Hawaii to Tahiti (land and cruise)

Ever since we saw the Vin Diesel movie XXX (Triple X), which no-one but us seem to remember (we are showing our age!) we have dreamed of one day visiting Bora Bora. The movie ended with XXX and his girl on the most stunning beach we had ever seen (at the time), with water bungalows, lush jungle, and a jaw-dropping mountain in the background. It stuck in our heads as somewhere that we just had to go at some point!

Of course, it’s a LONG way from Scotland! And also super expensive, so short of winning the lottery, it was never going to be quite the trip we envisaged. So it was time to compromise…

In the end, we found a cruise with Norwegian going from Honolulu to Tahiti at a very competitive price which included all our drinks (we also ended up getting a free room upgrade too).

The cruise came in at just over £1650 each, but we ended up spending a lot more than this. We spent almost £1500 (for the two of us) on excursions alone, and as we upgraded our long haul flight between Heathrow and LA with Air New Zealand to the “Sky Couch”, hoping we could get a sleep, and extra-legroom for the LA to Honolulu leg, we didn’t get much change out of £1750 each on the flights.

The “Sky Couch” was a real disappointment, and not comfortable at all. As soon as the people in front put their seats back there was no way that two of you could lie down in the tiny space! We felt it had been a total waste of money in our opinion. Add to this, 7 nights hotel accommodation (1 night in LAX, 4 in Honolulu and 2 in Tahiti) the cost soon mounted up. However, it was still probably a whole lot cheaper than having a week in Bora Bora. We were away for 3 weeks and got to see a lot more places, albeit we had only one day in Bora Bora.

The few days spent in Honolulu were great and that was worth doing. We utilised the hotels’ free bike hire, took the bus to Diamond Head to hike up to the crater and hired a convertible one day to tour the island.

On the cruise, we did a few trips, including a helicopter flight over Kauai and swimming with the sharks. These were expensive but worthwhile. The other trips were a bit of a rip-off, to be honest, especially the “hike” on the Big Island over the lava flows.

If we found Hawaii to be quite expensive, it was nothing compared to Tahiti, so it was probably just as well we hadn’t booked a week in Bora Bora (and also just as well that we had an all-inclusive drinks package on the cruise ship!)

Here is a selection of some of our favourite photos…

HAWAII STAY