Moorea, French Polynesia. No need to look further, it's in your backyard!

We really love our waterproof camera!

After spending some time on an Island of 200 people (see Vince's previous blog post),  we flew back to mainland Tahiti, jumped on the bus in stifling heat to city center in Papete, then took the ferry to Moorea, about 30-40 minutes.  It felt very populated comparitively... The island is bigger than the atoll we were on, but none of the islands there are really very big.  We then arrived at a resort that vaguely reminded me of the Four Seasons, in Hawaii, where we stayed for our honeymoon.  Vince had rented a lovely bungalow, as my belated Valentines day gift, just off the beach with an excellent pool, snorkeling gear, and the requisite terrible resort food.

We rented a scooter in the morning and stopped at a highly populated (at least 5 people were there) side of the road food stand and got a croque monsieur, yes we're in France!  We then visited the Lycee Agricole (agriculture school) where we saw a avacado banana tree that had the biggest avacados I've ever seen!  -Ok, it wasn't really both on the same tree-

Bana-cado tree!

Then we did a walking tour and saw the local flora.  There were tons of pineapple bushes, lychees, papayas, kiwis, passion fruit, but unfortunately they didn't allow us to pick and eat.  Side note:  I was surprised by the lack of these island staples in the food we ate at local restaurants, I guess they're not into locavorism.

We then scooted up to a viewpoint at the top of the hill.  Here it is. It speaks for itself.

Double beaches, all the way

We drove back down and had lunch at a cute little restaurant on the ocean while watching kite surfers do jumps 200 yards from us, then went snorkeling right off the beach.

Had never seen this guy before

After all that hard work, we decided to find another beach that we heard from a former local was 'chouette,' the best beach on the island.  So we scooted half way to the other side of the island, not finding it, and asked directions from a crazy local kid, I swear he was crazy, he told me to stop smiling.  Why would I do that?  (even his sister told us he was crazy) We backtracked, and finally found the beach after a bit and it was very 'chouette'.  White sand, coral-less bottom, long and beautiful.

We also found a place to buy me really large, really cheap black pearl earrings.  They're farmed on the many atolls in French Polynesia, hence the really cheap.




Since the food at the resort is so wonderful, we decided to get dinner at the local grocery store, bread, cheese, smoked meat and a bottle of wine.  We dumped it in the fridge and ran out to the water just next to the pool in our resort for a bit of snorkeling before the sun went down.  That's when Vince took this video.  We spent the day looking for excellent snorkeling places, and found one in our own backyard.....




And here is the requisite headstand!

The rest of the photos can be accessed here: