All the answers are in nature.

This has been a long-awaited trip for me, and I finally got around to booking my plane ticket and heading out to French Polynesia. It was about a year ago when I first discovered the island of Moorea in search of remote, obscure, and very steep mountain peaks I could climb in the middle of nowhere. I stumbled upon Moorea and became immediately entranced by its extremely jagged mountains and tropical scenery, and I added it to my wishlist. “One day,” I told myself. Well, that day has finally come.

I embarked on my journey on Saturday, June 8, 2024, leaving from San Jose International Airport and landing in LAX for a five-hour layover. It was midnight when my plane left the runway in LAX, heading for Faaa International Airport on the island of Tahiti. The food on the plane was decent, courtesy of Air France, although I had orange chicken at Pick Up Stix in Terminal 2 of LAX earlier that evening (which will become important later in the story). After a seven-hour flight, I landed in Tahiti and was greeted by a group of musicians playing songs in local attire as I waited in line at Customs. After getting my passport stamped, I was off to the races and headed over to the Hertz car rental kiosk, where I picked up my Kia Rio. It was a compact car, but actually a lot of fun to drive and I was surprised by how much I liked it. 

After pulling out of the driveway, I immediately went in search of coffee. I discovered later on that most stores were closed on Sundays, and it was Sunday. 

It was less than five minutes later that, after getting disoriented, I pulled into a small parking lot to get my bearings. As I came out, a car was coming in, facing my direction. I pulled past it and continued along my way. A few seconds later, I noticed a car driving alongside me, flagging me down. It didn’t occur to me immediately that it was the police. I pulled into a parking space and prepared for the worst. The officer asked if I was drunk. I told him I wasn’t (I don't drink alcohol at all), and that I was an American who just came in from a red-eye flight from LAX, trying to locate the ferry terminal in nearby Papeete. The story checked out, and he let me go without issue.

Shortly afterward, I found the ferry terminal. It should be noted that my Apple Maps didn’t work in Tahiti, so I ended up downloading Waze and using that for navigation (which I wasn’t able to do until I got wifi access later on). Also Yelp didn’t work either. Or maybe there are no stores with Yelp profiles on Tahiti. In any case, I was navigating the old fashioned way, with map and compass.

After seeing both McDonalds and Burger King closed, it occurred to me that all of the stores were closed on Sundays in Tahiti. I’m not sure if this is for religious or cultural reasons. In any case, I eventually located a grocery store that was indeed open, and I got some lunch (pork and a baguette) and a chef’s knife for cooking. 

I want to talk about the baguettes briefly. They sell them everywhere in French Polynesia. I mean, it's basically France, after all. And they smell so good. If I could, I would just keep one in my kitchen at all times just for the smell. I don’t normally eat a lot of bread, but I typically follow no dietary rules when I’m abroad so I can truly appreciate the local cuisine. So I ate a lot of baguettes and they were really good. 

I want to talk a little bit about the groceries in Tahiti. Eggs come on the shelves, not in the refrigerated section. Coconut milk was common, but there was no regular cow milk. Surprisingly, despite the fact that there were millions of wild chickens running around, there was no chicken in the grocery store. Instead, pork and red meat were prevalent. Choices of produce were limited, as one would expect for an island as isolated as Tahiti. 

I explored Papeete and Western Tahiti a little bit. Tahiti is really clean. The air quality is good and there is no trash anywhere. Graffiti and street art were very prevalent. I noticed a very sophisticated irrigation/drainage system, which is obviously to contend with the massive amount of rainfall. On the other hand, it seemed like a large percentage of the population was very poor, although French Polynesia is definitely not a third world country. The temperature was pretty moderate, although I had cloud cover that day and so direct sun wasn’t really an issue. 

I had attempted to access a trailhead for a hike I wanted to do, but, for one thing, the AllTrails app’s navigation was not working, and, for another thing, I noticed that the street layout in Tahiti was extremely disorganized. It was very comparable to Bali, Indonesia, where you can tell there was absolutely no centralized planning, as streets were constructed in a maze-like fashion. 

Bali was hands-down the most polluted place I’ve ever been to. I just want to mention this on a tangent here because it is very annoying to me how Bali is depicted on social media, which is not at all what the place is really like in real life. And it’s not just the air quality (which is so bad everyone there wears masks, and this was before COVID when I went), it’s also the sound pollution, which is a never-ending cacophony of motorbike engines roaring by at top speed 24 hours a day. Add in extreme heat, a blanket of thick, brown smoke hovering over the island, and mountains of trash piled up on the streets, and you have a recipe for an award for “Most Polluted Place on Planet Earth.” Bali is absolutely disgusting.

