Detailed Photo Review of Paul Gauguin 10-Night Cruise 9/6/17 Plus Moorea Pre-Cruise

[deladane]

Back when I started planning for our time in Moorea, I knew I wanted to take an ATV tour on our first full day here. Moorea is a volcanic island with lush green peaks rising up from their deep blue lagoon, and I knew an ATV tour would be a fun way to see the sites while getting the lay of the land. There are a few companies that offer ATV tours, but we pre-booked online with Moorea Activities Center(MAC for short). They offer 3 ATV tours of varying lengths, so we booked their longest tour which was 3.5 hours including a trip up to Magic Mountain at the end of our tour. MAC also offers jet ski tours, and if you book both an ATV tour and a jet ski tour through their company, you can combine them for a discount. They give you the option of doing both tours on the same day or splitting the tours onto 2 days. There was a couple on our tour who did both tours in one day, but I would not recommend that unless you have very limited time in Moorea. We had 5 full days here pre-cruise, plus 2 days again at the end of the cruise, so no need to rush things and we split the tours onto separate days. I sent several emails back and forth with MAC’s owner, Benjamin, and he was always extremely fast to respond and answer all of my questions (sometimes within 7 minutes of when I sent my email!) The 2 tours together for the 2 of us sharing 1 vehicle cost $320 USD (so $80 per person per tour), and Benjamin asked us to pay in cash on the day of our tour (note- he charges 10% higher rates for paying by credit card).

 

MAC has a small office on the west side of Opunohu Bay, about a 10 minute drive from our hotel, and they asked us to arrive by 8:30am for our ATV tour. There is a small parking lot across the street from their office where we could park our car (be careful though! We watched another car back up into the pole for their sign and crack her back tail light on her rental car!!)

 

 

When we got to the office, Benjamin greeted us with a huge smile and he knew who we were even before we introduced ourselves. We chatted for a few minutes, then he explained how the day would work. There were 4 couples booked on our tour and we needed to be fitted for helmets from the storage shed in the parking lot. Our guide Olivier had bottles of water for us and the admission fees to all of the stops on the tour were already covered in our tour price. Once everyone was ready to go, Olivier showed us how to operate the ATVs. DH was more than willing to be the driver, so I hopped onto the back seat and we were all set.

 

 

I was happy to see that these ATVs had back rests so I didn’t feel like I was falling off the back when DH drove faster on the main road around Opunohu Bay to reach the turn off towards Belvedere Lookout.

 

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After just a few short minutes, we left the main road and spent most of the rest of the tour on dirt roads. It was mostly flat and even surfaces, and even when it was a little more rocky and rugged, we didn’t notice it because the ATVs had great shocks to absorb the impact. Unfortunately, these low clouds plagued us through the entire tour.

 

 

Every so often, we came across a little river that we had to cross to continue on our path. It made for a little more excitement, but we didn’t get nearly as wet as I thought we would. We were in Moorea during their dry season. I can only imagine how manymore puddles and how much deeper the rivers get during their rainy season!

 

 

[deladane]

Our first stop was at a field of pineapples overlooking a beautiful view of one of the peaks. We had a few minutes to stop and take some photos, and Olivier told us a little about the process of growing pineapples.

 

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[deladane]

now googling trips to Moorea :)

 

haha I think I should ask the tourism board of French Polynesia to give me a commission for any vacation booked as a result of reading this review ;p

[deladane]

Next, we continued on our journey up to Belvedere Lookout. Moorea is shaped like a heart and there are 2 big bays along the North shore, separated by the green peak of Mount Rotui. Belvedere is one of the most scenic spots in Moorea and offers panoramic views of both Cook’s Bay (on the right) and Opunohu Bay (on the left). While there is a paved road that cars can use to access the view point, Olivier took us the back way through the jungle on a dirt road. We went up and down hills, and around sharp hairpin turns. You definitely couldn’t take a rental car along the path we drove! We also passed through small farming villages so it was interesting to see how some of the locals live.

 

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We had a few minutes to hop off the ATVs once we parked up on Belvedere. It was overcast most oft he day and there were low clouds hanging over the mountain peak, so the view was a bit washed out. We were glad we took this tour on the first day of our trip so we still had a few more chances to return on a clear day. For now, here are the views we could see on this day.

 

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A map of all the hiking trails in the area:

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All of our ATVs lined up in the parking lot:

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Maybe this is one of the roosters I heard this morning??

