cavemanzk

On summer afternoons/evenings the two side sections of this area roof opens up, and it becomes an outdoor patio.

offerendum

Thanks for this^

P.S. Never saw a sky-couch before....

nequine

Yes it was good to see how the sky couches actually look when folk are sitting in them.

The hotel may not have been worth it but the view certainly was!

worldtraveller73

I know krazykanuck - I have become one of those bottom feeders clogging up the lounge. I don't think Air New Zealand is the only lounge that has these issues. Capacity seems to be an every growing problem.

Thanks 757. It's always dissapointing to pay a lot and get very little.

That's good to know cavemanzk. I would imagine that would make this spot really nice on a sunny summer afternoon.

Thanks for your continued support offerendum. I think Air New Zealand is presently the only carrier that offers the Skycouch. I think it's a bit a head of its time.

Thank you nequine. The Skycouch was cramped!

worldtraveller73

Gare Maritime
Papeete, Tahiti Nui.

On our departure day, we checked ourselves out and headed to the Papeete Gare Maritime via Taxi which was 3,500 CFP. Although we could have flown to Moorea from Papeete, we opted for the boat so that we could get some time outside and enjoy the trip a bit more aside from sitting in another airport. It was funny to see European highway signs in the middle of an island the Pacific Ocean.





We purchased our tickets and dropped our bags in a luggage cage for the 11:30 AM sailing with Teverau catamarans. Their boats looked to be a lot cleaner and newer than the Armeti boats.





Since we had an hour to spare, we went for a 10 minute walk with our hand luggage to the market. We wandered through some pretty mouldy buildings in an area that likely had a lot of development potential.



We found the market that had local food wares on the main floor and the Tahitian food stalls and souvenir stands upstairs. It seems like everything was for sale here, and there were quite a few souvenir stands upstairs that would make any souvenir hunter happy.















We ended up with a small Polynesian statue and of course some Polynesian Francs as change.



There were also great fish for sale here. Sadly, to MrsWT73’s horror, it seems that even the beautiful tropical fish are even for sale here.







After the tropical fish horrors, we returned to the Gare Maritime and got ready to board the boat. I went to locate some sandwiches on board, but they sold out of most of the good ones within the first 10 minutes before we had even left the port.







Once underway, we had some nice views of Papeete in addition to some lovely boats that were in the area. Unfortunately, our grey weather continued on what was supposed to be a blue sunny skies holiday.









It was a quick 35 minutes crossing into Moorea on a mostly smooth boat ride.

It was really impressive arriving into the Moorea harbour with mountains towering high around you. It was like arriving to a steeply pitched valley from the water.







On arrival, the bags were carted off in the crate and distributed one by one. Most passengers appeared to be met by other people or tour operators. We were going freestyle and managed to grab the last taxi that was at the taxi rank. I was expecting a bunch of them there but there was only one. It was only 1,500 CFP up to the Sofitel Moorea, which was only 3 km up the road. Some strange cargo but I guess these are a commodity worth carrying. . .

worldtraveller73

Sofitel Moorea la Ora
Superior Ocean View

There are several chain hotels on Moorea. The Hilton, the Sofitel and the Intercontinental. Unfortunately, we didn’t have status at any of them. We did our research and the Hilton and the Sofitel seemed to fare a lot better than the older Intercontinental, which seemed to be set on a less inspiring beach lagoon. When we went to book at the Hilton, all the availability for the decent rooms pretty much dried up at the 4 month mark so we ended up at the Sofitel. This wasn’t a bad thing, we had an excellent time here and we’d easily return without hesitation.

The Sofitel is located very close to the Moorea ferry terminal (3 km) and MOZ airport (1km) and has a very short drive to both the airport and the ferry. Some google photographs of the location of the property on beautiful Moorea for those that aren’t familiar with the place.





We took a $15 USD taxi from the ferry terminal over to the hotel. Surprisingly, there was only one taxi meeting the ferry arrival. I was expecting a taxi rank but for whatever reason, there wasn’t anyone here on our arrival. Luckily, we did not have to call...

On arrival at the Sofitel we were met with "Iorana" (Hello in Polynesian) and had a seated check in on the couch. A welcome pineapple drink was provided, in addition to a tiare lei. One thing about the lei was that it was incredibly fragrant- more so than in other past check in’s that Ive ever had. A copy of our passports were taken and we were encouraged to join the Accor Club hotel program as if they were reading off a script.