Also there are no addresses in Tahiti (or Moorea). This caused challenges in finding my Tahiti AirBnB, which I’ll talk about later. Cars and motorcycles were common, but they weren’t the loud obnoxious kind you find in Southeast Asia. And this might seem obvious, but everyone speaks French and all the signs are in French.

I made it to the ferry and drove my car into the cargo hold. Once inside, I ventured up into the cabin area, which is very posh and features a restaurant and great views. The ferry ride from Papeete to Moorea takes about 50 minutes. You have to purchase one ticket for your person and another ticket for your vehicle, if you have one. As I got closer to Moorea, I saw my first glimpse of Mouaputa, a towering peak covered in greenery and soaring through the mist. My most immediate concern was the weather, of course, since I would need good conditions on the trail to make it to the top, as I had read that in rain it would be impossible to summit. I figured that at some point the clouds would lift and I would have a weather window, so I remained optimistic. Mouaputa was indeed the reason I flew to this remote corner of the world and I was determined to climb it one way or another.

Once I arrived on Moorea, I noticed a totally different vibe compared to Tahiti. Moorea is 1,000 times more beautiful than Tahiti, and very, very pristine. There is absolutely no trash anywhere on the island, and believe me, I was looking for it. Moorea has very little infrastructure, although I noticed some public transit. People drive very slow on Moorea, which is great because I drive slow. I hate rushing around everywhere and Moorea is a place to slow down and relax. You can really feel it when you come here. 

The first thing I did was check out the trailhead for Mouaputa. It starts in a residential area, so I had concerns about private property and the parking situation. I located a hospital with a big green sign that said parking was free (gratuit in French). It was closed, but I figured it would be open in the morning since it was Sunday and everything was closed on Sundays in French Polynesia. So I drove around the island over to Cook’s Bay, where my AirBnB was located. I was provided some directions and GPS coordinates, and located it after a little bit of searching. Once inside, I settled in and came up with a game plan for dinner. 

There was a pizza place nearby (Allo Pizza), which I think was the only place open that night, and I don’t eat pizza. By this time it was pouring torrential rain. In the back of my mind I wondered if I had made a mistake coming here and that it would be raining the entire time. I cast the thoughts off and reminded myself that the only reason it was so green in Moorea was because of the rain it receives. I set out around Cook’s Bay looking for some kind of dinner prospect. 

I saw a girl barbequing under a metal roof. I stopped and thankfully she was selling BBQ meat, and much to my delight, she had chicken. I bought a chicken plate with steak fries and asked her about Rotui, a mountain peak nearby. She told me that you need a guide to get there (which turned out to be false). I paid her 1,000 CFP (about $10) for the meal and brought it back to my lair where I gobbled it up in haste.

The weather indicated that the next day (Monday) would have moderate sun. I debated whether or not to attempt Mouaputa the next day, since I really wanted to climb it and I could barely contain my excitement. But when I realized I had no breakfast for the next morning, coupled with the uncertainty of the weather, common sense dictated that I waited until Tuesday for an attempt on the peak. 

At night, the sky cleared up suddenly and I saw Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, for the first time. Sirius is only visible in the Southern hemisphere because of the latitude. Since I spend a lot of time looking at stars back home, I found this star to be particularly fascinating. It is extremely bright and twinkles like crazy in rainbow colors. 

The next morning, I went to the local supermarket in Cook’s Bay and did some grocery shopping. Again there was no chicken, so I had to make do with shrimp. I picked up some eggs and other basics, such as bread and coffee. 

After a leisurely breakfast, I made my way over to Magic Mountain, an easy hike up to a summit platform. I didn’t include this in my YouTube video for aesthetic purposes, but I want to point out that there are trucks that take tourists to the summit without having to earn it, which I don’t like. And they come every ten minutes, so the summit is guaranteed to be packed with people at any given moment. In retrospect, if I had known about the tourist trucks I would have probably skipped Magic Mountain altogether and simply gotten an earlier start on Rotui, which I’ll talk about in a second.

I went back to the AirBnB and cooked some shrimp. I decided to go check out Rotui since it was so close. I didn't believe the girl who cooked me dinner. Indeed, the trailhead is very easy to find and access, and so a guide is not needed at all. So I set out on the Rotui hike around 2PM, which ended up being a very tight timeline to make it back before dark. Keep in mind that I did this trip in June, and so it was winter in the Southern hemisphere. The sun set around 5:30PM at that time of year, so a 2PM start was ambitious. 

I made good time in the beginning. However, as I got higher on the ridge, it became more and more treacherous. The ground was not solid and I found myself slipping and sliding around, which normally wouldn’t have been a really big deal, except for the fact that you have gigantic cliffs on both sides of the ridge the entire way up. I couldn’t comprehend how these sedimentary ridges became so steep. Normally when you have sedimentary deposits, they form really gradual rolling hills, not knife-edge ridges. Add in thick vegetation and beautiful scenery, and you have a truly unique hike with Rotui. 