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[deladane]

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DH thought it was really funny every time I had to put on a hair net before putting on my helmet after each pit stop (he had to wear one too!)

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After we took all the photos we wanted, we rode our ATVs back down the mountain just a short distance to the agriculture school where we were able to taste 5 of their jams.

 

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I have no idea what fruits they were but they were all so delicious that we couldn’t resist buying a jar. It was hard to pick one just flavor, but we opted for the pineapple. The ATVs have 2 small compartments to hold our belongings so we stashed our treat in the compartment and continued on our way to the next stop.

 

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[deladane]

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[deladane]

We drove for quite a while into the middle of the island to a beautiful spot deep in the valley with panoramic views of Mount Tohivea. This dormant volcanic peak is the highest on the island of Moorea, and is actually featured on the back of the 100xpf coin in FP currency.

 

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After a bit more driving, we ended up back at the main road opposite the Super-U where we bought our groceries yesterday.

 

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Our next stop was at the Rotui juice factory, which can easily be accessed by cars as it is located just off the main road on the northwest corner of Cook’s Bay…. Just look for this sign:

 

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[deladane]

The juice factory is open for tours every day except Sunday, so it is worth a stop if you get a chance.

 

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They have a bar at the back of the store where they pour samples of a few of their drinks. First we tried the pineapple flavor of Tahiti Drink. It was very similar to the regular flavor that we had back at the hotel.

 

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After that, we tasted samples of the pineapple rum and coconut rum. Both were good but I preferred them mixed with juice versus just a straight shot.

 

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Interesting factoid: The Tahitian word for “pineapple” is “ananas”… very similar to the English word “bananas” just minus the “B”. On the first few days of our trip (including when we bought jam at the agriculture school), I heard people say “ananas” not knowing it meant “pineapple” haha Personally, bananas are my least favorite fruit while I LOVE pineapples, so I was happy to learn that “ananas” and “bananas” were different!

 

 

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[pghsteelerfan]

Hiii!! So glad you found my review, and I hope you enjoy reading along! How was Hawaii?? That is still on my to-do list, but we keep planning big vacations to far away places so we never have enough vacation days for a short trip like going to Hawaii (since we can get direct flights to Maui from SJC and be there in about 4 hours, it is totally doable over a long weekend if we ever get our acts together to plan it!).

 

I am sure you flew right over us, but you must have been very high up if you weren't landing at SFO or SJC. I just had to look up Mt. Umunhum because I've never heard of it, but guess what... I can see it from my bedroom window in our house now!! We live in South San Jose and our bedroom faces South and West and looks right at Mt. Umunhum but I never knew it had a name! How funny!!

 

As for the spacing thing, I only noticed the issue when Cruise Critic changed the format of their forums last year. I did not have any issues when I posted my Celebrity Equinox review in March/April 2016, but that was still with the old forum format. I can't figure out how to fix it other than just manually re-entering the spaces between the words that get messed up, but it's definitely annoying and means I can't just throw a post up quickly like I used to.

 

Hawaii was nice, but our "dream vacation" turned into a nightmare on our next to last day, while we were in Maui. I got the very sad news from our neighbor watching our four cats that one of them had passed away. This was very sudden and unexpected, and he was only 4 years old and had no health issues. He was thrown from a car when he was 6 weeks old, so had a fear of anyone but my husband and I. He was VERY special and to us, more like a dog, always wanting to be with me and very loving. We think he had a blockage from dry food since he was too afraid to come out when neighbor was here to give them their wet food. They normally eat wet food, but we do give them a little dry. We've been away for a week (twice) and once 8 days while we had him and he'd been fine, but we think 2 weeks was just too much. I thought I had my bases covered when we left, but hindsight is 20/20. Needless to say we are shocked and heartbroken over this. So my memories of Hawaii right now aren't the best.

 

 

But Hawaii was nice and very pretty, a lot of mountains. On the western sides of Oahu, Kauai, and Maui, it's almost like desert. While driving through those areas, it reminded me of the scenery near Las Vegas, once you get out of the city, but then the ocean was right there. Unlike the Caribbean, it didn't seem humid. They get the trade winds from the east, so there was a stiff breeze most of the time. Throw that in with lower humidity, it got a little chilly (for us anyway) in the late afternoon, early evening. We rented a car on all three islands, so in order to see the sights we spent a lot of time driving. But yeah, you should go for a long weekend if you can get a direct flight to Maui. We actually tried to change to an earlier flight home when we got the sad news. It would have been from Maui to San Fran, 3 hour layover, then the connecting flight to Dulles, but we weren't able to get it.

