people, they just want some of the fish scraps they are feeding the fish. But still….it’s a damn SHARK! We all have Jaws in our brains. I tried to take a couple pics with my underwater camera as I made my way back to the back of the boat. But I was too afraid to take my eye off the shark. I was just pointing and shooting in it’s general direction, so I never did get a shot of it. As I made my way to the back of the boat, I lost track of the shark, I figured it swam away. I look down and it is eating a chunk of fish scraps directly under me! I mean like 3 feet under me. I had to get back in the boat for about 5 minutes just to collect myself. I wasn’t really scared. Just mildly freaked out. It does take you out of your comfort zone being in the water with a 6 foot shark. Bruno, our boat captain, said not to worry, they don’t like white meat. LOL! Real comforting, huh?

Another (or possibly the same shark) showed up at the ray feeding, but it just swam by and left. We continued on to the Motu Picnic. After we finished eating and had snorkeled for about a half hour, Paul looked off toward the reef and pointed out an approaching squall line to Bruno. He immediately rounded everyone up and we started to pack up to leave. Not fast enough though. Within 5 minutes it was upon us and it was pouring buckets….sideways! I swear I think there was more water in our boat than there was in the lagoon. The trip back to the hotel was a very wet affair. It poured! We all tried to stay toward the center of the boat (it was covered) but the splash and the sideways rain drenched us anyways. Even though the last half hour of it was a washout, we still had a great day.

Other than making numerous trips to the market for food, we really didn’t do much else except chat with people the rest of our time there. We met some of the most delightful people. Many of the hotel guests were from the US, but we also met people from Switzerland, Argentina, Mexico, Norway, France and Italy. The Tahitian ladies working at our hotel, Georgina, Valestine, and Nelly were a delight. We spent many hours visiting with them. We also met a great couple from Kentucky, one from Central California, and one from New York. I imagine we will stay in touch with all 3 couples. We had a blast visiting with them. The couple from New York have stayed at the hotel twice a year for the past 8 years, so they introduced us to many of their local Tahitian friends too. We had some great conversations with them. We can’t wait to go back. We feel like we now have friends that live there. Paul already wants to postpone our still planned trip to Rangiroa, for another trip to Moorea. As much as we loved Bora Bora, we absolutely can’t wait to return to Moorea.

Our last night was Saturday night. I awoke around 3:30 to wind and really heavy rain. I couldn’t get back to sleep at all. We finally got up around 7. We went downstairs to walk to the market for our daily croissants. The entire lobby and boutique was flooded. It rained so hard all the water from the road washed right into the hotel on it’s way to the bay. OMG, there was water everywhere! Checkout time was 11am, our ferry to Tahiti wasn’t until 5:45. Valestine let us keep our room until our departure. I guess it pays to be friendly with the staff, they made others checkout on time. When our transport came to pick us up, it was none other than Brian, one of the Tahitian friends of the New York couple. The look on all the other faces of those in our van when we got hugs and kisses from our driver was really funny. We kinda felt like royalty.

Although it had rained heavily all morning, it held off all afternoon. It was overcast, but not raining when we got on the ferry. About halfway across it started pouring buckets again. We’re thinking OMG, we had asked our transport back on Tahiti to delay picking us up to 8 instead of 6 because we didn’t want to sit at the airport for 6 ½ hours. We figured we’d eat dinner at the roulettes (meals on wheels that are a local tradition) and then go to the airport. Well…….it’s now pouring buckets and we are thinking we made a huge mistake. As the ferry docked, it began to rain even harder. Then something happened between the time we docked and we actually got off the ferry. In the space of about 3 minutes it completely stopped raining. But we still didn’t want to hang out at the ferry docks for 2 hours. Well, as luck would have it, our transport company was there waiting to pick up some other people on our ferry so we just jumped in too and went straight to the airport.

When we arrived at the airport we immediately ran into the couple from Kentucky who had been on Bora Bora the past few days. We knew they were on the flight an hour earlier than ours so figured we’d run into each other. Then the real fun started. Paul looked around and couldn’t find any flight information at all for our flight. After about a half hour of searching he finally trackes down an Air Tahiti Nui customer service rep. It seems our 12:45am flight has been cancelled. It is going to be combined with the earlier 11:30pm flight and we better get in line now (8pm) if we expected to get a seat on it. Woo Hoo….lot’s of notice, huh? Thank God we do get to the airport early, so we were able to get in line and score some seats. But….we ended up in the VERY last row….you know the one where the seats don’t recline because of the wall behind them? And this particular plane DOESN’T have the foot rests! Red eye flights just suck….and then your seats don’t recline and you have no foot rests and they have the damn air turned down so low we about froze to death….so can it get any worse….yep……the damn plane is delayed and doesn’t take off until almost 2am!!!!! Mind you, I have already been up since 3:30am because of the storm! So, this flight is now 100% full. 2 half full flights combined into one. Not an empty seat on it. No stretching out and sleeping on the way home. Going home REALLY SUCKS!

Going through security at the airport in Tahiti is a bit of a pain. They search all your bags….like 3 times! But…we DON”T have to take off our sneakers! The lady pulls out Paul’s lighter that he bought there in Tahiti. We knew we couldn’t fly with one so we didn’t bring one with. But we thought it’d be worth a chance to try to bring one home. It was really cool. Said Tahiti on it and all. So the security lady pulls it out and asks Paul how many lighters he had, he said just that one. So she stuffs it back in his carry on and sends us on through.

We get to LAX, Going through immigration was a breeze. Naturally our bags were the VERY LAST ONES to come down the shoot! We get over to South West to make our connecting flight to Las Vegas. We go through security…guess what….remove your tennis shoes!!! Too funny! What is it between LAX and Las Vegas???? Then they scan Paul’s carry on and pull out his lighter and confiscate it. It’s okay to go 8,000 miles with one, but not 350 miles???? Geesh….

One good thing about our arrival being late is it means we won’t have so long of a layover at LAX. Woo Hoo! NOT!!!!! Our damn flight is delayed almost 2 hours! Man oh man, this return trip is like the trip from hell. If it can go wrong, it will!!! But I had no trouble finding my car…To Pee or Not To Pee!

Needless to say, we did finally get home. About 6 pm, I think. We pretty much got undressed and fell into bed! And we simply can’t wait to do it all again next year!