French Polynesia
You can be here in November for about €1,560, 3 days, direct.
Why now
Good time in November: 29°C days, 27 rainy days, sea 28°C.
The dry season during the southern winter is cooler, clearer and busier; the wet months are humid with heavy showers and cheaper rooms, and cyclones are rare but possible. Heiva, the festival of dance and sport in mid-year, is the cultural reason to time a visit.
Best months here: May, June, November. Daytime highs, sea temperature and rainy days from three years of Open-Meteo reanalysis; a rainy day is one with at least 1 mm of rain, which is the WMO threshold and not the same as "it drizzled".
The place
French Polynesia is 118 islands across an area the size of Europe, of which most visitors see three: Tahiti for the airport and the market, Moorea for the mountains, Bora Bora for the overwater bungalow. The lagoons are what the pictures promise; the distances, the baguettes and the Polynesian-French ordinary life around them are what the pictures leave out.
What you can do
- 01Take the ferry to Moorea and hike the Three Coconuts pass or drive up to the Belvedere over both bays.
- 02Snorkel with blacktip sharks and stingrays in Moorea's lagoon, then eat poisson cru with coconut milk.
- 03Spend a morning at Papeete's market for vanilla, monoi oil and pareu, then the roulottes on the waterfront at night.
- 04Dive or snorkel the Tiputa pass in Rangiroa on the incoming tide, where dolphins and sharks gather.
- 05Circle Tahiti's coast road to Teahupo'o and the Arahoho blowholes, stopping at the Paul Gauguin museum's gardens.
Where to stay · neighbourhoods
A family pension on Moorea gives the lagoon at a fraction of the resort experience; Bora Bora is for one splurge stay, and the Tuamotus for divers. Avoid staying in Papeete longer than the flights require.
Unusual things
- ◦Huahine's Maeva marae, a concentration of stone temples by the lagoon, and its blue-eyed eels in Faie.
- ◦The Marquesas, three hours' flight northeast, volcanic islands of tiki, horses and Gauguin's grave on Hiva Oa.
- ◦Tetiaroa, the atoll Marlon Brando bought, visited on a day cruise from Tahiti for the bird islet.
Day trips
Flight options
Routes come from OpenFlights (historical) and a 2026 route reference compiled from public timetables. Durations are the published schedule where we have it, otherwise a block-time model fitted on measured nonstop flights. Verify schedules with the airline before booking.
Entry requirements · IT passport
Source: passport-index-data, March 2026 (coarse indicator), covering 258 of our 268 destinations for each of 199 passports. Always confirm with the destination's official site.
Airports
Distances are centre to airport derived · nonstop counts are our route reference for 2026, not every flight that exists.
Local transport
- Airport to city
- Taxi, 10 min, ~€20; inter-island flights
- Car needed?
- No — walkable or good public transport
- Getting around
- Inter-island travel is by Air Tahiti flights, expensive and best bought as a multi-island pass, plus the Moorea ferry; on each island a hire car or bicycle. Faa'a airport is 10 minutes from Papeete and long-haul flights arrive at night.
- Clock
- 2 hours behind Los Angeles (Pacific/Tahiti) derived
- Daylight
- 12.9 hours of daylight in November · sunrise 05:15, sunset 18:11 derived
- Currency
- XPF
Good to know
Resorts on motu islets charge for every transfer and meal, and mosquito-borne dengue occurs; use repellent at dusk.
Alternatives at a similar price
Whole trip per person for 3 days from Los Angeles in November, then the flight time; estimates, like the total above.
Addis Ababa
Aqaba
Kathmandu
Riyadh
Doha
Abu Dhabi