PugetPolly
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We just returned from a wonderful trip to Moorea. We got lots of good advice and tips from this board so I wanted to let everyone know how it went.
A little background, my husband and I got certified last summer and chose Moorea (after much debate) as our first dive vacation. I'm a newbie at this so bear with me!
We stayed at Club Bali Hai and dove with Top Dive Moorea. Top Dive was great. The equipment (which we rented) was clean and worked well, and the dive masters were professional and just nice and fun to be around. Their website is www.topdive.com. They operate on other islands in Tahiti also, though judging from a comment in their guest book the quality is not always uniform between the different shops. However, I wholeheartedly recommend Top Dive Moorea.
It was pouring rain the first day we arrived, which was probably a good thing. If it had been sunny we probably would have been too tempted to hang out on the deck of our overwater bungalow. Since it was raining, we did the afternoon refresher dive and practiced a few skills. I think it was really helpful for me, mostly for my confidence and feeling comfortable with everything underwater. Also, I had never done a back roll entry off a boat before (only on the edge of a pool -- not quite the same thing!). It was a little scary the first time, but once I got the hang of it, it was fun.
We did 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. dives the rest of the week. Some highlights: Seeing dozens of gray, black-tip and lemon sharks at Tiki, Canyons, and the aptly named Shark Diving Room. The dive masters brought food for the sharks. The environmentalist side of me felt guilty about this -- upsetting the balance of nature and all. But the selfish kid inside me said, "Wowee! Look at all them sharks!" Maybe I can do a beach clean-up or something here at home to help improve my environmental karma? I also really enjoyed a dive called Temae, where we saw conger eels -- really thin, narrow, white eels that stick up from holes in the sand like blades of grass. Really beautiful corals there too. We saw lots of barracuda, clownfish, lionfish and many more fish than I don't know the names of. We're looking for a good fish identification book so we can figure out what all we saw.
On a few of the boat rides we saw dolphins and flying fish, which was really cool.
At most there were four people per divemaster, and sometimes it was just the two of us. The boats were comfortable, shaded, and bigger than some of the other dive operators' I saw. The water temp was about 80 degrees and we wore shorty wetsuits.
The only problem I had diving was once I got really nauseous. That has happened to me on top of the water, with the waves, but never before underwater. I'm sorta prone to motion sickness so I took dramamine the first day, but then I nearly fell asleep at the dinner table so stopped taking it. Only had a problem that one day... and luckily made it back to stable land without losing my breakfast, so no harm done.
The diving was fantastic (not that I have a whole lot to compare it to) but what was also really nice was just getting more comfortable with and better at diving. By the end of the trip I felt that I had really improved in buoyancy control and not waving my hands around when I swim (watching the video of the dives and seeing how stupid I looked trying to swim with my hands helped cure me of that!). We're definitely looking forward to our next dive trip.
A few notes about the dry-land part of our trip, mostly about the food, because that's never far from my mind. Club Bali Hai (www.clubbalihai.com) is awesome. Cheapest overwater bungalows in Tahiti and they were really nice. No $30 resort breakfasts for us... we walked 5 minutes every morning to the local grocery store and got delicious pastries for about $7 total. The location is great, because you can actually walk to places. Our favorite dinners were at Le Sud and Le Cocotier. We ate once at Alfredos, which is sort of a tourist institution and has nice entertainment on Thursdays and Sundays, but I swear it was the worst restaurant meal I've ever had. The food was just horrible, and really expensive. I'd advise going there for drinks and entertainment only. Some people loved it, though, so to each his own. I'd recommend Club Bali Hai to anyone who wants a fabulous South Pacific experience but doesn't want (or doesn't want to pay for) resort-style amenities.
That's it! My husband is the digital camera expert and he got tons of great pictures, I'll ask him to post some when he gets a chance. Cheers to all!
A little background, my husband and I got certified last summer and chose Moorea (after much debate) as our first dive vacation. I'm a newbie at this so bear with me!
We stayed at Club Bali Hai and dove with Top Dive Moorea. Top Dive was great. The equipment (which we rented) was clean and worked well, and the dive masters were professional and just nice and fun to be around. Their website is www.topdive.com. They operate on other islands in Tahiti also, though judging from a comment in their guest book the quality is not always uniform between the different shops. However, I wholeheartedly recommend Top Dive Moorea.
It was pouring rain the first day we arrived, which was probably a good thing. If it had been sunny we probably would have been too tempted to hang out on the deck of our overwater bungalow. Since it was raining, we did the afternoon refresher dive and practiced a few skills. I think it was really helpful for me, mostly for my confidence and feeling comfortable with everything underwater. Also, I had never done a back roll entry off a boat before (only on the edge of a pool -- not quite the same thing!). It was a little scary the first time, but once I got the hang of it, it was fun.
We did 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. dives the rest of the week. Some highlights: Seeing dozens of gray, black-tip and lemon sharks at Tiki, Canyons, and the aptly named Shark Diving Room. The dive masters brought food for the sharks. The environmentalist side of me felt guilty about this -- upsetting the balance of nature and all. But the selfish kid inside me said, "Wowee! Look at all them sharks!" Maybe I can do a beach clean-up or something here at home to help improve my environmental karma? I also really enjoyed a dive called Temae, where we saw conger eels -- really thin, narrow, white eels that stick up from holes in the sand like blades of grass. Really beautiful corals there too. We saw lots of barracuda, clownfish, lionfish and many more fish than I don't know the names of. We're looking for a good fish identification book so we can figure out what all we saw.
On a few of the boat rides we saw dolphins and flying fish, which was really cool.
At most there were four people per divemaster, and sometimes it was just the two of us. The boats were comfortable, shaded, and bigger than some of the other dive operators' I saw. The water temp was about 80 degrees and we wore shorty wetsuits.
The only problem I had diving was once I got really nauseous. That has happened to me on top of the water, with the waves, but never before underwater. I'm sorta prone to motion sickness so I took dramamine the first day, but then I nearly fell asleep at the dinner table so stopped taking it. Only had a problem that one day... and luckily made it back to stable land without losing my breakfast, so no harm done.
The diving was fantastic (not that I have a whole lot to compare it to) but what was also really nice was just getting more comfortable with and better at diving. By the end of the trip I felt that I had really improved in buoyancy control and not waving my hands around when I swim (watching the video of the dives and seeing how stupid I looked trying to swim with my hands helped cure me of that!). We're definitely looking forward to our next dive trip.
A few notes about the dry-land part of our trip, mostly about the food, because that's never far from my mind. Club Bali Hai (www.clubbalihai.com) is awesome. Cheapest overwater bungalows in Tahiti and they were really nice. No $30 resort breakfasts for us... we walked 5 minutes every morning to the local grocery store and got delicious pastries for about $7 total. The location is great, because you can actually walk to places. Our favorite dinners were at Le Sud and Le Cocotier. We ate once at Alfredos, which is sort of a tourist institution and has nice entertainment on Thursdays and Sundays, but I swear it was the worst restaurant meal I've ever had. The food was just horrible, and really expensive. I'd advise going there for drinks and entertainment only. Some people loved it, though, so to each his own. I'd recommend Club Bali Hai to anyone who wants a fabulous South Pacific experience but doesn't want (or doesn't want to pay for) resort-style amenities.
That's it! My husband is the digital camera expert and he got tons of great pictures, I'll ask him to post some when he gets a chance. Cheers to all!
