First of all… where are we? Mo’orea is a small island, (about the size of Orcas Island in Washington State) and has about 16,000 inhabitants. It was a 1 hour ferry ride from the main island of Tahiti. This may be the most beautiful island we have ever been to. It has a reef that almost complete surrounds the island and creates a calm lagoon inside of the breakwater that has the most amazing colors. White sand combined with no waves and water that is blue, teal, green, turquoise and many other colors that I don’t know their names. The island itself is filled with palm trees and tropical gardens everywhere around many old volcanic peaks. Everyone says it feels like Jurassic Park or the King Kong island because of the cliffs and mountains next to the beaches. We had a lot of “pinch me” moments during our 8 night stay.
People often ask us how we can afford to travel all of the time and I usually respond with “It is cheaper than living in the US”. That isn’t always true. There are some places that are a bit more challenging and we are going to visit quite a few of them to start out 2026. But, we always find ways to stay near our budget and try not to let high costs affect our experience too much. We did that in Mo’orea. We found an Airbnb a block away from the beach for about $100 per night. It was very basic but it worked.
Food was a lot more than what we usually see. Beer was often $10 at restaurants and entrees at the regular French restaurants usually started at $28 for a local fish dish. We often ate at home or at the much cheaper food stands called “Snacks”. We could get some tasty grilled fish or chicken with fries and a salad for $15. We ate sandwiches and ramen at home a lot but groceries were expectedly high because everything has to be shipped to this island. The cheapest bottle of wine was $10 and a pound of hamburger was the same. We were surprised to see the fruit prices even though they grow a lot of fruit on this island. Small pineapples were $8 and half a watermelon was $10. It is a French island, so we did like the locals and ate a lot of 60 cent baguettes for breakfast and sandwiches. It was weird to see everyone walking away from the grocery store carrying several of them just like it was in Paris.
Transportation was also a bit challenging. There wasn’t a public bus and the rental cars were at least $90 per day. We took at taxi the 5 miles from the ferry to our Airbnb the first day that cost us $30. We ended up walking to most of our activities. We did rent a 50cc scooter for a couple of days at $50 per day. We had to stay on the flat road around the island because that small scooter can’t do hills with 2 people on it. We did meetup some nomad friends and drove around the island in their rental so we felt like we saw most of the island. I am complaining about the prices a lot, but we did make it work!. We stayed near our budget and had a wonderful time on this beautiful island. I want to warn people about the costs but it shouldn’t be a reason to skip it.
The main attraction of this island is the water and we were in it every single day. The highlight was a boat tour on our second day. We toured the bays and took our volcano pics of the island before stopping at an awesome spot to snorkel with stingrays and reef sharks. We then returned to our boat and almost immediately came upon some sea turtles. We were able to use our new video camera to get some awesome underwater vids of everything. The next stop was a private island for a grilled lunch that we really enjoyed. It was a fun group and we enjoyed their music, games, cultural demonstrations and native dancing lessons. I highly recommend Albert Tours if you make it to Mo’orea.
We enjoyed that tour so much that we did another boat trip the next day. This one was just a short boat ride to a restaurant on another private island. Coco Beach is a very popular restaurant that you need to reserve several weeks in advance. We had a great lunch on the beach and did some more snorkeling with rays on the island after lunch. More “pinch me” moments on another beautiful beach.
Meg and I are alone most of the time in our travels which is fine but…. sometimes we want to talk to someone else. We are connected with many Facebook nomad groups and we love having meetups to discuss travel and our similar nomadic lifestyle. Last fall we met a couple in Portugal that we really enjoyed hanging out with. We realized we were going to be in French Polynesia so we kept in touch for another meetup. They had a rental car so we were able to explore the island with them for a bit before having lunch and doing some snorkeling in the afternoon. The next day they invited us to their nice hotel for lunch and some more beach time. We were rethinking our decision to get an off beach Airbnb after seeing their place :>) It was lots of fun and we are hoping to meet up with them again soon. Thanks PJ and Chris!
This was one of those most beautiful places we have been and we are glad we have seen it. That being said, it doesn’t really feel like this is a place that we could come back to and stay a couple of months for slow travel. Mo’orea has an expat community, but most of them are speaking French. My French is very very basic. We aren’t sure we would be excited for a longer stay if our budget only allows an off beach basic Airbnb. We also probably should have splurged for a few days in a beach resort for this trip, but it definitely wouldn’t be in the budget for a longer stay. We were happy to experience the best of Mo’orea this week our way and we will always have some really good memories of this week. Next up…. more beaches in the Pacific in the Cook Islands.