Rotui has a series of false summits where you actually descend several times before reaching the true summit. I found this to be particularly demoralizing, but the scenery was out of this world beautiful, and I pressed on until I got to a cloudy and fog-covered summit. Needless to say, I was disappointed I didn’t get to see a summit view, but at least the views from the ridgeline were pretty amazing. By this time it was about 4:30PM. Sparing no time, I descended as quickly as possible. I didn’t want to have to deal with any precarious ridgewalking in the dark. It started to get dark right around 5:30PM or so. I pulled my headlamp out and the battery died in about two minutes. I’m 100% sure I charged it before I left because I had this big checklist. In any case, I finished off the last bit with the light from my iPhone, which still had plenty of battery. When I made it back to the car, which was around 7PM or so, I couldn’t believe how exhausted I was. I had really underestimated Rotui, and a 2PM start time was not the wisest choice. I was so tired I actually didn’t even eat dinner that night. And I needed to wake up early the next day for Mouaputa, so I went to sleep after a well-deserved shower.

The next morning I had a gigantic breakfast consisting of six eggs, two pieces of toast, a butter croissant, and a couple slices of baguette dipped in olive oil. With lots of calories at the ready, I headed off to start the long-awaited Mouaputa hike.

The first section consisted of traversing through a residential area. At one point, I got to a dead-end and a woman saw me with my backpack and gloves, put two and two together, and pointed me over to a downed log on the far end of her property. I thanked her, crossed the log, and made my way along the shoreline of a river over to the actual trailhead. I’m 100% sure if you didn’t know where to go, you wouldn’t find it. 

So I headed up the trail, which is lush and jungle-like, before crossing the river to head up to Mouaputa’s subalpine zone. It was interesting to see how the vegetation doesn’t change at all with increases in altitude. In the Santa Cruz Mountains, for example, where I live, you have a very distinct difference in plantlife in the river valleys, which are covered in ferns and beautiful green plants, and the hills and ridgecrests, which have chaparral, grasses, and smaller shrubs. But on Moorea, you have ferns and greenery consistently all the way up and down the topography with absolutely no change in flora at all.

I made it to a section of trail where you criss-cross a river several times. I didn’t include this part in the video, but at one point, you come to what appears to be a dead-end. But there is a rope hanging from the rocks at a nearby waterfall and you pull yourself up a 30-foot cliff face to get up and over this obstacle. It was the steepest part of the hike for sure, but the rope made it fairly easy to negotiate. 

Up higher, I made it to what I call the “rope sections.” This area was very, very long, and consisted of an extremely muddy ridge which had ropes about 60-70% of the way up. The ropes really helped since it was very muddy and even with the ropes, I fell down over 100 times. I brought rappel gloves, which were very handy, especially for the way down, where my hands were sliding down the rope constantly.  

The last little section is the steepest. My GoPro footage of this section was unusable due the amount of smudges and mud on my camera lens, so I ended up not including it in the final video, which was kind of a bummer since it was the most exciting part of the climb. In any case, I had a clear sky on the summit and I was very thankful for that. The view was pretty amazing. To the North, you can see Cook’s Bay and Rotui. To the West, you have Tohivea, a mountain peak on Moorea which has never been climbed. To the Southeast, you have Tahiti.

I started my descent and fell another 100 times on the way down. I was completely covered in mud, head to toe, when I got back to the car. 

I took the rest of the afternoon off and basically did nothing, which was great. 

The next day, which was really sunny, I took some time to drive around the island looking for a good thumbnail photo for my YouTube video. It wasn’t until 10:30AM that my AirBnB host reminded me I had a diving lesson at 12:30PM. She had organized it for me beforehand and I had totally forgotten about it. So I went home, made lunch, and headed over to Moorea Blue Diving for my first ever scuba diving experience. 

My dive instructor, named Sebastian, provided me with one-on-one training since I was the only American in the group. He explained everything to me, and I buckled on my air supply backpack, waddled to the edge of the boat, and plunged into the water.

The fishes were pretty amazing. There were large schools of them, ranging in colors from whites to yellows to neon pinks. I also saw an eel, which was pretty cool looking. It was about half an hour or so until we surfaced and headed back to shore.

The next day was basically my exit day. I had to catch the ferry back to Tahiti to prepare for my 7AM flight the next morning. On this day it poured rain in Moorea, so I was thankful to have done the climbing I wanted to do with the weather window I had. My only regret was doing Magic Mountain and not starting Rotui earlier that day.

