Been a while since I posted here but my wife and I just got back from our honeymoon to the Society Islands and wanted to relay our wonderful experience there. When I was first planning the honeymoon, I didn't intend for it to be a diving trip. My wife, however, made sure to let me know that she expected to dive on our trip. I chose well 
Once we decided on a Windstar cruise out of Tahiti, we looked at the diving options. As the dives from the ship were fairly expensive and only 6 tanks available, we did a little research and ended up buying 2 Te Moana passes. If anyone goes to the Society Islands, I can't recommend this enough. It comes out to about $60 per tank which was $30 cheaper than the boat. We were there for 10 days and ended up doing 10 dives each. She's not very comfortable with the idea of doing more than 2 or 3 dives in a day so we kept a very conservative plan the entire trip. We never did more than 2 tanks a day and we didn't have any days of back to back 2-tank dives.
Thur: 2 tanks
Fri: Off
Sat: 2 Tanks
Sun: Off
Mon: 2 Tanks
Tues: 1 Tank
Wed: 2 Tanks
Thur: 1 Tank
By avoiding the ship excursions, we mostly avoided the ship's vacation divers. Favorite question I heard before we left to one of the ship's dive coordinators was "I'm an advanced diver with about 20 dives and it's been about 5 years since I last dove. Do you offer a refresher course?" With the Te Moana pass, we had a nearly exclusive dive experience! Most of the dives were just my wife, the dive master, and myself. The only dive where we were inflicted with divers from the ship ended up being the worst as one diver seemed to make it his life's goal to swim into me from any possible direction. I swear no matter what I did, somehow he would plow into me from some direction I wasn't looking in. At one point he shot up to the surface from about 60 ft since he was fiddling with his Go Pro. The DM wasn't very amused either.
The vis was amazing on all of the dives up to about 30 feet under and below that the vis was pretty awful. We were both very pleased with the abundance of sea life and saw pretty much anything we hoped to see from sharks to mantas. The coolest thing, we both agreed, was the large school of eagle rays we saw off Bora Bora.
I can't say enough good things about the operators we used:
Eleuthera Plongee - Tahiti, Bora Bora
Hemisphere Sub - Ra'iātea
Mahana Dive - Huahine
If you go, definitely get the Te Moana pass. It can be purchased in advance and makes things so easy once you're there.
Once we decided on a Windstar cruise out of Tahiti, we looked at the diving options. As the dives from the ship were fairly expensive and only 6 tanks available, we did a little research and ended up buying 2 Te Moana passes. If anyone goes to the Society Islands, I can't recommend this enough. It comes out to about $60 per tank which was $30 cheaper than the boat. We were there for 10 days and ended up doing 10 dives each. She's not very comfortable with the idea of doing more than 2 or 3 dives in a day so we kept a very conservative plan the entire trip. We never did more than 2 tanks a day and we didn't have any days of back to back 2-tank dives.
Thur: 2 tanks
Fri: Off
Sat: 2 Tanks
Sun: Off
Mon: 2 Tanks
Tues: 1 Tank
Wed: 2 Tanks
Thur: 1 Tank
By avoiding the ship excursions, we mostly avoided the ship's vacation divers. Favorite question I heard before we left to one of the ship's dive coordinators was "I'm an advanced diver with about 20 dives and it's been about 5 years since I last dove. Do you offer a refresher course?" With the Te Moana pass, we had a nearly exclusive dive experience! Most of the dives were just my wife, the dive master, and myself. The only dive where we were inflicted with divers from the ship ended up being the worst as one diver seemed to make it his life's goal to swim into me from any possible direction. I swear no matter what I did, somehow he would plow into me from some direction I wasn't looking in. At one point he shot up to the surface from about 60 ft since he was fiddling with his Go Pro. The DM wasn't very amused either.
The vis was amazing on all of the dives up to about 30 feet under and below that the vis was pretty awful. We were both very pleased with the abundance of sea life and saw pretty much anything we hoped to see from sharks to mantas. The coolest thing, we both agreed, was the large school of eagle rays we saw off Bora Bora.
I can't say enough good things about the operators we used:
Eleuthera Plongee - Tahiti, Bora Bora
Hemisphere Sub - Ra'iātea
Mahana Dive - Huahine
If you go, definitely get the Te Moana pass. It can be purchased in advance and makes things so easy once you're there.
