A Walk in the Park

The weather cleared up soon after I wrote the previous entry so we decided to go ashore and see if we could find the public gardens mentioned in our guide book. The guidebook gave the position as being 2.7km west of the museum entrance so I created a waypoint on my portable GPS in the approximate position and went off to see what we could find. At that spot we found a shallow reef close to the road. It was just deep enough to dinghy over to the road and chained the dinghy to a lamp post. From there we had a very short walk to the public gardens.

Although a bit noisy from the road the public gardens were very pretty and well kept. Having visited the expensive private gardens and the free public gardens I would recommend to anyone the latter. The gardens contained plenty of flowers, some nice lily ponds, some water features and a natural waterfall. The only downside was that the public gardens were quite a bit smaller than the private ones.

The really big surprise was a marked trail up the hillside off the back of the gardens. There were a few trail options – the longest advertised as a two hour hike which we decided to take. The beginning of the trail was quite muddy no doubt influenced by the recent rain. While slippery the path was made easily manageable by plenty of well placed ropes to hang onto. Soon, the trail climbed into pine forests. This was a total surprise. We had not expected pine forests in Tahiti. The path underfoot was soft with a bedding of pine needles and leveled out to a gentle incline. From time to time we would get excellent views of the reef outside.

The entire hike was a delight made more so by the fact that we had no idea it was there. It was not mentioned in any of the guides we had. We radioed back to Imagine and Sea Mist to let them know of our discovery. We knew John on Sea Mist was an avid hiker and would not want to miss this. We were walking anti-clockwise round the outer loop so we suggested to John that he go clockwise so that we would at least meet up somewhere.

At the highest point of the hike a path led off that wasn’t advertised. We checked it out for about 5 minutes in case there was a viewpoint nearby. The path definitely went somewhere but in the end we decided to turn back as as far as we knew it could have crossed the island.

On the way down we again saw some great views. We agreed that if someone had transported us here randomly and we opened our eyes we would not have guessed we were in Tahiti or some other tropical island. Being on the south side of the island the air was cooler than normal which added to the feeling.

We reached the bottom without seeing John. Our next stop was to visit the public springs a couple of hundred meters to the west. We soon found a car park at the end of a stream with some people visibly bathing a short way up the stream. There we found a couple of pools surround natural upwelling of water from the hills. Hot and sweaty from our recent hike we immersed ourselves in the cold mountain water. It was invigorating.

On the way back to the dinghy we bumped into John who had just come down from the hike. We figured he must have passed us by when we were off on the side trail. We let him know where the pools were so he could cool off.

On the way back we passed by Imagine who invited us to stop by for lunch which we accepted. While there John passed and joined us. We didn’t stay long as we were all ready to head east to the anchorage near the town of Taravao. Although we departed first, Sea Mist soon powered past us. The passage was simple enough as we’ve developed experience and confidence navigating the reefs in the last few days.

As soon as we’d arrived we checked for an internet connection and found two subscription services of which we have time on both. I was able to check our remaining internet orders and both are due for delivery on the 6^th of July which is encouraging. It will be a relief for all when these are in as I know it’s inconveniencing Ben to arrange to have someone in to receive them.

We decided to explore the town of Taravao so we dinghied ashore and tied off to a small jetty. We had to walk past a car wrecking site before finding the town. We wanted to find somewhere we could eat out as well as see what shops there were. We found a big ACE hardware store as well as a few supermarkets. There were a number of restaurants but none that really piqued our fancy. We walked about 3-4 miles before picking up some pizzas to eat that evening. On the way back we found a restaurant that we liked the look of about 50 yards in the opposite direction from the town from the road that led back to the where we’d left the dinghy. We may go there this evening.

We’ll stay here for the day and catch up with some internet things. Hopefully our parts will arrived today and we can head off for a relaxed few days not having to worry about things back home. We’ve been able to upload recent pictures so a few new albums should be available on our photos page.