Hi, girls! Here's my HM review from the time we spent in French Polynesia. Sorry it's so long!!! Hopefully you don't mind reading it.
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We spent two weeks there. If you have any questions, please feel free to FM me or e-mail me at
[email protected].
I give grades below where they are appropriate. If I can think of anything else, I will add it to the review.
Tahiti - 3 days, 3 nights: Accommodations We stayed at the
Sheraton Tahiti (Grade: A-), and it was fantastic. THE BEST POOL ever. They had one of those infinity-edge pools where it looked like it goes out straight into the ocean. They don't have much of a beach, though. We got upgraded to a suite and they had a plate of fresh fruits waiting for us. Our only complaint was that the breakfast buffet wasn't that good, so we chose to order a la carte instead, and the wait staff gave us a bit of a hard time over ordering it a la carte and kept pushing us to do the buffet. But the rest of the service was great.
Activities We walked around downtown Papeete (the capital city of French Polynesia). Just a note of warning: on Sundays, almost everything is closed. We did see a beautiful pink church where it was packed with Tahitians in their Sunday best. All the men were in suits and all the women wore hats. It was very cool. We also took pictures in front of the City Hall.
We did a circle island tour with
Marama Tours (Grade: A-). We booked them through the activities desk at the hotel. That was a lot of fun because we got to see a lot of the sights in one shot. We went in a new, very comfortable van, and we only had one other couple on the tour. The tour guide was French and he was very funny. He took us to a couple of different botanical gardens, the waterfalls, Musee Gauguin (we had lunch at the restaurant in the same complex as the museum), and other sites. The tour was almost the whole day and we got back to the hotel at around 4 p.m.
We went to the Marche Municipale (the main municipal market) in downtown Papeete. This was the best place to get souvenirs - the second level is all vendors selling souvenirs and they ended up having much better prices than we found elsewhere.
Restaurants/Food We had one nice dinner out at
Le Rubis (Grade: A) in downtown Papeete. It's a French-Tahitian place. The food and wine were excellent and the owner was so nice.
We also ate at the roulottes (see picture below). These are the food vans that come out at night at the waterfront in downtown Papeete near the Visitors' Center. There are about 30-40 of them and they serve all kinds of food. It was a lot of fun, very tasty, and very cheap for Tahiti!
Moorea- 4 days, 3 nights: Accommodations: We stayed at the
Sheraton Moorea (Grade: A-), and it was again a beautiful hotel. The service was great for the most part and the beach and the pool were gorgeous. We stayed at one of the garden bungalows. They gave out fresh pineapple juice and cold towels when we were waiting in line to check in, and they had a bottle of champagne and a plate of sweets waiting for us the first full day we were there. They also passed out fresh pineapple slices in the afternoon if you're lounging on the beach or near the pool.
We ended up going to the Sheraton's restaurant for dinner and show one night. The show was great, but the buffet wasn't very good.
Activities We booked the three activities below through the activities desk at the hotel.
We did a
Lagoon Tour (Grade: A) one day. I don't remember the name of the company who did this, but it was fantastic. We went on a boat and was supposed to do a circle tour around the island. We ended up not finishing the circle because we spotted whales and dolphins, and we followed them around. We saw pilot whales, dolphins, and humpback whales. It was amazing!! They also allowed us to dive off the boat to swim with the whales, which was fantastic! We paid extra to have a picnic at a motu (an islet), where there were sting rays and we snorkeled in shallow waters. They provided a full grilled picnic, which was really yummy. This wasn't a private picnic, so it wasn't as expensive. There weren't that many people there, only about 10, so it was fine. All of us were couples.
We also did an
Island Tour on a 4x4 (Grade: A). I'm sorry I don't remember the company name, either. We visited a lot of the areas can only be reached with a 4x4, and this was a lot of fun. Each 4x4 fit 8 people and we had 3 other American couples in our car, so we chatted a lot and made friends. We visited the juice and fruit liqueur factory, Belvedere point (a famous lookout point), pineapple plantations, a vanilla plantation, etc.
