We got off the catamaran in Moorea around a half hour after departing the port in Papeete. This island is much more rustic, sort of like a Kauai to Hawaii's Oahu. We had arranged for transportation, and after a little bit of searching we found her. We loaded up the van, and were taken to the Moorea airport, where we waited to pick up another couple who flew in (fancy, fancy).

After we dropped the other couple off, we arrived at and checked in to the hotel. They walked us through the pool area to the cabana which would be home for a few nights. We were two cabana rows back from the water, and the place was just beautiful. All the rooms at the hotel are cabanas, and some of them are situated on a pier that juts out into the ocean. These rooms have glass floors in the living room, come with in-room snorkel equipment, and have ladders off the deck that you can use to go right from room to sea. Pretty sweet. The hotel also brought us some welcome snacks, baked goods and chocolates. Not too shabby.

We pretty much hung out on the beach, grabbed some snorkel equipment and explored the cove. Lots of beautiful fish to stare at: parrotfish, angel fish, and hordes of needlenose gar. We enjoyed a splurge lunch provided by the hotel on the beach and spent the day with drinks, reading, and snorkeling.

That night, we decided to try to get away from the hotel's crazy prices and get out into Moorea. Most of the folks come here for honeymoons or one-time vacations, so they have more money ready to spend than we were hoping to!

Anyway, because our location was a beautiful spot at the far end of a small bay, driving to dinner took a while and we had to schedule our pick up. We ended up at an outdoor sit down pizza joint run by a really fun Moorean guy who chatted us up the whole night. He was really interesting, and when he found out I could speak French, we conversed in Frenglish the rest of the night.

The next morning we decided to repeat the previous day's activities, except we also decided to take a detour on the way to the airport to see the famous Bali Hai from the movie "South Pacific." We passed some farms and a river and eventually drove up a hill where some locals were chilling with a beer. There was a great overlook with Bali Hai behind us and the two coves we drove around the night before splayed out below, with palm trees, green landscape, and the cool blue sea off on the distance. We soaked it up as long as we could before we headed back to the port again to take the ferry back over to Papeete.

There, we hung out for a few hours, grabbed dinner, and we headed off to the airport for the last international leg of the big trip. We cannot believe this thing is almost over, but we have close to ten days on the west coast to share with each other some of our favorite cities. USA, here we come!