January 16, 2011

Our goal for the day was Hanatekuua, a bay and a beach on the northern side of the island. The only way to get there is by doing a 2-hour hike through beautiful and hilly terrain.

We started the day slowly and ate a large and nutritional breakfast on our balcony to stock up on calories

We drove over to the north side of the island to a village called Hanaiapa and parked the car. We saw on the map that we could do a short-cut if we walked through a private garden. Obviously we were not the only ones who had seen this. At the entrance to the garden the owners had put up this sign:

“Non-catholic dog. Do not enter!” Message received. We took the way around, with a smile on our face.

Our surroundings were beautiful. Here are a couple of photos from our starting point, Hanaiapa Bay:

We started climbing:

and passed this sign:

“Hanatekuua is one of the last preserved valleys on the island. Please respect it and keep the beach and the path clean.”

It was a hot day. We were well infused with sunscreen and had brought 7 liters (a bit under 2 gallons) of water, which would turn out to be just enough:

That´s 89.2 F for you North Americans. As you can see from the time, we picked the coolest part of the day to walk, not. Luckily it was partly cloudy and most of the time the clouds insulated us from the worst sunheat.

We walked along the side of a hill, more or less following the coastline:

This strange rock seemed to be the only one of its kind here. It had cracks like this on all sides. We were very curious about its origins:

We passed many beautiful trees:

After about an hour and a half we got the first view of the bay:

and then the beach:

We worked our way down to the valley and the beach:

There were a few houses behind the beach. What a remote place to live. There was a beach dog:

It was great to cool off, despite Helene´s skeptical look.

After about two super hours on the beach and a well-earned lunch we headed back. Iseline was not in the mood for walking and needed some motivation. Controlling robot-mom with two sticks did the trick:

Tired, but happy, wanderers:

The low sun made the landscape look different:

We got a nice view of Hanaiapa bay as we arrived:

We reached the bed & breakfast just before the sun went down. It had been a great day. The landscape here is truly stunning and, just like at the grand canyon, walking through it gave us a much better impression of its beauty.

Tomorrow we will head back to Papeete.

Eirik

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