Elsie Mae
TUG Member
Hello fellow travelers,
I have attached some photos of our January/February 2010 trip to Hilton Moorea. The hotel facilities are very nice. Both the Garden Bungalows and Overwater Bungalows are recently refurbished. We were very pleased with the overwater bungalows. We were given a free upgrade to OWB bungalow but I think they were giving this to most guests due to the fact that the garden bungalows were not 100% complete at the time. If you have your heart set on an OWB you might want to arrange for the upgrade before arriving. The Hilton gives you free use of snorkel equipment and kayaks. We used the kayaks a couple of times. We brought our own snorkel equip. The snorkelling in the Hilton lagoon is very good. Healthy coral and quite a variety of fish. I saw a stone fish - which I have never seen before. It looked like a conch shell scooting across the bottom. It looked up at me and bared its teeth. Activities we took advantage of: ATV tour with Dammon. We arranged this on our own and saved off the rate charged by the hotel. It was 15000 xpf (approx $185 for both of us). It was a 3 hour tour and it was the highlight of our trip. I think the hotel charges 15000 xpf per person for 2 hours. We did the shark/ray feeding trip thru hotel activities desk. They take you out to a spot by the Intercontinental Hotel where the water is only about chest high (out a couple hundred yards from the shore) and they rays come there to be fed as soon as they see the boats. This was our 2nd most favorite activity. We had planned to dive but the weather turned ugly at the end of our stay and diving was cancelled. We did do a refresher dive with Top Dive (at the Hilton) before the weather turned ugly. Top Dive runs a really good, safe operation. We drove around the island one day when it was raining. You really only need to rent a car for 4 hours to do this. We stopped for lunch and stopped to do a little shopping and made it back in less than 4 hours. We did not drive to the top of Belvedere since we had already done that on the ATV tour.
We loved the staff at Hilton. They really go out of their way to make guests happy. We especially bonded with the two ladies at the activities desk.
We flew with Air France out of Los Angeles. The Terminal Air France is in is a 10 minute walk (one terminal away) from the Southwest Airlines Terminal. So we were able to have only a 2 hour window between our connecting flights with no problems.
I think a 5-7 day stay on Moorea is all you need since it is a small island (around 40 miles to drive around the island). If I had to do it all over again, I would recommend taking one of the cruises that stops at various south pacific islands (Moorea, and Bora bora, etc). From what I have heard the cost would have been the same or less that our land based trip. It was too costly to move from island to island via airplane so we only saw Moorea. Usually I am not a cruise person, because you only get 6-8 hours in each port and usually that is not enough, but in this case all the islands are pretty small so 6-8 hours is plenty.
I uploaded pictures of the resort - but I can't figure out where they went or how to open them up. Help?
I have attached some photos of our January/February 2010 trip to Hilton Moorea. The hotel facilities are very nice. Both the Garden Bungalows and Overwater Bungalows are recently refurbished. We were very pleased with the overwater bungalows. We were given a free upgrade to OWB bungalow but I think they were giving this to most guests due to the fact that the garden bungalows were not 100% complete at the time. If you have your heart set on an OWB you might want to arrange for the upgrade before arriving. The Hilton gives you free use of snorkel equipment and kayaks. We used the kayaks a couple of times. We brought our own snorkel equip. The snorkelling in the Hilton lagoon is very good. Healthy coral and quite a variety of fish. I saw a stone fish - which I have never seen before. It looked like a conch shell scooting across the bottom. It looked up at me and bared its teeth. Activities we took advantage of: ATV tour with Dammon. We arranged this on our own and saved off the rate charged by the hotel. It was 15000 xpf (approx $185 for both of us). It was a 3 hour tour and it was the highlight of our trip. I think the hotel charges 15000 xpf per person for 2 hours. We did the shark/ray feeding trip thru hotel activities desk. They take you out to a spot by the Intercontinental Hotel where the water is only about chest high (out a couple hundred yards from the shore) and they rays come there to be fed as soon as they see the boats. This was our 2nd most favorite activity. We had planned to dive but the weather turned ugly at the end of our stay and diving was cancelled. We did do a refresher dive with Top Dive (at the Hilton) before the weather turned ugly. Top Dive runs a really good, safe operation. We drove around the island one day when it was raining. You really only need to rent a car for 4 hours to do this. We stopped for lunch and stopped to do a little shopping and made it back in less than 4 hours. We did not drive to the top of Belvedere since we had already done that on the ATV tour.
We loved the staff at Hilton. They really go out of their way to make guests happy. We especially bonded with the two ladies at the activities desk.
We flew with Air France out of Los Angeles. The Terminal Air France is in is a 10 minute walk (one terminal away) from the Southwest Airlines Terminal. So we were able to have only a 2 hour window between our connecting flights with no problems.
I think a 5-7 day stay on Moorea is all you need since it is a small island (around 40 miles to drive around the island). If I had to do it all over again, I would recommend taking one of the cruises that stops at various south pacific islands (Moorea, and Bora bora, etc). From what I have heard the cost would have been the same or less that our land based trip. It was too costly to move from island to island via airplane so we only saw Moorea. Usually I am not a cruise person, because you only get 6-8 hours in each port and usually that is not enough, but in this case all the islands are pretty small so 6-8 hours is plenty.
I uploaded pictures of the resort - but I can't figure out where they went or how to open them up. Help?