7/10/2026
10th Anniversary Trip Day 6: Fish and Pizza in Moorea
Alas the time has come to leave the glorious Polynesian dream that is Bora Bora. As the departure letter written by the front desk to us last night said so poetically:
Once upon a time, Mrs. Jutan Michal & Mr. Jutan Michael had a dream of a tropical paradise....
They flew to the mystical South Pacific to discover the beautiful island of Bora Bora and chose the Four Seasons Resort to be their home away from home.
They enjoyed endless white sand beaches, swam with colorful fishes, gazed upon sacred Mount Otemanu, and were pampered alongside an impossibly blue lagoon, day after day.
They became so relaxed that they slowly lost track of time. That is, until the resort team had the unfortunate duty to gently wake them from their Polynesian dream, to remind them that their boat would be leaving the resort for the airport the following day (10/07/2026) at 10:30.
While they enjoy their last hours on the beach with us, their luggage could stay in the room and would make their way to the boat for their departure.
Adventure to be continued...
We enjoyed our last of the glorious long breakfasts in Bora and were hosted by the amazingly wonderful staff as we had truly enjoyed over the last few days. Michal tried out the inflatable float in the water, with the current going the opposite direction finally for her, so she could see the view in the direction of our balcony like she was hoping to! I enjoyed the last few glorious jumps into the ocean from the room's dock, still my absolute favourite thing about the trip. So fun.
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| Michal fitting the part very well, especially with the fancy bag we got from the front desk! |
In classic Jutan style I had been thinking about the "Bora" hat on repeat, the overpriced and epic one from the store at the hotel. I told our buddy at the front desk that "After a few days of trying to 'resist the hat', I had to just go and buy it". What an epic hat.
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| My wife, ever the more practical one, wearing the hat she brought from home, instead of buying a new one she didn't need. Nonetheless... what a nice hat. |
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| Sweet hat, eh!!! |
We waved farewell to our hosts from the same James Bond-style wooden boat we'd started the trip with, heading back to the Bora Bora airport (which itself is on it's own private Motu 'islet'). It was a much more humid day, so sitting in the airport we were getting hot and ready to roll. The portable fan Michal got us upon recommendation from a travel group came in handy, again!
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| The signage for the Airport!!! |
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| Interesting history of the airport creation. Absolutely shocking to imagine how untouched the country must have been before the ability for travelers to arrive so easily -- must have been quite a lot of change around that time. Wild to imagine that the island was only accessible by boat before this! Also quite crazy that this was only 80 years ago or so... recent history. |
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| Off we go onto our plane, heading to the island of Moorea |
And off we went from glorious Bora Bora towards the island of Moorea. Moorea is very close to the Tahiti mainland, so it was just a few minutes less of flight time than if we were flying right back to Papeete. After a 40 min flight or so, we arrived at Moorea and took a hilariously short 5 min cab ride to the Sofitel. Someone had suggested you could walk there (?!) but seemed like maybe that would have been a poor choice, and certainly not wise in the pending rain and humidity.
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| Arriving in Moorea! |
The room was not ready yet, so we wandered around the hotel and found the Beach Bar. They had a "Tuna Poke" that was more like tuna salad, while the "Poisson Cru" was much more like Poke as we know it. We got both to try, of course! We were immediately struck by the amount of random chicken-y things wandering around: Chickens! Hens! Roosters! We saw one bird pecking at the remaining fresh coconut that was left on someone's table.
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| This dude loved that coconut |
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| "Tuna Poke" (L) and "Poisson Cru" (R) -- right, and the glorious wife and ocean, too! |
After a nice lunch and some feel of pending rain, we got fully checked in and into our room. The room was gigantic and had a nice sarong gift for Michal and cool Sofitel sunglasses for me! How nice and unexpected. We kept smelling the leis they put around our neck on arrival as the smell of the sweet flowers was quite perfumed and wonderful. We got settled briefly in the room and then headed right back out to the beach to go snorkel before it rained.
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| Just steps away from the beach! |
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| Fancy sarong laid out like a bowtie and sunglasses on the bed |
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| Fancy shower |
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| Michal showing off the sunglasses |
This was much more beachfront-y than Bora Bora. You immediately did not feel anywhere as secluded as you did in Bora, but the plus was that you were RIGHT on the lagoon and the fish and coral was right there for immediate exploration. Pretty amazing and the were a HUGE amount of fish right away. The yellow ones were very friendly and come right up to you. The snorkeling was super fun and the masks and snorkels we brought from home turned out to be really an excellent idea. It was also awesome that Alex lent me his GoPro, as I was able to capture some great footage of all the close reefs and fish. I even saw an Eel right off the bat! (I'll post a combined snorkeling video of the footage from this travel day as well as the next one, on the post for tomorrow, our last day of the trip).
