Tahiti – Club Med (never again!)

OK, I’ll admit… after my successful trip to Mexico, I struggled to try to figure out my next trip. Between 1997 and 1998, I switched jobs, so I was now working as a consultant, which meant I traveled a lot for work. I started to earn hotel points and airline miles but not enough to really pay for a trip. I don’t even remember how I thought of it but I started thinking about Club Med and the fact that those are all-inclusive vacations. I know they have a “reputation” but I looked for more family-friendly ones. I remember my new boss giving me a funny look when he asked me where I was going on vacation. Oh well!

In the end, I ended up selecting a trip to Moorea which is part of Tahiti, for no particular reason other than it sounded warm and I was going to be going on vacation in December.

I flew to LAX and then on an airline I’d never heard of before, AOM. As I read about this airline now, my flight makes sense. It was wide open. I had an entire row of seats to myself. The current Wikipedia article talks about the airline ceasing operations in 2001 due to fleet mismanagement and overcapacity.

Upon arriving in Tahiti, we took a short puddle jumper over to Moorea. The Club Med facility wasn’t bad… nice beach, nice cabins, etc. There was definitely a bustling bar. I spent a lot of time wandering the beaches and snorkeling in the cove in front of the resort.

One of the days, I decided I wanted to go parasailing. It sounded like fun! I met with the boat crew and we headed out to the bay. I was the only parasailer that day. As we moved to the right spot, they did tell me that the weather was a bit sketchy so they’d make a last-minute call on whether I’d actually get to go up. The crew then shared with me about 20 different hand signals to remember – go up, go down, too high, too low, reel me in, reel me out, etc. There were so many I was a bit overwhelmed. They hooked me up to the parachute as we skimmed along the water. The boat slowed down and the crew started chattering amongst themselves. After lots of pointing to the sky and pointing at me, they decided it was too dangerous for me to parasail. I was definitely disappointed but a bit relieved (I was having problems remembering hand signals!). As we made our way back to shore, I was extremely relieved for the cancellation as thunder and lightning rolled all around us. The waves were kicking up and I was happy to only be in a boat rather than in the air!

On another one of the days, I went on a shark feeding adventure. It’s exactly as it sounds! There were about 20 people in the boat and we went out to the outer reef area. The crew provided masks and snorkels and told us to hang onto the bar below water level off the side of the boat. We all jumped in and grabbed the bar. Soon after, one of the crew dove down and started putting out food for the sharks. The sharks (specifically black-tipped reef sharks) were clearly used to this routine and converged quickly. About 20 sharks swarmed around the food. It was exciting to be so close to any shark. At one point, I decided to look around a bit and looked behind the group. Boy, was I surprised to see even more sharks behind us! There were at least twice as many sharks near our feet than were in front of us! I definitely got my heart racing. But, of course, everything was fine and we all climbed back into the boat 30 minutes later.

And on a third day, I went on a ray feeding adventure. It was much safer than feeding the sharks but still a lot of fun. We stood in waist-high water with handfuls of food for the rays. As we fed them, the rays slithered up against our bodies. They were smooth and slimy at the same time. It was a strange sensation that caused me to giggle… a lot! It was so much fun having rays that were 4-8 feet wide, swarming around us, and slithering up next to us to get some food. It’s hard to describe, but I highly recommend it if you ever get the chance!

Otherwise, the trip was pretty mellow. I spent time reading and relaxing on the beach, swimming, and snorkeling, etc. I was probably the most boring person there, going to bed by 10 pm every night.

While I had fun on this trip, I never did another Club Med thing again. It wasn’t really my style or speed.