When the best thing about a hotel is ”eating with your feet in the water”, you really need to wonder. How about the restaurant being open for lunches and dinners for the brothers and their wives and friends, but not for the patrons of the hotel? The restaurant was closed more than half of the 14 days I was there. Suddenly the ”closed” sign goes up, for obviously bogus reasons. How about the fact that there is a spate of thefts, all perfectly timed for snatching shoes off patios at night or entering locked doors during the day, during the only hour a person was known to be out of the room? And the day after the maintenance man was given the job of cleaning that person's room? And suddenly security is too expensive for them to pay for, so some dude goes around a few times a night with a flahlight. And the police don't come even if they say they will because this island is a rotational job, they come from France and it is a vacation more than a job. Of course you need cash, because they don't accept credit cards, and banks are few and are all in the town 30 minutes away, as are the markets. So if you don't want to rent a car or scooter for exorbitant fees, you need to hitchhike to town ot take intermittent busses that may not operate that day. And the fish and coral in the lagoon are third-rate; the lagoon and its coral are degraded from too many tourists and too many boats zooming back and forth to bother the whales or the turtles or the sharks or the rays, and the coral id covered with sediment, no soft corals, not a great variety of marine species. Mildly fun, as were the kayaks, but not worth the transactional costs of being at a mediocre hotel with proprietors who couldn't care less about the comfort, security, or wellbeing of their guests! Do yourselves a favor: skip the bad vibes here, do diligent research and try to find a place that represents what Moorea should be and used to be, the one that exists in your mind. You will find it, it exists, but not at Fare Maheata!
50 Reviews