Help! Samoa or Moorea, Indecisive
 

Help! I am torn between a side trip from New Zealand to either Samoa or Moorea. We are also open to other South Pacific island suggestions as well. We are a family of 4 traveling with 2 teenagers, 17 and 15. Time only allows us to choose only one. We prefer somewhere that it will be relatively warm in mid to late June. We have been to Hawaii numerous times and fell in love with the Polynesian culture on those visits. We have also visited the Cook Islands, Rarotonga and Aitutaki, the summer before last. That beautiful place, though very low key and lacking "things to do", really seeped into all of us all and we had a wonderful and memorable trip! My biggest drawback after reading information was that Moorea will really dig deep into our bank account, lol. We were able to visit the Cooks without too much damage but we are a find and make our own "free" fun kinda family so I wasn't sure if Moorea could be done on a budget or not? The biggest drawback I find on Samoa is that in pictures it doesn't seem to have bright blue waters and it doesn't seem as scenic as Moorea or other Tahitian islands but this could be totally false assumption. Reading online leads me to believe that Samoa may have more remnants of Polynesian culture left than Tahiti and her islands. Any guidance would be appreciated!

Skip Tahiti, we found it too built up.

We found both Samoa and American Samoa to be just OK , nothing very special.

We like Morera quite a lot but really found BoraBora to be the best of the lot.

Go with Samoa.
They need your tourist $$ rather than Tahiti.

Interesting.Planning a holiday in the South Pacific over New year's next month for 13 days.Looking at Tonga and Fiji. Keenly following the advice you'll get.