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| The water was very clear and the coral and fish were stunning |
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| These yellow fish were very friendly and kept coming up to us! |
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| The clouds rolled in and the rain was ready to arrive -- thankfully we were already in the water! |
After a good amount of snorkeling, we headed back to the room and tried to figure out how to get pizza from the famed Allo Pizza, a place so good that my buddy Shaun from work had said he still remembered the pizza from there from his honeymoon 20 years prior. We had heard you could order it for delivery but I was having a lot of trouble getting my phone to work. Ultimately after getting the phone onto WiFi calling, it worked. "Allo Pizza.... No Delivery"! Well, that seals the deal, then! We were hoping to be able to order it and have it show up at the front desk, but that was a no-go. So... ok... guess we'll go there instead!
In the lobby we ran into some nice and talkative folks visiting from Oklahoma. The lady at the front desk seemed to think it might take a while for a cab, in the dark at night in rainy weather... the Oklahoma peeps immediately suggested we share a ride with them. They had been out the prior evening and knew the driver's life story! They had pre-ordered some time before so the driver came within a couple of minutes, so lucky. The father of the driver is a car mechanic in Tahiti, while the daughter and the mother both took turns driving the cab. Most cabs on Moorea don't run at night, so we were lucky to be in the loop with this service. They were so nice and organized and told us they'd just split the bill between us two couples, and we could just pay later on our way home! So funny. Our newfound friends were returning to a new restaurant called Ke'ike -- they had been to the same place the day prior and raved about it and were literally going back to the exact same spot. A spot to keep for next time, I guess!
We arrived at Allo Pizza and it was immediately clear why it was so important to just be eating there and not attempting to deliver it; would have missed the whole vibe of the experience. There was one long counter at the front and you order your pizza, then watch them make it for you in a wood oven. We got the life-changingly good Chevre Miel (White creme fraiche, cheese, goat cheese and honey) and the Moorea (fresh tomatoes, cheese, onions, garlic sauce, cream and fresh Moorea Pineapple). It was sooo good and so fun to sit there on the stools and watch them make the pizza. I ordered a Rotui juice (the factory is just down the road from here) and hilariously rather than a single juice box, they gave me an entire litre of it.
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| Fun to be here on the side of the road in the rain! |
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| The pizza chefs hard at work! |
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| Moorea |
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| Chevre Miel |
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| See the giant juice container! |
As we were wrapping up we asked them "Can you please call Sophie for us?" (the previous cab driver's mom). I tried to hand them her business card and they said, hilariously, "Oh, we have her number already!" It's hard to get cabs at night here, not unsurprisingly, and so we were lucky to have this service. The cab ride back was very nice, we learned a lot and I asked Sophie like 100 questions. This (and local grocery stores) are one of my very favourite things in a foreign country... you have no clue of other people's life experience and way of life, and it's so utterly fascinating to hear it right from people who live it every day; such a different way of living than your own. Sophie told us that there is actually no high school on Moorea, so kids have to get up at 4am and take the ferry across to Tahiti. There was going to be a new high school built in 2020 but then Covid changed the plan and totally messed that up. It sounds like the pandemic was incredibly hard for locals, especially in an area where the industry is so tourist-focused like this. She mentioned that France was "luring youngsters away" from French Polynesia, it reminded me of stories of folks from rural areas in Canada, Newfoundland and so on, getting jobs out in Alberta and then stories of them never coming back to Newfoundland. It was interesting to hear how she described it. I then asked her about the language, guessing at the answer -- and she confirmed what I figured, that it was incredibly important to the previous generation that the new generation maintained their Polynesian roots -- she spoke passionately about the importance of kids maintaining the Tahitian language and not only speaking French, and of preserving their culture.
We bid Sophie a "Māuruuru Roa" (thank you very much) and headed to the bar to get our free welcome drinks. We got an Eclipse (Orange-cinnamon rum, Aperol, Kiwi Puree, Pineapple Juice and Perrier), and a shot of Manutea VO 43 Rhum Ambre (Gold Rum) locally made on Moorea. I was really hoping to find some local rum I liked (like we did successfully in The Seychelles!!) but even this fancier sipping rum was VERY strong and more like a shot of strong vodka than a smooth sipper! Oh well. Still very fun to try it and a great nitecap to another glorious and interesting day. Back in the hotel room, the Heiva dance festival from Bora Bora was on TV -- some music and dance, but mostly a story being recited in Tahitian! We had no idea what was going on, but still fun to watch.
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| A glorious nitecap! |
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| Making good use of these giant umbrellas! |
