Escaping the NZ winter, we booked a holiday to Mo’orea, French Polynesia. Mo’orea is a small island, so small in fact, that we rode around it on a scooter in a couple of hours. It doesn’t have long hiking trails, but we did manage to find a trail for a day hike. One would think on an island that small, and on a well mapped tourist trail, there’s no way to get lost, but we managed to do exactly that.

We took a taxi to the Belvedere Lookout point, marked with a circle.

The plan was then to follow the orange route the end and take a taxi back to the hotel.

The trail was well marked.

We reached the highest point of the trail.

The trails was there to begin with, but got fainter and eventually disappeared. We ended up bushwhacking through woods and sliding down hillside. Luckily I had brought my Katadyn BeFree, so we could filter more drinking water.

Eventually we found a farm track and followed that to the main road. We sat by a bridge and called a taxi to take us back to the hotel. The couple of hours of walk had ended up a bit more of an adventure and took more time than planned for.

Lessons learned: shortcuts rarely save time and/or not worth the extra effort.

Here’s a video of the hike.