Continuing on with the theme in French Polyensia, nothing seems to occur quickly in this country. The check in process was about a twenty minute affair, despite having been booked through the Sofitel Website and having a pre-paid reservation, information filled out on the website, credit card information / loyalty points on file etc…

Our assigned host introduced herself and provided a brief description of the location of the restaurants and the card system that is used at the resort. In addition to room keys, guests are assigned 2 sets of white cards (snorkel deposits) and 2 sets of black cards (towel deposits). The issuance of key cards for towels seemed to make much more sense than completing a daily contract form like we did at Le Meridien Tahiti.

There was a small Club Accor exclusive lounge off the lobby. The sign actually says “Feel Welcome” but don’t come in unless you have one of our cards; in 5 languages. LOL. We didn’t bother visiting as the lounge itself was pretty sparse.





We were initially told that our room wasn’t ready but by the time we got through the twenty minute check in process, a room became available and we were golf carted with our bags to Room 314. The grounds here are quite pleasant and peaceful to pass through.









The Superior Ocean View #314 was situated right on a raised beach wall right near the water. All the rooms here are detached villas’- ours was about 10 feet from the water with a shared outdoor shower for rinse offs after swimming.







There was also a nice outdoor sitting area, although I found it to be quite dark to be of much use. It’s also worth noting that this resort is East facing, meaning that this space is only bright in the morning. It ended up being mostly a drying storage area.



There isn’t much “beach” in front of our particular villa. It was pretty much straight into the water for snorkeling. This wasn’t a major disadvantage, but more an explanation of what you’d expect with a “Superior Ocean View”… …or at least of an ocean view. It also means that there is no real shoreline in front of these villas.





The room itself was tastefully appointed. The bags were pretty much dropped without much room explanation. The room was straight forward and we were able to figure things out without any problem.













The room had a proper working air conditioner and a full bathroom. The room was well appointed and tastefully decorated.















There was an information station, along with some advertisements for the spa, along with some complimentary bottled water.





We did a little self discovery and learned that the mini bar (non alcoholic) liquids were complimentary and refilled once per day, but the snacks around the mini bar (Lay’s Chips and Nuts) were for pay. These were always re-stocked without issues through a dedicated attendant. The canned Polynesian fruit juices of pineapple and mango were pretty awesome and seemed to be canned locally.



We found ourselves on the property map. Although a large resort, it didn’t feel that way as we had lots of privacy and seclusion to ourselves.



The room had a nice view of the over water villas. While not to my immediate liking (I’d rather have an endless ocean view), MrsWT73 really liked the view and it’s always a unique hotel to look at over water villas.





Surprisingly, it was mostly an American crowd at this resort. Very few French people. Many couples, married and dating, in addition to several older well heeled groups.

Of note, the wifi internet was absolutely horrible. It was barely functional in the villas and would require re-connecting for every use. I was barely able to load single photos to Instagram and wasn’t able to load webpages at all. I wouldn’t plan on getting any work done here (checking email) or even Facetime’ing family members. This isn’t usually an issue for a beach resort holiday, but at these prices, you’d at the minimum, expect things like wifi to work as advertised. This wasn’t the case with the wifi. =0

Also worth noting, is that the TV has one English channel (CNN). All the rest of the channels are in french. No one comes to a beach resort to watch tv but after a few days, the lack of anything other than brash CNN is a bit madding.

After settling in, we went to the bar for lunch. We each had a croque monsieur, reasonably priced at 16€ with pommes frites, a small salad and paired with a Hinano Tahitian Beer overlooking the water villas... My gosh – it was probably the most tasty croque monsieur I’ve ever had. The Sofitel staff were well trained and very attentive to service –although interacting here is a very slow and relaxed affair. It was about 60 minutes to get through a lunch service with only a sandwich and a beer ordered.





Pleasant views however from the dock as we enjoyed lunch, so the slower pace was not such a bad thing. The weather picked up a bit toward the afternoon.







We also spent some time on the main dock. There were chairs set up here which led for some great tropical fish watching in the clear waters.





I took a look at the pool on the way back to the room. There was a nice looking infinity pool by the main restaurant. The pool overlooked the northern pontoon of the over water villas. There always seemed to be a lounge available here during our visit, although we never actually visited here for sun; instead opting for lounging near our villa.





