Local Albert Transport 4WD tours take you to the top of “Magic Mountain” on Mo’orea.
Huahine is known for watermelons, Taha’a is known for vanilla, Moorea is known for pineapples, and Bora Bora is known for tourists,” says our Moorea safari guide, Gerard Teritahi, rattling off some of the Tahitian islands with part humour, part exasperation.
Indeed, Bora Bora is a tourist magnet. Insta videos of thatched bungalows hovering over crystalline water sell the Tahitian island dream, but they fail to showcase the diversity of the 118 islands that make up French Polynesia (with Tahiti just one of those, and Bora Bora another).
As a quick geography lesson, French Polynesia, also referred to as the “islands of Tahiti”, is made up of five archipelagos. There are the Austral Islands in the south, the Tuamotu islands and atolls in the centre, the Gambier Islands in the east, the Marquesas Islands in the north-east, and the Society Islands in the west, which are the tallest and most populated islands in French Polynesia.
Some of the outer islands take a week to reach on a bittie boat, but the Society Islands, which encapsulate Tahiti’s main city of Papeete (and the international airport), make a great starting point for exploring this autonomous territory of France.
Moorea is part of the Society Islands archipelago.
Tahiti – the gateway island
First things first, you generally don’t go to the islands of Tahiti to visit Papeete, so don’t be turned off by the sweltering airport and exhaust fumes that smack you in the face on arrival. Papeete is a business centre that Polynesians from the outer islands typically view as a pitstop for admin days and specialised healthcare, knowing that French Polynesia’s real beauty and calmness lies elsewhere.
“We come here for work,” says our guide, Heimata Tuariihionoau, as he clunks his van into gear and pulls away from the busy arrivals terminal. He’s taking me and my partner on a half-day tour of Tahiti Nui, the large portion of the island of Tahiti (with Tahiti Iti its smaller offshoot, where the Olympic surfing competition took place). Though Heimata’s heart lies in his homeland of Huahine (the watermelon island), he’s showing us that Tahiti has more to it than offices and an international airport.
Huahine is an agricultural island, known for its watermelon fields.Credit: iStock
Our tour starts at the sacred ’Arahurahu marae. A marae is an open-air temple of sorts with platforms and low walls made of coral and volcanic stones, where Polynesians used to worship their gods. When British missionaries came to the islands in 1797, gathering at maraes was forbidden (as were traditional ancestral tattoos, which were revived in the 1980s). This is the point much of the population converted to Christianity, and many still practise today, including Heimata.
In contrast to the city and suburbs of the north-west, the eastern side of Tahiti is rugged and rural, and we visit the “trois cascades”, with a waterfall plunging 100 metres through the forest, a black-sand beach (typical of the island), a grotto and a powerful blowhole. There are no restaurants, hotels or service stations, and this simple way of life is reflected elsewhere in French Polynesia.
Good views meet good food
The pin-up Tahitian experience is a stay in an overwater bungalow, pioneered in French Polynesia in the 1960s and subsequently cemented as a luxury status symbol around the world. Of course, Bora Bora is the location that commonly springs to mind when “overwater bungalow” and “Tahiti” are mentioned together, but you’ll find these bungalows on other islands too, including Taha’a and Moorea.
Luxe overwater bungalows at the Sofitel Kia Ora Moorea.
We spend two nights in a spacious bungalow at the Sofitel Kia Ora on Moorea, perched above postcard-perfect water animated by colourful marine life. Keen to explore beyond the resort (tempting as it is to stay), we join a lagoon tour with Moorea Fishing Adventures, which, between swimming with turtles and black-tip reef sharks and sipping fresh coconuts, helps us appreciate the island’s greater beauty.
Our boat skims across water that transitions from aqua to deep blue, gently undulating like a silk bedsheet and twinkling like a disco ball in the sun. On our left, a lace of whitewash fringes the reef that encircles the island, like a tripwire that keeps the wild ocean at bay, and to our right there are jungle-clad mountains so jagged it seems if you ran your finger over the horizon you’d cut yourself.
A Superior Lagoon bungalow at Sofitel Kia Ora Moorea.
After docking back at the Sofitel’s private jetty, we spend our afternoon with Moorea local Mareva Barbeau from Tahiti Food Tours to explore French Polynesia’s culinary offering. The signature dish you’ll find everywhere is poisson cru – raw fish marinated in lime juice and coconut milk – but we discover a few surprises, including the casse croute chow mein – a chow mein (Chinese egg noodle) baguette. This unusual, carb-on-carb dish gives insight into a lesser-known influence on French Polynesian culture (no guessing where the baguette came from) – Chinese.
A taste of Moorea with Tahiti Food Tours.
The Chinese originally came to French Polynesia to work on the sugar cane and cotton fields, and, now, generations of Chinese families have woven their culture into that of the French Europeans and Polynesians, so you’ll commonly find noodle dishes (including chow mein, sans the bun) and local fruit, like pineapple and small, crunchy Tahitian mangoes, sprinkled with Chinese red plum powder.