 

 

When we flew over CA, I could see the eastern part of San Francisco from the plane even though we were pretty high up, but the rest was totally fogged in. I was hoping to see the Golden Gate peaking above the fog, but wasn't able to. I did see part of the Bay Bridge though. The area of San Jose you're in sounds close to where we were, south west. We were in a section called Cambrian and weren't too far from Los Gatos. We would have gone to Brahnam High School, but I think I heard it's a private school now (???). Glad I was able to give you the name of the mountain. There used to be a radar on top, but they've since removed that and just the base still remains.

 

 

The spacing issue. I actually had issues with it when I did my Liberty cruise (itinerary out of San Juan) in Nov. 2015, even before the format change. That could have just been me though.

 

 

Looking forward to the rest of your review and really enjoying your pictures.

[deladane]

Hawaii was nice, but our "dream vacation" turned into a nightmare on our next to last day, while we were in Maui. I got the very sad news from our neighbor watching our four cats that one of them had passed away. This was very sudden and unexpected, and he was only 4 years old and had no health issues. He was thrown from a car when he was 6 weeks old, so had a fear of anyone but my husband and I. He was VERY special and to us, more like a dog, always wanting to be with me and very loving. We think he had a blockage from dry food since he was too afraid to come out when neighbor was here to give them their wet food. They normally eat wet food, but we do give them a little dry. We've been away for a week (twice) and once 8 days while we had him and he'd been fine, but we think 2 weeks was just too much. I thought I had my bases covered when we left, but hindsight is 20/20. Needless to say we are shocked and heartbroken over this. So my memories of Hawaii right now aren't the best.

 

 

But Hawaii was nice and very pretty, a lot of mountains. On the western sides of Oahu, Kauai, and Maui, it's almost like desert. While driving through those areas, it reminded me of the scenery near Las Vegas, once you get out of the city, but then the ocean was right there. Unlike the Caribbean, it didn't seem humid. They get the trade winds from the east, so there was a stiff breeze most of the time. Throw that in with lower humidity, it got a little chilly (for us anyway) in the late afternoon, early evening. We rented a car on all three islands, so in order to see the sights we spent a lot of time driving. But yeah, you should go for a long weekend if you can get a direct flight to Maui. We actually tried to change to an earlier flight home when we got the sad news. It would have been from Maui to San Fran, 3 hour layover, then the connecting flight to Dulles, but we weren't able to get it.

 

 

When we flew over CA, I could see the eastern part of San Francisco from the plane even though we were pretty high up, but the rest was totally fogged in. I was hoping to see the Golden Gate peaking above the fog, but wasn't able to. I did see part of the Bay Bridge though. The area of San Jose you're in sounds close to where we were, south west. We were in a section called Cambrian and weren't too far from Los Gatos. We would have gone to Brahnam High School, but I think I heard it's a private school now (???). Glad I was able to give you the name of the mountain. There used to be a radar on top, but they've since removed that and just the base still remains.

 

 

The spacing issue. I actually had issues with it when I did my Liberty cruise (itinerary out of San Juan) in Nov. 2015, even before the format change. That could have just been me though.

 

 

Looking forward to the rest of your review and really enjoying your pictures.

 

Oh wow, I am so sorry for your loss :( I do hope that as time passes, you can look back on your vacation with happy memories of the time you spent there and seperate that from the sadness you are feeling now.

 

It's such a small world! We recently moved, so we are a little further East of Cambrian now. Our last house was walking distance from Branham High School, and as far as I know it is still a public school. I don't have children though so it's possible it became private and I just don't know it. The students definitely do not wear uniforms though!

[Texed]

Dana,

We are on Paul Gauguin again in July, 2018. So thanks for the wonderful review. :)

[gydell]

Love reading your reviews! Makes it hard to wait for our 1st PG cruise in July 2018. Any chance you got a copy of the daily activity sheets or 1or 2 food menus? Thanks!

[deladane]

Dana,

 

We are on Paul Gauguin again in July, 2018. So thanks for the wonderful review. :)

 

You are welcome! Glad you're enjoying it :)

 

Love reading your reviews! Makes it hard to wait for our 1st PG cruise in July 2018. Any chance you got a copy of the daily activity sheets or 1or 2 food menus? Thanks!