I also wandered around the over water villa pontoons. The villas were unique in their own way. Although unfortunately based on the design, many of them look into each other or towards the land. If you were looking for an endless view, pick your over water villa category carefully as there were 4 different categories when I checked based on the direction and view. You may end up with a landward view of Moorea island proper- which may not be a bad thing since the mountains are super cool.











We eventually settled in and had an easy afternoon enjoying some reading on a lounger outside of our villa. Since the Sofitel on Moorea is east facing, there are no sunset views here. The sun disappears behind the mountain at 4:02 PM (sunset was scheduled for 5:32 PM today). As a result, an eastern facing sunset looks like this. . .



The Sofitel Moorea la Ora had a great first impression as a property. It was mostly welcoming although the slow wifi and the slower pace of life was quite a bit behind island time. More to come shortly on our time in Moorea. . .

worldtraveller73

Sofitel Moorea la Ora
continued

On the morning after our first night, we had breakfast at the buffet. The breakfast was included in our room rate. It was a pretty strong and quality filled buffet; easily the best hotel breakfast of our trip.

The breads were of exceptionally quality, accompanied with real “French” rich tasting butter. Those of you that have dined in France will know exactly what I mean… The croissants were so good, I saw one French looking traveler taking three of them back to his table and devouring them in one sitting. Breakfast was set outside most days with a nice waterfront setting . . .











After breakfast, we had some beach time in the morning. We were in between the villas; not actually on the beach itself. It was pretty quiet down at our end since most of the guests seemed to be elsewhere in the resort during the day.

I went for a snorkel on the south side of the over water villas. There was not a lot of room between the corals and the surface. I had to navigate between the corals like a labyrinth. On south side of the over water villas, low tide caused some pathways to be un-passable. Some of the fish were quite large and took a run at me.







While there weren’t a lot of fish or much schooling, the corals were in reasonable shape (not broken or stepped on). Unfortunately, while there was a moderate variety of fish, the snorkeling was no where near as interesting or diverse as our experiences in the Maldives. The Maldives house reef’s gets the blue ribbon here versus where we went from shore in Moorea.













After the snorkel, while MrsWT73 was continuing to sun herself in the morning sun, I took a walk up to the look out over the bay just above the hotel. First, a nice walk through the hotel grounds. They are super lush and pleasant. Perfect for relaxing in privacy... ...not a soul around.









A quick right out the front gate of the Sofitel and a slight climb up the hill (at least by Canadian standards) on foot to the top after about 10 minutes.







There were stunning post card perfect views over the Sofitel Resort towards Tahiti Nui.







While the color of the water is the most beautiful blue, you can really tell that the area is not super rich in coral life from these high elevation photographs.







There was also a memorial plaque for an Air Moorea flight 1201, a Twin Otter that crashed on August 9, 2007 where all 20 souls on board perished.



I went back to the resort and had some more afternoon sun. Later in the afternoon, we used the free one hour activity per day and did a paddle board. It was the first time paddle boarding. The beach host recommended to us a route that had us paddling down the beach towards the north due to the corals. The visibility into the water was great and you could easily see beautiful fish from on top of the paddle board.







After the paddle board and an apperativo at the room, we had dinner at the hotel’s Vue Bar. I had a cobb salad which was just okay. Back at the room, the sunset tonight had lighter pink skies, including some friends that came out to visit as the sun went down.







A pretty perfect day in French Polynesia!

offerendum

I only count 4 languages on the sign

I like your underwater pictures and have to agree. Looks nice but nothing too special.

nequine

Wow, it looks so idyllic!

Annalisa12

Bula. Great review.

worldtraveller73

Yeah offerendum, the snorkeling experience may have been different with a boat offshore but from shore it wasn't all too exciting. Sort of a 6 out of 10 experience.

I think I counted the Asian language at the bottom as a fifth language but who knows? It could have been Accor in Chinese.

It was pretty idyllic nequine. Thanks for reading.

Thank you Annalisa12. Everyone in Australia, including our Australian friends, knows about the Bula comment but I have to admit that it's foreign to us Canadians. =)

worldtraveller73

Sofitel Moorea la Ora
continued

I slept in a little on our next day. We had a great breakfast followed by some morning sun. We went out for another snorkel, this time between the two over water pontoons. There were lots of fish with some better visibility and interesting corals.