Go wild
Though the overwater bungalow is a bucket-list experience for many visiting the islands of Tahiti (and rightly so – there’s nothing like waking up to glistening, turquoise water on your doorstep), there’s something commercial about it, and the clientele are predominantly “safe” holidaymakers (mostly American) who prioritise Insta over culture.
More intrepid souls might prefer to stay in a small guesthouse or pension, which are dotted around the islands. On the island of Ra’iatea, a 45-minute flight from Papeete, we check into the boutique Raiatea Lodge Hotel, where the sunset spills golden light onto the modern bungalows, scattered across a spacious lawn, then join a guided tour of the UNESCO-recognised Taputapuatea marae. This is the most significant of all of French Polynesia’s maraes, with Ra’iatea considered the birthplace of Polynesian culture – from New Zealand, to Easter Island, to Hawaii.
Taputapuatea marae, French Polynesia’s most important marae for religious and cultural events.
The following day we meet Patricia Hubbard, who moved from France for the island lifestyle, when she and Reno Demahahe – the “pearl surgeon” – pick us up in a small tinnie and whisk us a couple of minutes offshore to a small hut in the ocean. This is where we learn about Tahiti’s famous cultured black pearls, with Reno demonstrating the process of introducing a nucleus into an oyster, which will form the core of a pearl that will take around two years to develop. Anapa Pearls harvests only 10,000 pearls a year (a tiny run compared with some of the larger farms on other islands, which can produce up to 100,000) but they offer the interactive experience of “diving” for your own pearl.
Snorkels on, we plunge off the hut’s platform into the clear water, looking for two oysters planted by Reno amid the coral. After a few minutes of scouring the seabed we find our prize, and hand our oysters to Reno to see what we’ve caught. He pries open each shell and makes a small incision to reveal a gleaming purplish pearl, and, though it’s gimmicky – a treasure hunt meets lucky dip – we’re chuffed to take home two Tahitian pearls, just as beautiful as any you’d find in a store.
Tropical treasure hunt … visitors can dive for their own pearl.
Very vanilla
Ra’iatea’s neighbour, Taha’a (which is next door to Bora Bora), is just a 10 to 20-minute boat ride across the lagoon. This laidback island has all the community feels, with a close-knit population of just 5000, and a wild interior where vines grow so thick they cloak the trees in deep-green shawls. A ring road follows the island’s 70-kilometre perimeter, just metres from the gently lapping sea, where local families wade in the shallows, their clothes bundled under coconut trees.
Taha’a is surrounded by a string of small islands known as motu.Credit: Emmanuel Bouvet
Though Taha’a doesn’t have any public beaches, a lagoon tour will take you to a “motu”, a small island befitting a movie set, with stereotypical palm trees and water that is gin-clear at the shore, then deepens to bright turquoise and satin blue.
About 80 per cent of people living on Taha’a are farmers and the primary crop grown is vanilla, hence Taha’a is nicknamed the “vanilla island”. We visit a co-operative as part of a 4x4 safari tour to learn about the labour of love required to grow Tahiti’s large, fragrant vanilla pods (the flowers must be pollinated by hand, given the bees that would typically play this role decided Taha’a wasn’t for them).
The ‘vanilla island’… Taha’a.Credit: Gregoire Le Bacon
After our tour, we splash about in the ocean in front of our pension, then take a late afternoon stroll down a quiet road to watch the sunset transform into a starry sky. In the stillness, it’s obvious that Taha’a is not known for tourists. They’re all on Bora Bora, and the other islands of Tahiti feel like our little secret.
The details
Fly
Air Tahiti Nui flies to Papeete from Sydney and Melbourne via Auckland. Air Tahiti then offers internal flights between the major islands.
Stay
Sofitel Kia Ora Moorea Beach Resort, see sofitel-moorea-kiaora.com
Raiatea Lodge Hotel, see raiatea-lodge-hotel.com/en
Opoa Beach Hotel (Ra’iātea), see opoabeach.com/en
Pension Anahata (Taha’a), see pensionanahata.com/en
Kon Tiki Tahiti (Papeete), see kontikitahiti.com/en
Tour
Moorea Fishing Adventures runs fishing trips as well as beach and lagoon tours. See mooreafishingadventures.com
Albert Transport offers a range of tours on Moorea, including 4x4 Jeep safaris and lagoon excursions. See albert-transport.net/tours
Tahiti Food Tours offer tours on the islands of Tahiti and Moorea. See tahitifoodtour.com
Visit the Marae Taputapuatea with a local guide from Taxi Heinui – Giovani. Email taxi.raiatea@gmail.com
Take a day tour of Taha’a with Tahaa Tour Excursion (with Raiatea boat pick-up option). See tahaatourexcursion.com/en
Tahiti Transports Prives offer group and private tours from Papeete. See tahititransportsprives.com/tours
Dive for your own pearl with Anapa Pearls. See anapapearls.com
The writer travelled as a guest of Tahiti Tourisme and Air Tahiti Nui.