Tahiti

So, to celebrate Steve's weight loss mostly
 and a little bit to celebrate his 40th and my 30th birthday,
and a little bit for Christmas,
but mostly because we love to travel -
Steve and I decided to go to an island,  then we started looking at Costco travel and realized that Tahiti wasn't so expensive that we couldn't afford it - and at the time we were thinking when we have kids we won't be able to do this, so over Christmas break we booked our trip - and we left for Tahiti and Moorea on February 26th - and spent 7 nights in Paradise. 

The pictures featured on this blog are a combination of photos we took our last day on the island - after we had packed our good camera (stupid Jill) - which someone stole the memory card out of - and some photos we got some from friends from Payson that we met on the trip -

The Tahitian Airport - when we arrived all was perfect - warm weather etc - leaving was a bit crazy and included about two hours of standing in crowds of smokers with no air conditioning - good thing we had already fallen in love with French Polynesia by then.

Our accomadations in Moorea - we spent our first two nights in Tahiti - not our favorite and in fact for those two days we wondered if we had made a mistake and "should we have just gone to the Bahamas" - when we got to Moorea and saw our bungalow the view and ocean just off our back porch - we knew we had made the right decision.

The pool at the Tahiti Resort - wow can you believe this is a real picture and not a post card - the best part of our trip was there were no crowds (except at the airport as we left) - Tahiti receives the same number of visitors in a year that Hawaii receives in a month.

The Pools at the Intercontinental Resort on Moorea where we spent our last 5 days - Heaven

Intercontinental Resort Moorea - Wow

More of the Intercontinental Resort Moorea

The Sunsets were amazing

Our last Sunset - at this point we had not been in a hotel room for almost 12 hours - and we still had about a 5 hour wait prior to our 8 hour flight to LAX - followed by a 3 hour layover and a flight home to SLC - despite all of that I would reccomend that anyone and everyone go to Moorea!

We got to swim with the sting rays and feed them when we took a tour around the island - unfortunately the pictures of us doing this - were lost - but here are some of the sting rays provided by our friends.

Reef Sharks - Steve was out there snorkling with them - I opted to get back in the boat when they appeared.

After our tour around the island of Moorea - they took us to a small Islet - for a BBQ and more snorkling - Steve got to try Poisson Crue and we got to see about 50 wild cats a couple of wild dogs and hundreds of wild chickens.

Polynesian Dancers at Tiki Village





The last day in Moorea we rented a car and drove around the island twice - 40 miles all the way around - we used about 1/8 of a tank of gas - when we stopped to fill the car up - it was approximately $15 - many it makes me feel better about the fact gas was $3.50 per gallon when we got home.

Belvedere Lookout - you can see Cooks Bay on one side of me and Opunohu on the other





Our friends Derek and Kemarie from Payson - what are the odds we would run into another couple from Utah - that had booked the exact same trip for the exact same days from Costco