This guy was almost completely hidden.



In the afternoon, I finished my first book “Shake Hands with the Devil” about Canadian Senator Romeo Daillaire’s experiences in dealing with a genocidal massacre in Rwanda in 1994. I started my second book for this trip. It was a good weather day and the island of Tahiti Nui as seen from Moorea was actually free from clouds.

Around this time on day #3, we started to run out of snacking supplies. We decided to rent some bikes from the resort and ride to the local supermarche. It was 900 CFP ($9 USD) and about 25 minutes of bike ride from the property at a brisk pace towards the local market by the ferry terminal.

Departing from the property, we rode down to the market just past the port of Moorea. It was a fully flat ride with beautiful views. Again, it was totally bizarre to see French / European highway signs in the middle of an island in the Pacific.









The mountains here on Moorea are absolutely lush and full of trees and greenery on all surfaces. It was very unusual to have the towering mountains of Moorea all around you in this eastern corner of the island. It looked spectacular when the sun hits it and is highly unusual.





After the pedaling, we arrive to the Champion “medium box” market. Surprisingly, the market had lots of items – more department store than grocery store. It had the largest avocados I’d seen in a while, French baguettes for 50 cents ($USD) and lots of French cheeses (comte) at very reasonable prices.







MrsWT73 at the wine rack with the hardest decision of the day. Again, it was awesome to have this kind of wine selection at a beach resort and was one of the more unusual features of visiting French Polynesia.





Although apparently in French Polynesia, alcohol and elections don’t mix.



Tahiti Wine? The sheer concept of wines in an atoll on an island in the Pacific with soils mostly populated from corals is totally bizarre. I think we will pass for now…



We loaded up our panniers and headed back to the resort property. It was a spirited ride but we stopped a few times for photographs and we were able to make the distance within the 1 hr time allotted.











Sacked out for the last sun of the day that disappeared at 4 PM again. As the sun slipped away from the day, we had the opportunity to try some Tahiti Delight courtesy of our villa neighbors from Los Angeles. Eight % alcohol and a sharp tropical citrus taste much like a fresher version of Hawaiian Punch fruit juicy red. Dinner was again at the resort pub and was a Wagwu burger with pommes frites. Was actually okay but getting a little tired of pub food for dinner.

The last highlight of our stay occurred on our last night after dinner. We went out to the pontoon by the bar and shared a bottle of wine as we watched the stars. The pontoon has a lit portion on the water with a spot light. We were lucky enough to see two manta rays stake out the area as they glided through the shallow waters right in front of the hotel at around 10 PM. MrsWT73 was super excited. She wasn’t able to get to bed for hours after that. They sure glide quite gracefully – they were as big as my coffee table at home and had huge long tails that must have been 4 feet long.







It was pretty awesome to get to experience this right from the hotel dock.

In summary, we really enjoyed our stay at the Sofitel. The rooms were in decent condition, and the fit and upkeep of everything was top notch. The service was very good as well, much better than our recent St Regis and Starwood experiences. The house reef was pretty good, almost as good as the Maldives but not quite. The only negatives about this place were the WiFi and the over all price of accessibility. I couldn’t imagine spending more than 4 days here during high season as the price is so dear compared to everything else in the world. South East Asia- I'm looking at you. Despite these shortcomings, we would easily return to Moorea and the Sofitel without hesitation. Highly recommended.

worldtraveller73

Air Tahiti
Economy Class (L)
MOZ-BOB (Moorea – Bora Bora)
VT 244
June 16, 2017
Booked: ATR 72
Flown: ATR 72
Departure: 12:05 PM
Arrival: 12:50 PM

After our 3 days stay, it was time to leave. I had the bell captain call for a taxi and happened to grab one that was just dropping off some other travelers. The driver asked me where we were going prior to accepting us as travelers, and didn’’t seem to fussed with us having to wait fifteen minutes for MrsWT73 to settle the bill at the front desk, chatting with the bell capitan staff to fill his time.

The bill settling process at the Sofitel took quite some time. It was well over 15 minutes thanks to one group in the queue; some Spaniards that were reconciling every dinner with the hotel, and print outs over print outs.

The taxi ride up was only 7 minutes and 1,200 CFP’s ($12 USD). We arrived quite early to the Moorea terminal.



