7/11/2026 10th Anniversary Trip Day 7: Best Ever Snorkeling in Moorea
The final day of the trip has arrived! It felt like we were traveling for much longer given how action-packed this was, and since we had left the kids with Michal's parents (who were visiting us in San Francisco to help make this trip possible), it was enough time to be away from them. Thankfully the time really went slowly and it didn't feel as if we'd rushed the trip. Expertly organized it would appear!
First things first -- breakfast. WOW this did not disappoint. The food and service and vibe in Bora Bora was impossible to beat, but of course Moorea is right off of the mainland of Tahiti, so it's much less remote. And thus the food selection was shockingly awesome. So this was quite a perfect way to wrap up the trip. The buffet was very plentiful and very 'fruit forward' -- with, as you may know, tropical fruit being my favourite thing! So this sure was awesome.
Let the games begin!!! Famous local Moorea Pineapple and both yellow and purple passionfruits... omg
A shockingly large selection, all of homemade Kombuchas of various varieties!!
Well this was awesome
The "confitures" were insane -- mixed various tropical fruits. Oh man. I went back like 5 times. Was hard to pick a favourite, they were all so different and so insanely good
What an amazing day and amazing view here
Yes I ate about 7 full passionfruits...
The brown butter shortbread was GREAT
So um... yeah. That was truly out of control. The staff was very friendly and happy and rushed to make us an Iced Coffee which was also stellar (and served from a big wine glass). We were introduced to the pancake lady, who introduced herself as "Moorea" (wait, the same as the name of the Island? Maybe?) saying that her name meant "thoughts" / "dreams". The "egg guy" was named something that translated to "Waterfall". He fit his name perfectly as he kept grinning and nodding at me, and doing a Shaka hand sign every time I went by. Just in general that dude was PSYCHED. Loved his job, loved saying hello to people at the hotel, just great vibes.
The mini baguettes were still warm and went very well with French butter and a taste (or 10) of every single one of those epic mixed tropical fruit homemade jams. Just so ridiculously good.
We wrapped up wth some flans and a scoop of Mango sorbet (duh) from the pastry lady, who also gave me a few extra things from the pastry area when I showed even a mild amount of interest. Soooo that was utterly incredible. I ate so much fruit and enjoyed the heck out of some Lychee yoghurt, all the jams, the weird juices and kombuchas, and just so much more. Wow. This gave us the energy we needed to go back out snorkeling and... DAAMMN. This may well be the best snorkeling I've ever done, anywhere in the world, in my whole life. I took some GoPro and it needs no description, you just need to watch it and enjoy. I saw an eel!! And so so so many bright coloured fish, swimming right there. You just wade out and it seems like there's nothing going on under the surface and then BLAM, you just go under for a second and you're shocked by how many various fish and amazing coral there all is.
Here I posted a video of the snorkeling in Moorea -- this is actually a combined video of the snorkeling we did today and also from the day before. The Eel (about a minute in) might be the coolest part, as well as the yellow fish that come way too close to you, and just the sheer amount of fish and schools of fish, and how close you were to the coral.
Highly recommend watching the video above! And here's some photos from the GoPro too. We did more snorkeling today after yesterday was so successful, starting on the other side of the beach this time. There were so many fish, and Michal was really getting the hang of it, which I was quite proud of! During the snorkeling, it started to rain! "It's OK, we're already wet!" We kept going for maybe an hour and enjoyed the heck out of the experience, before going back to the hotel room to pack up and get ready to give in our bags.
After that glorious snorkel adventure, we went to the front lobby area and found the hot showers there since we'd already checked out of our room. We continued reading our books as well as got changed and so on in the fancy shower areas, so we'd be ready for our departure back to Tahiti.
We soon after got picked up by a super nice cab driver to head out and towards the ferry terminal. The flight times out were not convenient for us, so we'd booked the local ferry. On the way out of the cab, the driver said "I wish you a long life, many blessings". What's the Polynesian word for 'mensch'?!
There was a fruit stand there so I obviously got a full giant watermelon-sized coconut. Michal weirdly doesn't like coconut (even coconut water?!) so I crushed the whole thing myself and have never been so hydrated in my life.
Get your hydration on
The delivery of the bags upon arrival in Tahiti was by a dude on a tractor
Arriving in Papeete, we knew a lot of things would be closed on a Saturday afternoon, but it was fairly ghost-town-y. Nearly everything was closed. We schlepped our bags around and found a few random touristy shops but nothing of note. Thankfully we had researched this in advance as I would have been somewhat devastated if we were trying to go to the Farmers Market (also closed) on this last day in Tahiti.
After some unsuccessful wandering in the humidity, we wanted to make our way towards the Hilton Hotel further west so we could a) drop our bags there and b) go to the Carrefour grocery store across the road from the hotel, stock up on some snacks and stuff for dinner, and then walk to the stadium where the Heiva was going to be held. The Heiva is in it's 145th year and "The Heiva i Tahiti is one of the most important cultural events on The Islands of Tahiti. It was created in 1881, and it is one of the oldest festivals in the world." It was very hard to get tickets to this, I had logged in the day of and it always sells out the same day, so needless to say I was overly psyched for this. Dancers and singers come from all over the Polynesian Islands for this incredible festival and I was pumped. But first... let's ditch these giant suitcases...