 

Oh don't you worry, I have lots of goodies to share with you when I get to that part of my review. I took photos of the daily schedules and the menus every day, including the menus at the specialty restaurants. But you'll have to wait until I get to each day on the cruise to see them :) I promise I will finish my review before your cruise next July!!

[gydell]

You are welcome! Glad you're enjoying it :)

 

 

Oh don't you worry, I have lots of goodies to share with you when I get to that part of my review. I took photos of the daily schedules and the menus every day, including the menus at the specialty restaurants. But you'll have to wait until I get to each day on the cruise to see them :) I promise I will finish my review before your cruise next July!!

Can't wait!!! Everything seems so exciting!

[aerobee]

Dana, another big thank you for bringing your trip to us.

 

A question about Moorea - - it appears you didn't have air conditioning. Was the heat/humidity tolerable?

[twin123185]

Dana, another big thank you for bringing your trip to us.

 

A question about Moorea - - it appears you didn't have air conditioning. Was the heat/humidity tolerable?

 

 

 

No matter what Dana says, YOU NEED AC!!!!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

[deladane]

Dana, another big thank you for bringing your trip to us.

 

A question about Moorea - - it appears you didn't have air conditioning. Was the heat/humidity tolerable?

 

No matter what Dana says, YOU NEED AC!!!!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

 

 

While yes, of course it would have been great to have AC, we were just fine without it. We were there in September which is winter in Moorea, and for the first few days, it was cloudy and rainy more often than not, so that kept the temperatures comfortable. Notice that I was wearing full length leggings on our ATV tour- I was very comfortable and not hot at all. Had we traveled in their summer months, when it is hotter and more humid, I don't think I would have been as comfortable as I was. There is a ceiling fan in the living room which helped a lot, and there was a second fan in the bedroom but that one was mounted on the wall and not as powerful. I slept on top of the sheets (there was a blanket in the closet but we never put it on the bed) and it was a little warm in the bedroom but no more so than our bedroom at home in the summer.

 

So to answer your question, yes the heat/humidity was tolerable, but that's likely because it wasn't very hot or humid while we were there in September :cool:

[Wendy The Wanderer]

No matter what Dana says, YOU NEED AC!!!!

 

 

I disagree, but I'll update you in a few weeks. We've stayed in another small hotel on Moorea, Les Tipaniers, in the September timeframe, with screens on the windows (!) and a ceiling fan, but no AC. We in no way needed it. We'll be back there on Wednesday (yippee!), so I'll let you know how that goes.

 

I can also report on bugs--I just realized I don't have any bug spray, but I can buy some locally if needed. Frankly I'm glad we don't have to deal with a mosquito net on the bed--I've done that several times in Asia and I find them claustrophic.

[deladane]

Sorry for the delay... I wanted to get this video working so I could share it with you! I don’t remember exactly where we were on the tour when I took this video, but this will give you a good idea of what it was like to ride on the ATV. Even when we were on unpaved roads, you can see that it was very level (likely from all the ATV tours on the days before us haha) and it was a fairly smooth ride…

 

JKGZEC1fn3I

 

 

After driving around for a few more minutes, we went back to the MAC office to drop off one of the couples who only paid for the 2.5 hour tour. Now it was time for the grand finale of our tour: the ride up to Magic Mountain. The road was steeper and windier than the places we went earlier in the day, but it was paved for most of the time as we made the climb to the top.

 

 

Once we parked our ATVs, we hiked up a short but steep path (probably a 45 degree incline, so definitely steep!) to reach the overlook point.

 

 

 

Magic Mountain offers amazing 360 degree views of the water and the mountains. Olivier gave us 20 minutes to take photos while he turned the ATVs around down where we parked them. I can only imagine how beautiful this place must be on a clear and sunny day. Unfortunately, we did not have an opportunity to return here on a day with better weather so we had to make due with a cloudy, overcast view… At least it wasn’t raining!

 

 

 

[deladane]

I am not sure why there is a giant white space there- I tried to embed the link to my youtube video with the special icon but it didn't work. I posted the normal link too, as a back up. Weird.

[deladane]

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The drive back down the mountain was much more direct and we were back at the MAC office 10 minutes later. Overall, I really enjoyed the tour in that we saw a lot of the inland part of Moorea and we saw beautiful views as we sped along both the paved and dirt roads, but I did not find Olivier to be a great tour guide. He spoke very little English so it was hard to ask him questions, and he did not give us much information about what we were seeing.

