North Island Adventures Days 4 and 5

I'm back from tramping. I said I was doing Gillespie but we got down there and chose a different route. I'll save the details for another post.

Day four the weather was poor.

We awoke at Daly's Hut.


Walked out through jungle stuffs.


These cows followed us as we crossed their paddock. Rachel was terrified. I figured they either expected us to feed them or to move them to a grassier area.


We drove up the Coromandel Peninsula. Beautiful but the weather was not too hot.


We stopped at a place on the Coromandel called Long Bay where there was a walk to a huge Kauri tree. Ate lunch here.


Continued around and stopped at Hot Water Beach, disappointed that we'd missed high tide. We decided to find a hut south near where Daly's Hut was and come back up the next day to have another shot at the Coromandel with good weather.

We stayed at Te Rereatukahina Hut which we'd thought had burned down.. the signage wasn't too good and we got there around nine so it was totally dark. We were standing about 20 meters from the hut and couldn't see it. Exciting stuff.

Day 5. Coromandel with good weather!

A picture of the hut the next day when the sun had come up and we could see where we were.


Walked out and crossed the river we'd crossed coming in. We were a bit worried it would be too high as it had been raining a bit throughout the night but it turned out that the river was deeper the night before when we came in. When we came in it was a bit risky actually.. just over my waist and quite swiftly moving.


Had a delicious breakfast (we hadn't had a warm meal in 4 days) at a place along the road.


We drove up to the Coromandel again and went to Cathedral Cove before Hot Water Beach as we had time before low tide.

Cathedral Cove. Totally reminded me of Bermuda.




It was too beautiful to not go for a swim.


Hot Water Beach. Met some people who'd done this once before and decided to share the job of digging a pool.


Had a beer while lying in a hot pool with the ocean waves crashing in. Thank you Angie for making this a dream of mine. It was worth it.


We then drove down to Te Puke which is about an hour north of Rotorua. Rachel's father had set us up with a place to stay on a kiwi fruit farm there and we were more than happy to have a shower. Claire (pictured) was home alone and she took great care of us :)


We had our own little room at the kiwi farm. It was so nice of them to put us up. We even got to wash our tramping clothes!

North Island Adventures Day 3

We woke up at the hut in Egmont National Park in the snow. All of this snow fell overnight.


Here's a video of it snowing! We were very surprised!




Here's a river we'd crossed the day before. The guys at the hut warned this might be too high to cross.. They were fortunately wrong!





Once we'd gotten back to the car we headed out of Egmont and up the West coast towards the Coromandel. We drove a road called "The Forgotten Highway" for over 100km, some of it unsealed roads. The road certainly seemed forgotten. Here's a shot of a slip on the road.



And here's a video of us driving along. Watch for slips, sheep, rocks in the road, slow corners, and me conducting and hooting along to some old NHS Chamber Orchestra tunes!



I had a blast driving that road even if the weather was pretty crap. I have no pictures from our tramp into "Daly's Clearing Hut" that night because we did just about all of it in the dark. It took about two hours to get to the hut.

I won't be updating for the next four days as I'm going on yet another tramping adventure. This time it's down to the Gillespie Pass. A good bit of tramping in the snow with my mates Dale and Mary. I'm looking forward to posting about the rest of my North Island adventures, my tramp up Avalanche Peak just a few days ago, and then the Gillespie Pass which should be amazing!

North Island Adventures Days 1 and 2 (finally)

Hi. Rachel and I had trouble getting our photos on facebook the last week so that can account for maybe a day of lateness with this post. I haven't gone for a massive tramp as the last post stated because of the weather. I've mostly been in Christchurch turning 21, and otherwise I spent yesterday climbing up Avalanche Peak (a post to come), and the day before that I did that bike ride over the port hills I wrote about ages ago.

Anyways, let me tell you about my adventures on the North Island.

Day 1

Rachel and I got a lift to the airport quite early on Friday October 2nd from Harry which was a great luxury. The flight took about 50 minutes and was totally painless. When we got to Wellington we called the car rental company and they told us they'd send a driver to pick us up. We had an hour long setback because of miscommunication... I was calling the main Apex desk, not the Wellington one, and they'd sent a car to Auckland Airport. Further details aren't worth describing but we met up with a driver who took us to the rental office an hour late. We got the car witha discount of 4 bucks a day (totalling 40 dollars discount) for our unfortunate waiting experience.

We cruised out of Wellington in the rental car.


There was a bit of rain but we were not too discouraged and we headed up to Ruahine Forest Park to a hut I'd read of. We stopped at a beach for a break.


After the beach we drove through Bulls and then up Northeast to the Ruahines through some fantastic scenery.


We got to the start of the tramp to the hut and read that there had been a slip on the track which would increase the time to the hut to 3 hours which was not too great for us as it was 7:30 after we'd had a bite of dinner and organized our packs. We debated camping by the car but decided ultimately to check out the track.

The tramp was flat for about 20 minutes until we reached the detour where the path cut steeply uphill around what we assumed was a slip (too dark to see). We went up, over the slip, and down into a valley before going up the rest of the original path to the hut. Rach thought she'd seen someone coming up behind us with a light and was worried that we'd meet our doom.

Day 2

Tramping in the dark is awesome because the next day you get to see what you tramped and it means the tramp down is nothing like the tramp up.

The hut had gas heating and a gas stove, neither of which I could be bothered to use.


View of the hut on the hill. Fantastic.


We each took an "oh my god the sun is so bright" picture.



Big bridge we'd crossed the night before. When we looked down at night we couldn't see the bottom. This worried Rachel.