We were on the side of the road schleppin' stuff and I was encouraging Michal that we should not try to walk with all the stuff. We decided to just wing it and wait for the bus again like we had done the previous week. Michal remembered that the guy at the hotel said that the bus will pretty much stop for you anywhere if you wave it down, you don't need to be at a real stop. And so after some waiting and sweating in the humidity... they did!! We waved them down and got onto the bus with ALL our bags, kinda crazy. But in true Polynesian form... no one was stressy or concerned that we had so much stuff. To the contrary, people on the bus were so nice, helping us with our bags and putting their hands on some of our stuff so it didn't roll down the aisle when the bus turned. Super nice. Got lots of grins and nods again that these crazy foreigners with too much stuff were doing the local thing and taking the bus like everyone does. My prior week's research served me well too, I said we were going to Carrefour, and he said "Carrefour Puna'auia?!" which I remembered was the bigger 2nd location way further and closer to our old hotel. "No, Carrefour F'aaa!" I said, somehow remembering the name of the closer one. He nodded and said we were on the correct bus. Huzzah!
We got to the Hilton and it seemed it might be questionable whether we could hold our bags there, but taking them all the way to the airport was too far (and also unclear whether there would be baggage storage), and taking them back to our hotel from the prior week was even more complicated and further. So we winged it again and had to pose as a hotel guest and make up a story, but ultimately the guy let us store the bags there. I figured it would just be fine because people are so friendly there but it seemed you needed a room number so we had to wing it. I think the dude totally realized what I was doing so I made sure to give them a tip later as a thank you for clearly letting me game the system:)
Anyway after we ditched the bags successfully, we went to the Carrefour and it was just as French and epic as I had anticipated. Tons of fun snacks and candy to take home for the kids, fancy French chocolates and cookies and stuff. We got some gifts for the kids and snacks and some random hot scalloped potatoes to eat for dinner on the way to the stadium. What I really wanted was the one snack I couldn't find the whole week, a stack of sun-dried bananas called "bananes séchées", sold all rolled up into a sort of banana cylinder. I had seen it at the Champion the prior week but forgot to buy it (and Carrefour is the same parent company grocery store) so I figured it had to be somewhere. I asked the dude at the deli counter in case he knew, and he said (en Francais!) that he didn't know. I figured, America-style, that was it and I guess I just wasn't going to get them or find them. And then... he put down all his stuff from what he was doing, came out from behind the counter, and made it his personal mission to find me the bananas. Incredible. He talked to a stockist lady to clarify what we were looking for, and took me through several aisles to try to find it. Then he found me banana chips(!) -- close but not quite. After 5 or 6 minutes he seemed to say that he was sorry he couldn't find it for me, and said farewell and seemed to be going back to his counter and getting his apron back on. Then... a few min later he came up to me and took me right to it, it was in a weird random side aisle near the bulk foods and I was so psyched. I couldn't believe the extra mile customer service at a grocery store. Very telling of the kind Polynesian culture!! So that was awesome and there were actually two types, the one I was looking for and another one called Dehydrated Bananas so I got both.
Successfully schlepped our stuff, now off the bus and weaseling into asking the hotel to hold them for us while we were at the dance competition show
Carrefour!!!
A huge selection of the local rums. Was hoping to have really loved one of these like in The Seychelles but all the ones I had were pretty strong. So I decided just to travel home with the one Manutea one I had bought the prior week instead of buying half the shelf here:)
Random, but good dinner!
And then... off we walked through the alleyways from the grocery store toward the big downtown amphitheatre, Place Toʻatā. We kinda RACED there since we didn't want to get there late and we had spent a lot of time wandering around Carrefour (looking for bananas, and so on..) We weaved through a few random dark alleyways and seemed to be eventually getting there thanks to Google Maps but... it seemed oddly quiet for the biggest cultural event of the year...
Ah, the random alleyways of Papeete
Wah wahhhhh.... CLOSED.
Took a sad consolation prize photo of this random graffiti
After all the organization and pre-planning and figuring out tickets 4 months prior, and even planning to get on a later, indirect flight home via LAX on Air Tahiti Nui (so we could leave well after the show at midnight, and not take the direct 9:30pm United SFO flight...) after ALL that.... the show was CANCELED THAT NIGHT. At the last minute too. Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
The best word I could describe my feeling was "crestfallen". I was so upset about it as we had shuffled all the plans around coming to it, and even the flight thing was so annoying as it was on a different airline and we couldn't move back our flight or something to the earlier time and avoid the indirect flight and the additional 8 hours of travel via LAX that we had decided to do just to support getting to the show that night. What a shame. Michal tried to encourage me to not let it ruin the trip or the day but I was a bit inconsolable for a time. Such a cool and historic cultural event and such a one-off opportunity to experience a truly local event with 99% locals and just the odd tourist who is in-the-know. Dang.
