Moorea was the second stop of our Tahiti vacation. To read about our first stop in Tahiti, you can click here.
We arrived at the boat dock in Moorea and we were picked up by a van from Albert Tours for our 20 minute journey to the Intercontinental resort. For most of our drive to the hotel, the driver played the part of tour guide, giving us information about the island. As we pulled into the resort, he also made a pitch for the Black Pearl Shop across the street that he also owned. We stored that information away for later retrieval.
Our room
We were given a Jr. Suite Beach Bungalow that was only a few steps from the water. There is a channel that separates the main resort from the small island where many of the over the water bungalows are located at. Our room was on the main land, facing the channel. The inside was basically a standard hotel room, but we had our own small porch to relax on or to dry all of our snorkeling gear.
Our Jr. Suite Bungalow
View of the water from the Bungalow. Snorkeling was only a few steps away.
The resort had a number of water activities such as stand up paddle and kayaks and we took advantage of all of them.
Kayaking in the shallow lagoon off the resort
We also snorkeled every day, as the channel right outside of our front door was teeming with fish. It was great to be able to snorkel for a few hours, then come out of the water and be a short walk away from relaxing on your porch and grabbing a snack from your bungalow. We ventured once all the way up the channel to the bridge that signaled the start of open water. Under that bridge we spied a giant Manta Ray, swimming out toward open waters. We followed it a bit, trying to catch up to get a shot with our GoPro, but we thought better of it as the Manta headed out toward the deep water.
The water right outside of our bungalow was teeming with fish.
The resort also had a fair share of wildlife activities as well. They had a dolphin pool with regular dolphin shows. They also had an area devoted to their turtle hatchery and turtles of various sizes.
The resort had daily dolphin shows.
The turtle hatchery had turtles of all different sizes.
We still had not found any black pearls that Tahiti is famous for. We looked for some when we were in the market in Papeete, but they looked cheap and noone had the time or the desire to explain anything about the pearls to us. We decided to hike across the street to the pearl store owned by Albert tours. Sure, it was likely a tourist trap location, but we had a free afternoon with nothing to lose. There were a few people in the store as we walked in, but there was a free salesperson who came over to help us. We spent the next hour with her as she patiently explained all the details of what to look for when choosing a black pearl. Yes, there was some subtle sales pressure to buy something, but nothing compared to what we expected walking in. We ended up buying several gifts… earrings, pendants, a ring. It was definitely a fruitful shopping afternoon, and much less stressful than we expected it to be.
We travelled to the tiny airport in Moorea, again courtesy of Albert Tours. The terminal was small and we were quickly checked in. We made the short walk to the twin prop plane waiting to take us to Bora Bora.
