Pam & Jeff's Honeymoon

If you're not quite sure where Tahiti is, you're not alone. We signed up, then spent some time looking at maps. We didn't realize it was quite that far south! Its about half-way between Los Angeles and New Zealand, and well below the equator. Its about 4100 miles from L.A. Click here for a map. Here is a local map showing the islands. Unfortunately, we're still not sure if water goes down the drain backwards "down under!" :-)

The group of islands we visited is known as "Tahiti" with the Island of Tahiti being the main island, where the international airport is located. We chose to visit 3 different Islands while were there: Tahiti, Moorea, and Bora Bora.

We stayed at the Sofitel hotel chain on all three islands. The one on Tahiti (Maeva Beach Resort) was older. We had been told by Jane, our AAA agent, that Moorea and Bora Bora were definitely the prettier islands, so we only booked the Tahiti room for 2 nights. Which was really nice, after an 8 hour flight, arriving at 4:00 AM local time, to not have to transport to another island. We just went to our room and crashed! The next day, we walked into town (Papeete, pronounced popy-eh-tay) and bought a phone card at the post office and some groceries at the store. This was a good exercise because we were nervous being in a foreign country where hardly anyone spoke English. It was a good confidence booster. After lunch, we wandered around the hotel grounds and took the pictures you see under "Tahiti" on this web site. (See link on left).

The next day, we hopped on a little puddle jumper and flew the whole 10 minutes over to Moorea. I had never ridden on a plane where you could look out the front window when coming in for a landing. Whew!

The first thing we noticed was that Moorea was amazingly beautiful, like a post card. The people were more friendly and the place was cleaner (Papeete was dusty and dirty and sort of a big city). The hotel was gorgeous. On this island, we had an overwater bungalow. We walked out the boardwalk after checking in, found #107 and opened the door. We were greeted by a beautiful room with hardwood floors, thatch roof and bamboo walls. There was a table, sort of, which was actually a hole in the floor with raised sides and a glass top, which would allow you to look directly through the floor down into the lagoon. The water was crystal clear, and about 5 feet deep.

Tide there doesn't vary much, probably less than a foot. The entire island is surrounded by a coral reef that is about water level, so the breakers crash on the reef, leaving the lagoon peaceful and calm. The Sofitel on Moorea had the calmest water we encountered the whole time we were there. Sea life was abundant, and you never knew what was going to swim by next.

Speaking of swimming by, we noticed when we got there that shark feedings were a fairly popular way to spend an afternoon. This didn't sound appealing to either of us at first, but a nice cruise around the lagoon with an island picnic did, so we signed up. To make a long story short, we ended up getting in the water with the rest of the lemmings when it came time to feed the sharks. A rope was stretched between two boats and they tell you in no uncertain terms to stay behind the rope. They gave us a mask and snorkel and sent us on our merry way. It was a bit of a struggle to hang onto the rope, breathe through the snorkel, and take underwater pictures, all while being squished by a thronging mob of folks doing the same thing. But it was worth it, and we have some rather nice pictures to show for it!

The shark feeding also included a swim with some friendly sting rays. That was a little more relaxing because the water there was only about 4 feet deep and the rays were much less imposing than the reef sharks! The rays would swim around and brush up against you. Their "skin" feels like thick slimy rubber. Just watch out for the tail! We have a nice video of the whole thing, plus the picnic (complete with coconut opening demonstration) made by a cameraman with a high-end underwater digital video camera.

One night we went to the Tiki village where some of the locals performed an ancient Polynesian marriage ceremony, including the traditional feast. I'll take Burger King over the local cuisine any day, but it was a great experience. The dancing was phenomenal and we have a ton of pictures to prove it!

There was a lot to do on Moorea - it was by far our favorite island - lots of restaurants (all French in nature but the hotel had the best burgers I've had in a while!) and things to do. Black pearls are the local tourist rage, and you can't go anywhere without someone trying to sell you some. We rented a car and drove around the island for the day and had a great time. The high point of Moorea (geographically speaking) is a peak called Belvedere. If you don't see any other pictures on this site, make sure you check out the view from Belvedere. Amazing! (be sure to click on it, and please be patient while the large version loads)

We said goodbye to Moorea and flew off to Bora Bora, which was about an hour away by air. The airport on Bora Bora is on the outer ring of the island so we had to take a boat from the airport to our hotel, the Sofitel Marara. We liked our overwater bungalow so much on Moorea, we decided to upgrade on Bora Bora also. The bungalows on Moorea went out from the shore along a pier-type structure, where here they hugged the shoreline.

Bora Bora was beautiful as well, but there wasn't as much to do. One very cool thing we did was to take a 4x4 tour of the island. On Moorea, most of the roads were paved so we could see a lot in our rented car, but the interior "roads" on Bora Bora were another story. Our tour guide, Rappa, was a great guy with a good sense of humor, a very detailed knowledge of the island, and a wild sense of adventure! He took us up roads you wouldn't believe. All along the way, he would stop and get various kinds of fruits. We thought he had a hot date that night, but when we got up to one of the overlooks where the WWII defense guns were, he laid out quite a spread on the hood of the Land Rover.

After being gone for the better part of two weeks, we were excited to go home. It took us 22 hours from the time we left Bora Bora until the time we pulled in the driveway in Westerville. It was the trip of a lifetime and I am thrilled I got to share it with my new bride and the love of my life, Pam.