Last week we took a trip to the top of Belvedere, a view point from the mountains in Oponuhu Bay, Moorea, French Polynesia. You can see all the way to Cook’s Bay, which is the next bay down.
We started off by taking the dinghy (our tender) to the mouth of the bay, which was about 2 miles from our boat, and tying it up to a tree. We walked along the road that lead to the start of the trail. Once we got there, there was a sign that showed different trails – the green on, the red one and the black one. We took the easiest trail (the green one) and set of for the view point of Belvedere through the jungle.
As we progressed on the trail we saw Marae, which are old Polynesian temples. Further along the track we saw an archery station where ancient Polynesians practiced archery in case of attack. Once we got past the archery station we had ice-cream at the Agricultural Lycee. It was very excellent. We tried different local flavours like soursop and passion fruit. After ice-cream we continued on the trail to the top. We got hot and sweaty after a while and really needed to cool down. Luckily we found some deep pools with fresh water in them. We deided we’d go swimming in them. It was amazing, I was sooooo cooled down and we had a great time. Once we got out we had a five minuite walk to the view point. The view was spectacular and beautiful. There was a view of all of Oponuhu Bay and Cook’s Bay. The walk was definitely worth the hard trek and I would do it again any day. I hope I will do it again with my family.
