Rangiroa: French Polynesian Paradise

May 21, 2018
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Bring This to Rangiroa: Kindle E-Reader

Amazon Kindles are a great gift for Rangiroa travelers.

If you plan to do any reading on your trip, bring an e-reader. You’re not going to find a bookstore or even English-language books in the gift shops on Rangiroa, so you’ll have to bring all your reading material with you.

With it’s light weight and basically endless capacity, a Kindle allows you to bring an entire library on your vacation. Plus you can always download new books if you need to. We all brought Kindles on our trip and used them constantly.

View Amazon Kindle here.

More Rangiroa Adventures

Visit Rangiroa’s Winery

As crazy as it might sound, Rangiroa is home to a commercial vineyard and winery! Vin de Tahiti grows grapes on one of Rangiroa’s uninhabited motus and produces wine in a warehouse just up the road from the Rangiroa airport.

I know what you’re thinking, this sounds like a gimmicky tourist trap. But I visited the tasting room and this place is for real.

Vin de Tahiti produces three whites and a rose; plus their related venture, Mana’o, distills rum made from Tahiti-grown sugar cane. At the tasting room you can try the wines and the rum, plus get a tour of the modest facilities. (Note that the tour will mostly be in French, but the host will make an effort to translate as much as possible).

Rangiroa's winery is open during selected times. Be sure to plan ahead for your visit. — Rangiroa’s winery is open during selected times. Be sure to plan ahead for your visit.

The wines are tasty, and have a really interesting minerality that comes from being grown in lava soil. We really liked the dry white and the rose, and these were also on the wine list at the Kia Ora hotel and even at the Intercontinental Thalasso on Bora Bora.

The rum was excellent, and I brought some home as a true Tahitian-made souvenir.

If you want to visit the winery, be sure to check the tasting room hours. I booked my tour with the Kia Ora activities desk and they also arranged a taxi to get there and back.

Here’s the Vin de Tahiti website.

Here’s the Mana’o rum website.

Dinner at Te Mao Restaurant

If you’re looking to get away from the resort and meet some locals, make arrangements for dinner at Te Mao.

This outdoor restaurant feels like you’re visiting a friend’s sophisticated backyard. The husband and wife team of Patrick and Sophie serve up some incredible dishes and an unexpectedly vast array of European beers. Ex-pats from Paris, this couple are a wealth of knowledge about the local area and speak fluent English.

The restaurant really is in a backyard. With sofas and low tables for seating, the atmosphere is more like a casual party than a stuffy restaurant. The menu is a collection of small portions meant to be shared. And every bite was delicious and satisfying.

Te Mao is such a small operation that Patrick himself picked us up at the hotel to bring us there. And there is no website, just a Facebook page and an email address: temaorangiroa@gmail.com.

Paradise on Rangiroa

Our trip to Rangiroa really was an adventure to last a lifetime. From the paradise of the Kia Ora Resort, to the underwater wonders of Rangiroa’s lagoon, to the warm Polynesian hospitality, it was the ultimate escape from everyday life.