Moorea by Boat was Swimming with Stingrays!

This was our longest excursion day so far on our trip. We left our apartment at 6:45am and got home at ~6pm. Definitely glad we did this day trip to the island of Moorea, but it could have easily been a couple of hours shorter for our crew.

The clear highlight of the day was swimming with the STINGRAYS and reef sharks! I will leave it to the video and pictures to share how amazing this was. It was awesome, and a bit terrifying.

We parked our car in downtown Papeete shortly after 7am. I registered my first mistake of the day by parking in the lot that we know and are familiar with (about a 10 minute walk to the ferry) instead of the one right next to the ferry terminal (as Whitney had suggested). I’m sure I will regret that at the end of the day when I am carrying a 3 year old and/or a six year old back to the car… anyway, onward!

The ferry to Moorea is an easy and super comfortable 30 minute ride, they even have a well appointed snack bar! Once we landed in Moorea we boarded a bus at the ferry terminal for the ride to the boat marina. This served as the start of the tour. Just rolling along was great, the bus made a few stops at hotels along the way and the driver shared some island history in French and English.

We were on the boat touring around Moorea from ~10am until ~3pm. The first couple of hours were all we needed. We went along the amazing coastline of Moorea, admiring the jagged green peaks and beautiful bays. We even saw a humpback whale and her baby swimming not far from the boat! That does not get old. The first stop was a sandbar with a dozen or so stingrays and black tip reef sharks swimming around. There was another boat and a few kayaks out there as well, but nothing in Tahiti/Moorea feels crowded. ‘Busy’ means there may be 5-10 other people doing it with you - love that! The water was crystal clear and only about waist deep. To our surprise, but not without a few tears, everyone swam with the stingrays and sharks. Yes, even Baby Hazel!

After that we moved on to a little island a few hundred meters off of Moorea for lunch. It was a beautiful little spot. We spent about an hour and a half there. The four tour team members cooked a delicious BBQ lunch for everyone and did a number of cultural demonstrations. The most valuable one, in case we are ever stranded on a tropical island, was how to actually select and open a coconut! I am still not sure I could do it, but at least I now understand in theory.

If it was just Whitney and I the 90 minutes relaxing on the beach would have been great. Mobile phone service was good there too, so in my work mode days it would have been perfect for knocking out a few emails, perhaps even a call. But not today. Today we just hung out. Scarlett and Nora watched the cultural shows when they happened. Otherwise they spent the time playing on the beach, chasing around the island chickens and cats, and asking periodically when we were going to leave!

After lunch a little rainstorm moved through. Instead of getting everyone wet the team took us to another nearby beach to wait out the storm. We hung out there for 30 minutes or so exploring the beach and swimming in the ocean. After the rain passed we cruised down the coast dropping people off at their hotel jetties along the way. We hopped off at the Manava resort (ironically where we stayed on Moorea during our trip three years ago) and boarded the bus back to the ferry terminal for the trip in reverse.

The tour promises to have you back for the 4:50pm ferry from Moorea to Papeete. When we arrived at the ferry terminal ~45 minutes early there was an earlier ferry loading the last few cars. We made a run for it and got lucky by making it on! That got us back to Papeete around 4:45pm instead of 5:30pm, which was a huge bonus. It helped compensate a little for my parking blunder and yes, I did get an extra workout by carrying Scarlett and Nora for significant parts of the walk back to the car. All good fun and we wound our way through the central market and picked up a sandwich and baguette for dinner!

A wonderful day, longer than we needed, but swimming with the stingrays will be a highlight forever.

A video and some pictures from our day.