Tips 👏
- Ideal place if you like kite-surf.
- The island is quite big, so renting a car is a good option. If you pre-book with Avis, they come and pick you up at the airport.
🏠 Accommodation
We stayed in an AirBnB in Ma’atea, at the south. While the place was lovely (traditional bungalow), it was a bit too far for us from the main attractions but also very noisy because of the traffic.
🚲 Getting there
Flight with Air Tahiti from Bora Bora, for about 45 minutes. There’s also a 30 minutes boat available from Tahiti.
⏱ Duration
We stayed three full days and felt that was enough.
By land 👣
We rented a car for the whole duration of our stay on the island, but just because our AirBnB was far from everything. Staying on the north coast would have been better, since that’s where most of the spots are (south coast is a bit deserted). A good place to stay is at Les Tipaniers.
Doing the tour of the island took us around two hours. We did plenty of nice stops to do on the way:
- The Belvedere in the centre of the island, to have the best view on the mountain.
- Pineapple road to get down from the viewpoint.
- Les Tipaniers beach to relax.
- Temae beach to relax even more.
We also stopped on the side of the road to buy a local pineapple for 3£ which was a delicious snack.
Boat at Tipaniers 🚣🏻
At the top west of the island, there’s two motus, in front of which Coco beach is located. The place is ideal to chill for the day, get some food and enjoy the view, or do some kite-surf.
We’ve opted to rent a tiny motor boat (licence free) for two hours (7000XPF) and went to the snorkelling point between the two motus where we saw rays, morays and lots of multicolour fishes.
Restaurants 🍲
- Snack Mahana: Closeby the Tipaniers beach, they do a very good tuna carpaccio for a good price!
- Tropical Garden: On the other side of the Hilton at the top of a hill, fresh juices, good food and wonderful views. You’ll have to walk 20minutes up-hill to reach it. Very sweaty but worth it.
Read Next ⏭️
Our 2 days stay in Tahiti, check again Bora Bora, or go back to the main French Polynesia post.