It turns out because of the weather earlier in the day, it was raining in the morning and they were concerned about the stages being wet and the dancers not being able to perform (it's an open-roof stadium). I had actually seen this the week before on our arrival, the earlier Heiva shows the prior week, one of those was delayed 'due to weather' so I knew it COULD happen, though the later ones in the prior week had some rain and they still moved forward with the show anyway. The unfortunate thing (from all the other attendees on their Facebook page comments) was that it was raining in the morning but totally clear and dry and perfect weather by the evening. I guess they had decided to cancel it at 2pm when we were on the ferry and so on, and of course I hadn't gone to the website to look or verify as the weather was totally sunny and dry all afternoon and evening. So that REALLY sucked.
Because of weather, we are delaying the Saturday show to Sunday night :( Locals on the group were very supportive saying that the dancers should only come on when it's safe and no one will get hurt, with others pointing out that the stadium was supposed to have a roof for years for this kind of issue. And some others pointing out how it was totally dry and they'd made the wrong call. But everyone was local so they would just stay another night... and unfortunately we were flying out the same night. :(
Thankfully, my wife knows how to turn a situation around and had a smart and clever idea to go back to the Hilton hotel where we'd stashed our bags so we could make up for the "What room are you in?" "Uhh... we stayed here last week...?!" scenario we had finagled prior. They had a super nice sushi restaurant there and though I was really upset about missing the Heiva after all that preparation and planning to go to it -- obviously it was out of our control and though a huge disappointment, this was a great idea to shift mental gears and enjoy a relaxed dinner in veryyyy welcome Air Conditioning after the schlepping around to and from the stadium on foot in the humidity all evening. It ended up being a really nice and relaxing wrap up to the trip, and we would have otherwise been racing to the airport after the Heiva finished. So we enjoyed our "consolation dinner" of sushi at SAN Faa'a at the Hilton. It was just fantastic. I got a Sakura Hibiscus mocktail (Lychee Juice, Lime, Hibiscus and Sparkling Water) and it was glorious. For dessert we got this incredible pavlova thing called Rosee (Lychee, Raspberrt, Rose Water, Mango Sorbet, Lime and Thai Basil), so good.
Much needed liquid after all the schlepping on this humid day
Michal encouraging me to enjoy myself and the consolation dinner (which was, in fact, awesome).
May well have been the best sashimi I've ever had
This candied basil was INSANE
We went back upstairs after an excellent dinner to collect our bags, and saw the nice couple from San Jose that were on our Bora Bora snorkeling trip and were celebrating their 30th Anniversary. So that was a fun surprise that would not have happened if we were at the Heiva as intended! I wrote my notes for this final blog post from the trip, and then we headed to the airport. A group was there, singing some sort of camp goodbye songs, seemed maybe like some exchange students going home and it was quite an emotional scene. What a wrapup to the trip. After the shock and surprise of missing the Festival we were so much looking forward to, we still tied up the trip well and made the most of it and then some.
The flight was good and with our stopover at LAX we managed to get a giant teal version of Ari's favourite stuffed animal ("Staffire"), this one named "Cinder". So we figured that would land well. And back we went to a wonderful welcome home from the kids and Michal's parents -- both of which I think were quite relieved to see us!!
Hello, Cinder!
Sad faces for the trip being over, at SFO heading home in an Uber
Welcome home signs!!
LOVE this shirt I bought
Had some leftover money with these super cool designs to share with the kids
WOW. What a trip. It's pretty amazing all we did in only 6 nights/7 days. We carefully planned all the details and then... just had to roll with it. A lot like our wedding; carefully planned and orchestrated, a lot of expectation and hopes and dreams tied into everything, and then when you get there, you just have to push the boat out from the dock and hope for the best. Writing this blog post now (a month after getting back), the little details that seemed huge at the time are way less important in hindsight, and the calm and natural beauty and fun, wild things like swimming with the sharks and the amazing snorkeling on Moorea, those are the things that stick with you. What an amazing set of memories to make, and a really special and incredible trip to enjoy together to celebrate 10 amazing years of marriage so far. To many, many, many more with my beautiful bride!!
What a glorious trip. So cool to finally be able to get to Bora Bora after dreaming about it for so long. The people, the culture, and the natural beauty was even more stunning than you could have imagined.
-Mike Jutan Corte Madera, CA 7/11/2026 (typed on 8/26/2026)
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.
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.
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.
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!
The signage for the Airport!!!
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.
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.
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.
This dude loved that coconut
"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.
Just steps away from the beach!
Fancy sarong laid out like a bowtie and sunglasses on the bed
Fancy shower
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).
The water was very clear and the coral and fish were stunning
These yellow fish were very friendly and kept coming up to us!
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.
Fun to be here on the side of the road in the rain!
The pizza chefs hard at work!
Moorea
Chevre Miel
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.
