Mo' Mo'orea

On Wednesday we booked a half-day snorkel tour with Moorea Water Games to take us around the island to the best spots. Even though we have our own snorkels and masks, they recommended we use their full-face snorkel masks. Instead of having a facemask that covers your eyes and nose with a separate snorkel tube, these masks cover the entire face and have a snorkel tube sticking out of the top. The nice thing about them is that you have a wider field of vision. The drawback is you look a little dorky. If you were a child in the 1980's you will know what I mean when I say we looked a lot like Snork cartoon characters.

They also gave us each an electric sea scooter. It kind of looks like a combo dustbuster vacuum cleaner attached to a fan. It had three speeds and let you zoom through the water effortlessly.

The tour stopped at several locations and the first one was at the reef just off the Sofitel resort, with some truly spectacular coral. The Sofitel resort has put a lot of effort into restoring and reviving the reef around the resort and over toward Temae public beach.

We were overwhelmed by the sheer number and variety of fish we saw. And because the guides bring a tour group here twice a day every day, none of the fish were timid at all. They just went on about their normal fishy lives while we peacefully zoomed along with them using our scooters. This school of convict fish hung out with us for quite a while, very cool!

After seeing the best part of the Sofitel reef area, we climbed back into the boat and headed towards the south end of the island. In fact, we were very close to our Airbnb and could see the backyard from offshore. Here we snorkeled in deeper water so there wasn't much coral to see, but we saw a squadron of eagle rays and several green sea turtles. Again, they weren't too bothered by us, so it was thrilling to see them up close.

After a busy day out and about we came back to our Airbnb, cooked a simple dinner, and watched a gorgeous sunset and sipped some local Hinano beers. An excellent and relaxing end to a great day...

Over the course of the week we found lots of time to explore the public beaches around the island. One of our favorites was Ta'ahiamanu beach near 'Ōpūnohu Bay. Great views of the mountains and super soft powdery sand.

Moorea is surrounded by a ring of reefs, and over time some parts of the reef build up broken bits of coral and sand until they become a very small island, or "motu". The Coco Beach restaurant is on Motu Tiahura just off the northwest coast of Mo'orea. So we made a reservation for lunch and spent the morning and early afternoon exploring the island and snorkeling between Tiahura and Motu Fareone. Lunch was very good and we had a great view of the boats going by in the main lagoon channel.

Well, after seven nights on this beautiful island it was time to head to our next destination. We had booked an afternoon flight direct from Mo'orea to Bora Bora -- there is only one flight a day between these two islands. We had planned on a leisurely day at the beach before our flight. But...man plans, God laughs. I got a text at 6:30am saying that our flight had been unexpectedly rescheduled to October 22nd. What??!! We wouldn't even be in the country on that date! So we quickly scrambled to get packed and check out. It took us less than an hour to get out the door -- we definitely "panic-packed" but luckily only forgot a few granola bars that were...in the fridge, of course. While driving we realized that the Mo'orea Air Tahiti desk wouldn't be open -- the airport was roped off, completely closed. Our only option was to start heading toward the ferry dock to get back to Tahiti. In the meantime, I called customer service right when it opened at 8am and was told, "I'm sorry your flight was moved. There are no flights in or out of Mo'orea right now. You heard about the strike, didn't you?"

No I hadn't heard about it but...of course! I should have known. Going on strike is the national pastime for the French and I guess French Polynesia is no exception. "Il y a un grève" ("there is a strike") is a saying we know very well from our travels in France. It seems that the firefighters for certain airports were on strike, effectively shutting down air travel. Luckily, the airports in Tahiti and Bora Bora were unaffected. We were able to get our flight changed over the phone, hopped on the ferry back to Tahiti, jumped into a cab to the airport, and actually got to Faa'a airport in time to catch an even earlier flight so that we arrived in Bora Bora six hours ahead of schedule! We were very lucky. Although I loved Mo'orea and could have stayed there another week, accomodations were surely all booked up so we would've had no place to stay. Plus we had pre-paid our Bora Bora Airbnb, so...Au revoir, Mo'orea!