Wednesday morning the weather looked promising, clear blue sky. So I decided to do my tourist duty on Moorea, make the walk up to Belvedere. I had a vague idea about which road to follow, and lucky me, it turned out to be the right one. It was a dirt road for quite a while, leading across a ridge which gave a beautiful view over the inside of the island, the collapsed crater of the volcano. Later the road met with a bigger road with black top, mostly shaded by the trees. Quite a nice walk. There was an unexpected cultural site to sea: an archeological site of the remains of the old settlements of the Polynesian people. There was an information board in three language with some explanation about the history, to my shame I must admit I forgot most of what it said already. But, the sites were quite interesting, an old archery platform, an ahu, and a marae. From there it was a little further up to the viewpoint. From the Belvedere you had a great view over most of the island and the two bays, Cooke’s Bay and Opunohu Bay.
On the way down I decided to descend into Opunohu bay, and then follow the main road along the shore back to Cooke’s Bay. In hinsight, that was a little too much, it was a lot further than I thought, and walking along a quite busy road wasn’t all the exciting. It took me five hours to complete the loop, only having taken about 15 minutes rest at the top. The legs were tired, and the hip (with titanium screws) wasn’t quite happy with it. Not much else was done the rest of the day.
Later in the evening I had VHF contact with Strummer, who had sailed into Papeete just that day. Sayonara had left for Taina. Since I am in no rush to go anywhere yet, I decided to backtrack to Taina and meet up with Peter. Sayonara had some fiberglass work done on the keel, after a close encounter with the reef near the Tahiti Yacht Club. Maybe we’ll sail together to some of the other islands of the Society Islands. Peter’s wife has joined him for a few weeks, and they will eventually go back to Papeete. After the Society Islands the next logical destination is the Cook Islands.