We went to
Tiki Village (Grade: A-) one night and it was a lot of fun! Tiki Village is a traditional Polynesian village where you can learn about traditional arts and crafts such as weaving and dyeing of pareos, stone carving, tattooing, painting, etc. At night they host the largest and best dinner/dance show. A big bus picked people up from different hotels and brought us to the village. We watched a quick show, and then we were given a tour of the village. The end of the tour was them opening their traditional Tahitian ground oven, where a lot of the food had been cooking all day. After that we ate the food, and it was very good. It was buffet-style. The last part was this huge dance show involving over 60 dancers. They had traditional Tahitian dancers, a wedding ceremony, fire dancers, etc. This is definitely worth going to.
RestaurantWe ate at [b]Le Mahogany (Grade: B+)[/b] one night. They serve French/Chinese food. They have a free pickup. The food was good and we got to sit outside.
Black Pearl Shop We bought a pearl at
Island Fashion Black Pearls (Grade: A). There are a lot of pearl shops in French Polynesia, obviously. We went with this one because it was mentioned in our guidebook, it has a free shuttle to and from the hotel, and the owner was American. He was really sweet - his name was Ron, and he explained everything to us in great detail, and didn't try to push all the expensive stuff. He stuck within our budget. We ended up getting a teardrop-shaped black pearl pendant and I love it. I wear it almost every day.
Huahine :
Accommodations: We did something unusual and went on a one-week catamaran cruise visiting Huahine, Raiatea, Tahaa, and ending at Bora-Bora. In order to take this cruise we needed to stay one night in Huahine. So we chose to stay at
Te Tiare in Huahine (Grade: B+). You can only get to the hotel by boat. We got a garden bungalow, and originally we were so excited that they had put fresh flowers out on the sinks and tables. Then we realize that the flowers were attracting a huge number of ants so we had to throw them away. There weren't that many people there at the time and the weather was a little cloudy, so that afternoon we got the pool and the beach to ourselves.
We didn't want to leave the hotel for dinner because it took some time just to get on the boat to go to downtown Huahine, so we stayed at the hotel for dinner. It turns out that it was a buffet/show night, so without planning to, we saw our third Tahitian show. The food was buffet-style and pretty good. Unfortunately the dancers for the show were pretty amateurish and a lot of them forgot the moves. It was still enjoyable, though.
Archipels Catamaran Cruise (Grade: B+) - 7 days, 7 nights: Now this is very long, but bear with me if you are interested. The catamaran cruise was definitely one of the coolest, most unique things that we had ever done. That being said, though, we wouldn't necessarily recommend it for everyone.
The company that runs the catmaran cruises is called Archipels Croisieres. They are a Tahitian-based company and their website is
http://www.archipels.com. We booked directly with them, but usually people book them through a travel agent. They have three main cruises and the one we took was the 7-day Leeward Islands cruise. Depending on the week, the cruise either starts from the island of Bora Bora and goes to Huahine or vice versa. In between, it stops at the islands of Taha'a and Raiateia. Our cruise happened to go from Huahine to Bora Bora.
All the catamarans they own are identical. They each have 4 guest rooms (which can fit two people + luggage very snugly, but they do have a lot of random storage spaces to store your stuff) and each guest room has its own private bathroom. There is a large cabin/common room, plus the whole outside of the catamaran to lounge around on.
Each catamaran has at least a crew of 2 (though some had a crew of 3). Basically, the crew consists of a skipper and a hostess (who does all the cooking and cleaning and any other odd job), which is what we had.
One of the best parts about the cruise is everything (except flights) is included in the one price. This means that all meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) and all excursions/tours are included, which makes it extremely economical since French Polynesia is VERY expensive.