 

MAC includes photos that they take of you during their tour in your pricing. They post the photos on their Facebook page each day so you can download them and have some great action shots that you can’t possibly take for yourself (even with a selfiestick! Haha). Unfortunately for us, we were third in line on our ATVs and Olivier did not encourage us to rotate our order so we are in the far distance for most of the photos. Try to be in the first ATV if you want good clear photos taken of you! Also, Olivier did not take many photos (perhaps because it was hard for him to stop on the narrow roads?), so we only ended up with 7 photos of us at the end of the tour. I had looked at some of the albums from other days of this tour and they had many more photos than we did. Here’s the best of the 7 photos we ended up with…

 

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The photo I used at the intro to this day of posts is also one that Olivier took of us.

[Sturmin]

Thank you for doing this review(saw your comment about it on Trippingaras Carnival review.) We've been interested in a Paul Gauguin cruise since I somehow ended up on their mailing list. This year is booked but maybe sometime in the future.

[aerobee]

I disagree, but I'll update you in a few weeks. We've stayed in another small hotel on Moorea, Les Tipaniers, in the September timeframe, with screens on the windows (!) and a ceiling fan, but no AC. We in no way needed it. We'll be back there on Wednesday (yippee!), so I'll let you know how that goes.

I have a reservation at Les Tipaniers pending for next May.

----------

Their email to me:

C’est Le bungalow vanille avec cuisine qui est climatisé avec deux chambres séparées

Et équipé de cuisine au tarif :20000cfp+14%taxes la nuit(sous réserve d’augmentation de taxes en 2018

Plus taxe de séjour :150cfp par personne et par jour

 

My translation:

In our vanilla bungalow the kitchen is air conditioned with two separate bedrooms. It costs: 20000cfp 14% tax per night (subject to increase taxes in 2018 150cfp per person per day).

----------

"Vanilla" is the name they give to the family bungalow--not meaning plain or basic as we might say in English.

I'm hoping the entire unit is air conditioned. Please let me know if you can clarify that when you're there....

Edited October 1, 2017 by aerobee

[deladane]

Once we got back to the office and returned our helmets and got washed up a bit, MAC provided free drinks of juice with rum (or without if you preferred). We relaxed on the couches at their office for a little while, enjoying the luxury of not being in a rush. It was fun getting to chat with the other couples on our tour since we were all on our honeymoon. Here is everyone from our tour (minus the couple who left after the first 2 hours), and our guide Olivier is on the right.

 

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After we had our fill of free cocktails, we headed back to the hotel to eat sandwiches for lunch on our porch with the baguettes, turkey,and cheese we purchased from Super-U. We had about 3 hours until our evening activity so we lounged around on the porch drinking Hinanos and gazing out at the beach.

 

Tonight’s activity was a sunset catamaran sail that we pre-booked online about a year ago with Voil’a Moorea. The boat holds a maximum of 8 people, and the 2 hour tour was scheduled to take us along the North coast of Moorea, first going east towards Cook’s Bay, and then turning back to go west as the sun sets. The group tour cost 5500xpf per person, and included roundtrip transportation from/to our hotel. We were told to meet our driver in the lobby of Moorea Fare Miti at 4pm, and about 2 minutes later, a lady drove up in a 4x4 truck. We drove 15 minutes to a dock (which turned out to be where PG boards their tenders!) just as our catamaran arrived.

 

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Our guide’s name was Jerome, and he explained that while we paid for a tour with up to 6 passengers, we were the only 2 who signed up so we would have a private tour! After some introductions, we took off our shoes and stepped on board. Jerome encouraged us to sit anywhere we felt comfortable on the boat, so we settled in on the padded cushions up front and Jerome brought us a “mai tai” (I say that with quotation marks because we were pretty sure it was just Tahiti Drink with grenadine haha)

 

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We motored East towards Cooks Bay and enjoyed the views of the mountains and hotels along the North coast. Every so often, Jerome popped up next to us to tell us about what we were passing (a rock formation in the mountains or which hotel it was or whatever), but otherwise he left us to enjoy a romantic evening.

 

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[deladane]

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Overwater bungalows at the Hilton

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After a while, we moved up to sit on the net way out infront. With all of the boat tours I have taken, I have never been on a catamaran so sitting on the net was new for me.

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