I had a very hard time finding my AirBnB since there are no addresses in Tahiti. Eventually I found the building, parked my car in a completely pitch black underground parking lot, and, using my headlamp, found my way up the catacombs of the hotel basement until I arrived at my AirBnB’s door. Relief washed over me as the door opened and I pulled my gear through the air-conditioned threshold and collapsed on the couch. For some reason I was dead tired this day. I think part of it was just the mental effort of trying to locate the AirBnB.

I made my way over to the grocery store. Pickings were slim. I saw lots of pork. No veggies. I made the decision to make breakfast for dinner, which I often do when I’m too lazy to cook a proper dinner.

Before heading to bed, I went to town to check out a local festival and mingle. The summer Olympics were hosted in Paris this year, and so a lot people were outside with banners and French flags. All the women wore traditional Tahitian dresses. The men typically made no effort to look presentable and dressed in shorts, flip flops and junky old T-shirts. This was surprising to me since in France everyone was very stylish.

The next morning I returned my rental car and headed to the security checkpoint. “I can’t believe it,” I thought. “Nothing went terribly wrong on this trip, and I’m going home.” But the trouble was far from over.

On the Air France flight, they provided us with “lunch” and “dinner,” neither of which I ate. Lunch was an absolutely revolting cold tuna sandwich. Dinner was a cross section of tofu (yuck!) with cold salmon in the middle. It upset me just looking at it on my tray table. I didn’t eat either one, thinking about Pick Up Stix in Terminal 2 of LAX, where I had planned to pig out on double helpings of orange chicken. Little did I know I would not be eating Pick Up Stix for dinner that night.

I landed in LAX about 20 minutes late. From there, after deplaning, I walked (I kid you not) about half a mile through endless hallways and staircases until I got to U.S. Customs. It took me about an hour in line at Customs and then, I had to recheck my bag. After that, I was essentially booted out of the airport, where I had to run at top speed to Terminal 2 and go through the security checkpoint again. I had forgotten that if you come into the U.S. with a connecting flight, you have to go through security again after you go through Customs. The checkpoint line was even longer than the Customs line, and, once through, I ran at top speed looking like a maniac with shoes untied, laces flailing about, to Gate 61, where my flight to San Jose was scheduled to take off at 9PM. I got to the gate right at 9PM on the dot, and my spirits were on cloud nine as I saw people lining up to board. But when I saw the sign that said “Gate 61B—San Diego,” I could feel my heart sink. I looked to my left and saw Gate 61A, which read “San Jose—Departed.”

And so that was that. I missed my flight home. And now I was stuck in LAX.

I talked to the ticketing people and they rebooked me for the next available flight to San Jose, which was 7AM the next day.

Accepting my fate, I collected my boarding pass and scrambled over to Pick Up Stix, hoping they would still be open at 9:30PM. However, despite closing at 10PM, they had no more food and refused to make me any orange chicken. So I had to turn my attention to another eatery. I only had two options—pizza and burgers. I haven’t eaten either pizza or burgers in over 20 years. Pizza, lacking meat, was out of the question. So burgers it was. 

Using my carry-on as a pillow, I snuggled up on the couch in Terminal 2 and slept as best I could. The next morning, I was first in line at Starbucks as soon as they opened and ordered a large coffee, egg sandwich, and butter croissant. I probably looked like a homeless man ravaged by a hurricane.

I caught the 7AM flight to San Jose and made it back to home-sweet-home around 10AM. It was a bright and sunny day and the first thing I did was water the plants in my garden. 

That day, I reflected on a couple of things. First off, California has the best weather in the entire world, and I’m thankful to live here. Secondly, even though traveling can be exhausting and frustrating sometimes, I have to remind myself that kings and pharaohs were not even able to do this. I mean, we live in a world where we can fly to another part of the planet in a matter of hours. Sleeping at an airport seems like a small price to pay for that. 

Every time I go on a trip abroad, I learn something new about people, how they live, and the way they think. For example, I thought to myself “if I lived here, I would be the only business open on Sundays and I’d make a killing.” But the reason I think that way is because I’m an American. Every aspect of my life as an American revolves around performance, competition, and working harder than the next guy. But when you live on a tiny island, your role as part of a community becomes more important than your individual identity. Preserving the peace, tranquility and culture of the island is more important than money to them. And you can’t escape your reputation at all. Besides, there is something special about Moorea. There seems to be an unspoken agreement around the island that everyone is just going to chill out. And people are really friendly. Locals would wave to me and the store clerks were really nice. It’s just a reminder that in America there is so much brainwashing. This is one of the reasons I don’t watch TV or have any social media. I just want to live free and explore the world.

I’ll always think back to the Moorean way of life when challenges arise. There is a certain amount of pride they take in the community and in the land. I think there is something we can learn from every part of the world we visit. I’m eager for my next trip and the lessons it holds.