The Cross Island Track
Jackamy
Paul & Derry Harper
Mon 14 Jun 2010 02:40
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Monday 14th June
Paul had met a man who'd recommended he do
the 'Cross Island Track', which is as it says in the name you walk from one side
of the island through the mountains to the other side of the island. Amy then
backed this idea up as she'd read about it and the book had described it as an
'unforgettable experience' and a 'must'. So that was it, in the afternoon after
we got back from church we changed out of our sunday best and into our hiking
gear and set off. We weren't expecting anything too strenuous as the guide book
mentioned that other walks were challenging but there was no mention as to the
difficulty of this one, it was just 'a very popular walk on Raratonga passing
through some of the islands most natural scenery'.
We set off on foot from the boat and walked
for around an hour along a road inland. It was a nice walk past some pretty
houses and scenery, and lots of pigs!
 A pretty tree
 Dogs just seem to be drawn to
us
 The easy bit!
 A pig sheltering from the sun
and Amy hiding inside a Banian Tree
 It all started to go downhill
(or should I say uphill) when we reached these signs!
Once at the signs we started to
climb quite significantly up the mountain. It wasn't too bad at the beginning
but then we reached a sign that said 'Do not go down the valley, follow signs up
the ridge'. This was when we realised we'd be climbing, I think we thought it
would be a leisurely walk through the valleys to the otherside, instead we began
our ascent up to the highest point on the mountain, 'The Needle' which is 413m
high. To say it was difficult is an understatement, we couldn't quite believe
that no one had mentioned how challenging it would be. The path was very narrow
and very slippery as it was muddy, we were basically climbing up the ridge of
the mountain over and in between tree roots, which actually worked in our
favour as we could pull oursleves up on the roots.
 Walking into the
unknown............A 45 minute vertical climb
 At the top was the needle, you
can see Amy at the bottom left to get an idea of the size
 And there were some beautiful
views over Raratonga
 
 There was also a friendly
cockrel who I'm guessing was after food as he was pecking his beak into our
bag
 Once we were up there we couldn't
spend too long resting as a guide had told us a few very important pieces of
information. Firstly, the buses stopped running at 16.00 and we needed to get
one back to the north side and we wouldn't be down in time. Secondly, he warned
us not to go down the other side as it was more slippy than the north side and
also a lot darker and given that the sun sets earlier at this time of year he
strongly recommended not to go down. So it was back the way we'd came! On the
way up Amy had said "Can you imagine having to climb down this, I hope it's not
like this on the otherside" and Paul had replied "I don't fancy that at all,
it's dangerous" - great, we had no choice!
 We found it easier to actually
climb down backwards on some sections so that we could use the roots almost like
a ladder
It took us 30 minutes to slip and
slide our way down. Paul slipped over once, Amy wakled into a tree as she was so
busy concentrating looking down and I managed with just a lot of oo-ing and
ah-ing. Once safely at the bottom I think we all breathed a sigh of relief, it
really wasn't the place to fall and injure yourself. Firstly because a resuce
attempt would be very difficult and secondly because it was pretty much a
vertical drop either side of the path down into the valley! Looking back now, it
was good fun but very tough on the legs and actually quite dangerous. It's a
shame we didn't make it all the way across the island but at least we climbed up
to the needle.
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