Moorea Island Beach

The lagoon here has amazing, varied snorkeling, and we saw turtles every day. Kayaks and bikes are available to use without booking, and there are some great restaurants nearby. We stayed three nights in a garden bungalow and would definitely come back. It's easy to prepare your own food in the shared kitchen. Each bungalow has a fridge, plus there's an assigned fridge space in the shared kitchen, an industrial kitchen the staff use for breakfast. Tea and coffee are available all day. You can buy breakfast at the resort, and it looked nice, but we chose to cook for ourselves. This resort is a rare gem.

The sunset view was the only thing we liked, and you can get the same view at other nearby resorts. We do not recommend this place. The male receptionist behaved inappropriately when we arrived, staring at us and being overly flirtatious. We felt treated like children most of the time, and this is not a honeymoon spot or the romantic bungalow setting it might suggest. Roosters woke us at 4 a.m., then 5, and kept going through the morning, as if they were in the room standing on our heads. Some windows had no blinds, so the room got bright very early. We went several days without room service, then on the days staff came, there were no do not disturb signs and they arrived before 9 a.m. Weekends were very loud around the hotel, with some restaurants turning into clubs and locals hanging around until the early hours revving their motorbikes. The ice machine in the open public kitchen was disgusting.

The free kayaks came in handy for seeing sharks, stingrays, and other small fish by a nearby island. We didn't spot turtles there, although other guests said they had. Snorkeling right out front wasn't the best. The free bikes, which came with locks, were fun to use. They ask you to stay within 5 km, which is reasonable since the bikes only have one speed. We cycled to tiki village and to a beach in the other direction. This place turned out to be a pleasant surprise. The staff were friendly, and it was clean. We hadn't realized there was a shared kitchen, so we were able to make quite a few meals. Breakfast is available for an extra fee, but it seemed pricey to us, so we skipped it.

BRING YOUR OWN TOWEL! What a shame, because this place has so much potential, with beautiful views and pleasant outdoor lodging. It's a little dated, though a bit of paint could help. Our double room was so small you could barely move, but with snorkeling right outside the window, that wasn't the main problem. The sheets smelled musty, and the towels were moldy, stained, and unacceptable. The cleaning crew replaced them with more of the same. By the end, we were drying off with toilet paper. I wondered if the damp Tahiti air made the smell impossible to remove, but towels at another hotel we stayed at were perfect. The crew made the bed but didn't even replace the soiled bathroom rug. Booking.com said breakfast was included, but it wasn't. At $30 per person, breakfast was pricey for what they served. We were surprised there wasn't more local fruit, just a medley like you'd expect on a plane meal. When we asked the kitchen lady how to use the espresso machine, she looked at us like we were stupid tourists, and then it didn't work for her either. There's a small market five minutes away with fresh baguettes every day, yogurt, and French cheeses. You can rent a car on site for $80 a day, which was a nice touch. Bikes and kayaks are free, and there's a friendly cat around always begging for food. Such a beautiful place, but it feels spoiled by poor management. It's a real shame, since it would be so easy to make it wonderful.