Quote:
Originally Posted by butterfly
I was thinking about visiting PPT/Moorea earlier but now I'm going somewhere else. I hadn't heard about the tropical garden though. Were there any special plants or flowers there that are unique to that part of the world? I looked at your map and it looks very close to the ocean road (1 km?) Was the drive really that bad?
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It's possible I was just there at the wrong time of year for flowers, but I don't recall seeing too many. There was basically just a greenhouse with a lot of vanilla plants in it. I definitely wouldn't suggest it as an amazing spot to see tropical flowers. It was mainly all about the great view and food.
The road up is not very long but in rough shape. While taking the catamaran sunset tour we met a couple from the U.S. He was telling us about their drive up to the tropical garden. "We had a manual car, and as we got to near the top, someone was walking on the road in front of me and I had to stop. I have a lot of experience driving manual but the hill was so steep I couldn't help but roll backwards every time I tried to get going forward and it was nearly impossible to get going forward again. We kept rolling back closer and closer to within inches of the large ditch and stone wall behind us and I couldn't figure out how the hell we were going to get out of this, there wasn't room to turn around in reverse."
After he finished I told him, "That's funny, we just had the exact same experience, right down to having someone walk out in front of us near the top."
Moorea being one of those volcanic islands, basically every road outside the one circling the island seems to ascend pretty quickly. There was an unpaved road I tried to take inland to a hike and quickly realized a half-km in that there was no way the rental car would be able to get there without serious damage. But the road up to Belvedere Lookout is perfect pavement.