A side story here. Sometime late last night, while I was on the bed, I had left my Nikon sitting on the bed when it hit the floor accidentally. It got the shutter stuck so bad that the mirror was unable to release and take photographs. I was resigned to it being out of commission for the rest of the trip but thanks to the internet at the next stop, I was able to diagnose and fix it. As a result, I had to take this portion of the trip with my iPhone.

We checked in at the counter. The Moorea airport was small but not in a charming way. It was hot and had a fair amount of people. It was another no air conditioning airport and for some strange reasons there were chickens wandering all through the airport cock-a-doodle-doing.







Air Tahiti proceeded to soak us for additional luggage by kilo ($35 USD) as the usual sized American rollies do not fit under their seats on the ATR72’s. It turns out that they could fit on the aisle seats only, but thanks to a support bar on the windows seat sides, it’s impossible to fit two rollies side by side under the seats. It was a bit of a sour way to start our experiences with them. They did allow an additional 5kg of allowance if you could show a PADI dive card (regardless of whether you had dive equipment) so our fee was dropped on presentation from 5,040 CPF to 3900 CPF. MrsWT73, in advance of a nice time in Bora Bora, had somehow managed to pack 6 bottles of wine in her hard cased suitcase for us to enjoy while in our villa so that lessened the overall available weight allowance. The fee was presented on the back of our boarding card, including with the PADI reduction.







There isn’t any assigned seating on Air Tahiti so it was a mad crush at the gate, followed by a walk out to the tarmac. The cargo was being loaded onto the plane immediately behind the cockpit. We all boarded through the rear door of the plane and it was a bit of a scramble to get those coveted window seats.













It was my first time on the French made ATR72. It was very compact on board when we settled in with the 2-2 configuration. I was happy we weren’t taking one of their 3 hour trips to Rarotonga on this equipment type.







We had an eastern departure from Moorea and some photos of the beautiful Sofitel area and reef on our climb off the right hand side of the aircraft. Those are the Sofitel over water villas that you can see up the beach in these photographs and the beautiful colored lagoon that it its on.







I took a look at the in flight magazine which advertised their air network size. Air Tahiti is said to cover an area the size of Western Europe. Their map had an outlay of Europe to scale over their flight paths.





There was also a segment and chart on the various isolated airports that they flew through. In one area, due to weight, there were up to 28 seats that they were not able to sell due to their equipment type. I thought it was interesting that Air Tahiti pubic ally shared this information with its customers, as back in North America, this information would likely just have been built in as a restriction into the flight reservation computer and us passengers wouldn’t be the wiser.



It was a smooth flight and a drink service was offered. It was a tropical fruit drink with an orange juice base.





We had a smooth arrival and a landing at Bora Bora. Most of the plane was glued to the window as we approached with Bora Bora on the left side; we were on the wrong side of the flight. As a result, we didn't get any villa views, just a view of the old runway aprons.



The runway was quite large and parts of it were over grown. The Americans built this runway after the Pearl Harbor bombing. At its peak, I wondered what it was like here when they had up to 6,000 troops stationed here? The apron was likely full of planes parked on the apron at one time. Now it had signs of over growth and weeds coming up through it.





Our bags were transferred out. Similar to the Maldives, there were several kiosks at the luggage claim to assist with transfers. Except here, there were only 7 desks compared to the upwards of 40 that are found in Male.



The balance of the passengers that weren’t being picked up were transferred over to Vaitaire via a Air Tahiti boat that is included in the cost of the ticket.

Well – what’s to say? Air Tahiti is about the only way to get from Moorea to Bora Bora. As a result, they can pretty much charge full price for everything and offer almost nothing in return. While we missed the fine print surrounding the smaller than average dimensions for the bag size on the website, we ended up paying for it at the counter. No meals were offered and it was a pretty much basic and straight forward service. If you’re taking this route, pay close attention to your luggage size as the basic allowance is one bag at 50 lbs and nothing else!!

We were transferred in the boat over to Le Meridien Bora Bora for the next chapter of our adventure.

Bretteee

The beaches on Fiji look as if they have a lot of coral. There is a small boat that does a 4 day and 1 week cruise which seems nice.

I was in Tahiti in 1986. We did not like it so much. However they now have beautiful hotels on Bora Bora.

chongl

I remember standing in the middle of that runway when we got off the plane at BOB and feeling so small just glancing down the tarmac