Basically, the catamaran works out to be a floating bed & breakfast (plus lunch and dinner). The hostess cooks all the food for you and, on our trip, the food was awesome! The food was very gourmet and the hostess cooks all kinds of French and Tahitian specialties. The rest of the day, we were either snorkeling, lounging around on the beach or on the boat, or going on some tour or another. The boat has a tarp stretched over the front where you can sunbathe, nap, and just watch the sceneries. Each of the excursions was a lot of fun and we definitely got to see a lot of things in a more intimate setting, since our tour group just consists of everyone off of your ship (i.e., 8 max). We also did a ton of snorkeling as you basically just dive off the boat and our captain knew a lot of more private spots where there weren't a lot of people, so we were able to see a lot of amazing things. We don't scuba-dive, but one couple on our boat did, and they said it was even more amazing deeper in the water.
Now, the reason why I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to everyone is that you definitely need a sense of adventure for this.
**First, while they do make every effort to take care of you, it's definitely not a 'pampered' cruise (e.g., you have to physically pump out the toilet after each time you go... which, apparently, if you've ever been sailing before, it's pretty standard... or so I've told).
**Second, French is very much the predominant language onboard ship (English is spoken, but not all that well). We were told the reason is that most of the people booking are Europeans and they host very few Americans. When we went, we had three other couples with us (two Italians and a French couple) and our skipper and hostess were both French. We had a great time communicating, but it was very much a mishmash of French, Italian, and English.
**Third, you have a better chance of being seasick on this then on, say a Carnival cruise. Actually, when you're sailing around the lagoons in each island, things are pretty smooth. It's when you sail from island to island is where things can get a little choppy at times (again, not too bad, but definitely enough to make one a bit quesy if you're susceptible to such things).
**Fourth, you can't be picky about the food. The hostess already has pre-set menus in mind, and although there's really nothing that weird on the menu, you still can't be that picky. However, they do ask if you have any food allergies or religious proscriptions at the start of the cruise, so you don't have to worry about that.
If these are minor or non-issues to you, we would highly recommend this trip!
Raiateia: Our catamaran stopped at Uturoa, the main town in Raiateia (and the second largest city in French Polynesia) and we walked around for half the day, but there was really nothing particularly special that came to mind there. We mainly bought souvenirs and replenished our dwindling sunscreen supply!
Taha'a: We took a
Vanilla Tours 4x4 (Grade: A) tour in Taha'a as part of the catamaran cruise package - the guy in charge, Alain, was amazing. He and his wife are botanists, and they live in this hut made out of all natural materials, and they have their own botanical gardens. He knows so much stuff about the plants, the animals, the history, etc. We highly recommend going with him if you can.
Bora-Bora - 3 days, 2 nights: Accommodations The first night we were in Bora-Bora we were still on the cruise, so we stayed at the catamaran. The second night we stayed at the
Bora-Bora Nui (Grade: A+). This is honestly the most beautiful hotel we've ever seen and we've traveled quite a bit. Everything was lush, pristine, and meticulously maintained. We got an overwater bungalow, and the bungalow was ridiculously amazing. It had a HUGE marble bathroom with a big tub, a separate shower room and two sinks, a canopied bed, its own private deck, and it came with a free in-room breakfast. We also got a free bottle of champagne.
The pool was the biggest one in French Polynesia and it was two-tiered. The beach was also beautiful. They gave out free scoops of fresh Tahitian vanilla and coconut ice cream as snacks in the afternoon. I'm sure I’m forgetting something, but just believe me when I say this hotel is worth every penny you spend staying there.
Restaurant We went to
Bloody Mary's (Grade: A-), the restaurant that all Americans go to on Bora-Bora. The restaurant has a sandy floor, so you can check your shoes in and go barefoot. It was actually pretty fun, but unfortunately we did run into some ugly Americans who complained about the food, the chairs, etc. If you want to go, you should get a reservation as soon as you arrive on the island because they only have a certain number of reservations available for certain hotels. There was no menu - they just have all the fish and meat in the front and they explain to you when you get there what the dishes are, and you order right there. Everything is grilled and served with vegetables and fruit. The food was pretty good, especially the calamari appetizer, and the service was great. Our waiter really liked us because we didn't act like the ugly Americans at the next table who made his life miserable, so he gave us a free dessert.