A picture of the slip that caused the detour from afar:


The start of the detour going the other way:



The other side of the detour only twenty minutes from the car park:


We hopped in the car and drove out the way we'd come in. We drove through Bulls again but this time took the other route out of town going this time to Wanganui. We passed through Wanganui inquiring about the gorge in which some of LOTR was filmed. We decided to do that drive after the Tongariro Crossing later in our trip and continued on towards Egmont National Park. We followed the road along the coast which claimed to be a surf highway but we did not have any of the exceptional beachside driving we were expecting. Before cutting inland to Egmont mountain we stopped at a black sand beach.


Egmont from a distance:


And much closer (Dawson Falls visitor center):


We checked out how long we thought it would take us to reach the hut (2 hours?) and decided to use a bit of our time walking to Dawson Falls before heading in.


The tramp was not particularly intense. It was a very nice walk though. It had quite a few stairs which Rachel lamented as we climbed up. We discussed why we thought the US didn't have huts and trail maintenance like those in NZ.

Here's the hut.


There were a couple of 30ish kiwis staying here. They tried to snare a possum while cranking drum and base. They set up a slipknot raised by a few pieces of firewood on that porch thing and put some bread out. Nearly caught one. Twice. Those things are dumb.

Oh yeah before nightfall we left our packs at the hut and went for a bit of a walk as we didn't feel we'd earned our rest. We found this swinging bridge not too far back along the trail. We found out the kiwi guys had come from this direction.


And that's the end of day 2. I hope to get up the rest of these pretty rapidly.

Back from the North

Hello world. I got back from the North Island last night after eleven days of exciting adventures.

The excitement now takes a short intermission while I attend my last few days of class at Canterbury. I have an exam on Wednesday and Thursday.

After those exams, I will be leaving with Dale to go tramp in Fiordland for another eleven-ish day adventure putting me back in Christchurch with what I hope is just enough time to do well on my first final (Management).

I am excited to blog about my travels, but I must get a bit of studying in for these tests... If I do not manage to blog about my North Island adventures just yet, fear not, I kept a detailed journal of what I did so that I can refresh my mind if it must wait until I'm back from Fiordland on October 27th.

Kei Otautahi ahau e noho ana

The title means "I am currently staying in Christchurch" in maori. I just took my Maori final in which I had to speak Maori with the teacher. The test was worth 40% of the class and went very well.

A few notable things have happened since Country Life Weekend.

Last Saturday, I went to my second Canterbury Rugby game which was fun. Zanne, Nick, Laura, Matt Kelly, Kate Davidson, and Shelby Combs were there.


That night Katie Wright and I hosted a bit of social drinking between the hours of 8 and 2. At about 2 o'clock Katie called up her boy Harry who told us some horrifying news. Our flatmate Alice had been wading in the ocean up to her knees and was sucked into the water by some huge undertow. After ten minutes of searching for her and not hearing her cries, our friends called the cops. By the time the cops showed up Alice had managed to swim ashore. She claims she was swimming her hardest for about twenty minutes before catching a few waves well enough to get out. Harry asked Katie and I if we could grab Alice's keys, go find her car, and pick her up from the hospital to which she'd had an ambulance ride. I was fully sobered up so we grabbed the keys and looked for the car which was described by harry as "a little white banger". Believe it or not, the key unlocked the first car we tried.

I drove stick shift with my left hand and on the "wrong" side of the road down to the hospital which was just a few Ks away. I had a blast. Driving stick is great and Christchurch is super flat so it was easy. We found Alice and took her home. She's 100% fine. Whew.

By that time it was already about 3 or 4 and Katie and I had to get up to go rafting at 9. We nearly missed it. For some reason neither of our alarms went off. And we had both remembered to shift our clocks forward an hour the night before!

Rafting with the IFSA crew was great.

I'm all the way on the left.


Here's one of my raftmates. The guide's name was sam.


In this next one I'm the blue helmet in the front... I'm sitting across from Dale who has the red helmet. We did mostly level 2 and 3 rapids but this one was class 5.


Though our raft never flipped or dumped anyone out, one of the rafts did flip on the level five rapid leaving all of the members except the guide swimming. Shelby Combs wound up in a brace from thigh to ankle. For a while they thought her leg was broken but we've found out it is alright.

I spoke to one of the guides about the incident afterwards and he said that one of his whitewater kayaking friends had traveled the world kayaking but after coming and doing these exact rapids and getting flipped upside-down and crashing into a few rocks, he gave up whitewater kayaking for good.

At the end of the rafting trip we had an option to jump off a cliff 30 feet into the water. Most people did it. I opted to go first.. my picture is the only one that came out like this. In the rest of the pictures the person is blurry and the rocks are clear.


Yeah so now that all that exciting stuff is out of the way we can talk about simpler stuff.

I cooked up pad thai for a few of my friends. I'd never done it before and it turned out really well. Yum! Chives and bean sprouts!



My first New Zealand mead was enjoyed on Wednesday by lots of my friends. I wanted to get it finished so that I could get another together before going away for my North Island trip. Though racked multiple times, a good amount of yeast stayed in solution which was a shame. Anyways, I've just put together more mead tonight. This mead has KIWIS in it and is made of part-manuka honey that i got at the farmers market. YAY. I hope to bring a sample of this mead to the honey vender down in Lyttleton.

I gave the mead to Dale this time to take care of as I'm going away for a good while starting tomorrow morning. I will be catching a flight to Wellington and renting a car to tour the North Island with my friend Rachel. We'll be staying in lots of huts, eating lots of scroggin, and checking out the geothermal activity up there. At one point we will be staying at a Kiwi orchard run by friends of Rachel's father! Near the end of the trip we will be doing the Tongariro Northern Circuit. That link's a description of the tramp and here's a map. It's supposed to be exceptionally scenic. One of the volcanos we will be walking up and around was used as Mt. Doom in Lord of the Rings.

Expect lots of awesome photos and stories when I get back on October 12th.