10th Anniversary Trip Day 7: Best Ever Snorkeling in Moorea

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)