The start to the cross island hike

The track across (not including the bit where we got lost)

Big leaves!

Tricky trail (and slippery)

Halfway there!

At the top, now time to go down

Almost done

Took the "Clockwise" bus back

Yep, we did it. 7 hours worth which included getting lost and backtracking which took up about 2 hours of the trip. With the getting lost part, we climbed a peak not on the path, then back down and climbed the peak that WAS on the track, thus we climbed two of the peaks on the island. We also lay claim to being one out of only two groups who did the hike and we were the oldest who managed it. The other group was a newlywed couple from New York. We saw about ten others on the trail, but they all just did the out and back to the peak called The Needle. Wimps! The toughest part was the peak that we were lost on. Very steep.

We did have one incident. We’ll call it the Gatorade incident. I had a liter of Gatorade in my backpack with the lid on crooked and half of it spilled…right into my Nikon D2 camera. This could have a detrimental effect on the trip as the camera is now inop and it is the one with the polaroid filter which is so important in this tropical light. It’s just dead and the LCD screen has water in it. The only thing I could think to do is wash it with fresh water and then I’m going to set it out in the hot sun tomorrow and see if I can bake it out. If not, I guess we’ll turn it into an artificial reef. Since I have two lenses for it, I imagine I’ll have to get another body but who knows when we’ll be somewhere again where that’s possible. Oh, well. We still have the pocket camera which takes pretty good pictures so all is not lost.

Once we got down from the mountain/hike, we convenient found a little shack on the beach that sold BEER! So, we sat out back in the sand and enjoyed a couple cool ones while waiting for the bus. And, we took the Clockwise bus back. We really wanted to take the Anti Clockwise bus because it sounded cooler, but by the time we got down to the road there was only one more bus before the two hour dinner break, so we just grabbed the clockwise one.

What was the hike like? Pretty dense jungle much of the way and gorgeous view from the top at The Needle. Steep and slippery but not as steep or scary as the Bora Bora climb. There were only two ropes on this one and it was only 412 meters high. But there were some memorable areas in the interior when we were hiking through a fern grotto where the ferns were 8-10 feet tall!

At this point as I’m writing this, we’ve had dinner and Lisa and Ann look like you could tip them over if you touched them on the side with a feather. I think we’ll sleep really well tonight.