So once again I find myself apologising for the lack of updates. After readjusting to a busy new schedule I damaged my foot a fortnight ago which led to a fun Mothers Day, spent at the hospital getting scans.
My poor paw (not the fruit) has settled down thanks to a nice run of anti-inflammatory pills but it's meant the greatest adventures I've been on recently is to the couch and back.
I'll be a good test tomorrow with a shift at the Zoo and hopefully from there I can plan my return to the walks, which I'm really missing. Coming up I have a weekend trip up North scheduled in about 3 weeks to tick a couple off and then in July we're booked in for a trip to Wellington where I will combine attending the Comic-con, visiting Weta Workshop and two hikes over a pretty busy 48 hours.
My hope is that the next update doesn't start with..."I'm sorry.."
Saturday 23 May 2015
Sunday 26 April 2015
Walks 09 and 10....Finally!
So um April has disappeared and I've fallen off the pace. I knew it was coming. A change in jobs, two birthdays, a trip to Rotorua and an upcoming visit to Hamilton meant the month became a challenge for fitting in walks, which doesn't really excuse the fact that this blog is three weeks late and as punishment I shall force myself to eat this chocolate bar which is bad for me....
...ok now that that's been taken care of I shall cast my mind back to the first weekend of April *cue flashback music*
Easter weekend was another great opportunity to check off two walks over the four days so on the Friday I roped in my sister for company once again and we headed to the Whatipu Coast for Walk #9.
Whatipu Coast should be about 40 mins. out of Auckland but the last stretch of road, and I use the word 'road' quite loosely here, is a twisty, mono-lanular (it was that intense I felt the need to create a word) stretch of loose gravel that forces you to drive at about 10 kms an hour, turn off your Elton John CD which keeps trying to jump out of the player, causes your little sister to stop exhaling and extends your trip by about an extra 20 mins. To sum up, it's a bad road.
We arrived later in the day to find the car park full which surprised me, as I assumed that because I hadn't heard of it, that nobody else would know the coast existed. This really has become a journey of knowledge for me. There was a full campsite and lots of families coming and going from the beach track and I was quite overwhelmed by a familiar yet faraway sense of holidays when I was younger, then Nikki reminded me that I hated camping and we were able to move on.
The walks this weekend ended up, by accident, to have a theme...CAVES! The Whatipu Coast has not only a lovely low-tide beach walk, but the track we were following took us past some old sea caves, which varied in size and spookiness. It really was a day were I had to channel my inner nugget of bravery as the walk seemed to take us through the largest collection of Nursery Spider nests I've ever seen. We've encountered their webs on a previous walk, were I think I spotted 2 maybe 3.
Behold the Spiders lair...
Every one of those little white dabs is a nest which closer up looks like this...
Each of which houses many....MANY little spiders. I don't know if they give out awards for braving these sorts of conditions, but they should. Nikki of course, took great joy in my suffering as the numbers of these nests only increased the further along we got.
The walk itself (once you stop thinking about your impending death-by-spider) is lovely. There's a small amount of bush and then you're walking via thin sandy tracks alongside the cliffs with lovely open views towards the sea.
The caves are quite amazing and vary in size and shape, but being the sensible young ladies we are, we chose not to spend too much time off the path exploring in the dark.
It's a one-way track to the caves so we returned back the way we'd come and then took the path down to the beach to continue the hike.
Discovering the joys of walking on sand was an adventure all on its own, but the beach presented a wonderful second half to the walk. A world away from the enclosed trail by the caves, the wide open space leads you to towards a lovely lighthouse with a beautiful view of the coast.
And then you're spoilt again by the return view of the Waitakere Ranges.
A lovely walk that left us quite exhausted, but happy in all that we'd seen.....except the spiders...
Walk #10 on Sunday was one that I'd been really looking forward to. Not only did I get to enjoy a road trip out of Auckland with two lovely friends, we were joined on the walk by members of the Waikato Parkinson's Committee which had been organised with the help of Dilys Parker who contacted me after my first walk down in Hamilton. Dilys does a lot of great work for people with Parkison's and you can check out her Facebook page here
As much as I'd been looking forward to it, I almost messed up this trip. For some reason my muddled mind thought that Waitomo (our destination for this walk) was on the Auckland side of Hamilton, a leisurely 1 1/2 hours away, but the night before I checked my maps and no, that wasn't quite right. Waitomo is an extra hour on the other side of Hamilton so I had to send panicked messages to my friends Kim and Jill who were travelling with me to break the news that it was going to be an 8.30am start. Luckily they're both wonderful and nothing was a problem so early the next day we headed South.
Waitomo is a tourist hot spot, famous for the glow worm caves which bring visitors by the bus load to the tiny village every day which is only frustrating when you're stuck behind a couple of those buses. Our walk was another 10 minutes down the road after Tourist Central at Ruakuri Caves which was a nice, much quieter spot.
Once there we were joined by Peter and Kelvin and their wives from the committee and we were ready to set off.
This was a beautiful bush walk that took us up and past some fascinating limestone walls, through tunnels, across bridges and ultimately into a massive cavern which I'm told is even more impressive at night but was still amazing.
Sadly my camera (and its operator) are not very good at taking pictures in the dark...in a cave so please enjoy the worst photo you'll ever see of the inside of a cave...
I could have used my flash but didn't want to startle any (read spider) animal that may have been dwelling in there.
I'm finding myself more and more obsessed with trees as we go along these walks and as we followed the loop back to the car park we passed some amazing examples. I'm starting to believe that I must have been a Woodland Elf in a previous life.
Once we were back we had a really nice lunch before the journey back and I'm so grateful to the whole group for their company and hope we're able to all meet up again for another walk sometime in the Waikato area....after April ;)
...ok now that that's been taken care of I shall cast my mind back to the first weekend of April *cue flashback music*
Easter weekend was another great opportunity to check off two walks over the four days so on the Friday I roped in my sister for company once again and we headed to the Whatipu Coast for Walk #9.
Whatipu Coast should be about 40 mins. out of Auckland but the last stretch of road, and I use the word 'road' quite loosely here, is a twisty, mono-lanular (it was that intense I felt the need to create a word) stretch of loose gravel that forces you to drive at about 10 kms an hour, turn off your Elton John CD which keeps trying to jump out of the player, causes your little sister to stop exhaling and extends your trip by about an extra 20 mins. To sum up, it's a bad road.
We arrived later in the day to find the car park full which surprised me, as I assumed that because I hadn't heard of it, that nobody else would know the coast existed. This really has become a journey of knowledge for me. There was a full campsite and lots of families coming and going from the beach track and I was quite overwhelmed by a familiar yet faraway sense of holidays when I was younger, then Nikki reminded me that I hated camping and we were able to move on.
The walks this weekend ended up, by accident, to have a theme...CAVES! The Whatipu Coast has not only a lovely low-tide beach walk, but the track we were following took us past some old sea caves, which varied in size and spookiness. It really was a day were I had to channel my inner nugget of bravery as the walk seemed to take us through the largest collection of Nursery Spider nests I've ever seen. We've encountered their webs on a previous walk, were I think I spotted 2 maybe 3.
Behold the Spiders lair...
Every one of those little white dabs is a nest which closer up looks like this...
The walk itself (once you stop thinking about your impending death-by-spider) is lovely. There's a small amount of bush and then you're walking via thin sandy tracks alongside the cliffs with lovely open views towards the sea.
The caves are quite amazing and vary in size and shape, but being the sensible young ladies we are, we chose not to spend too much time off the path exploring in the dark.
It's a one-way track to the caves so we returned back the way we'd come and then took the path down to the beach to continue the hike.
Discovering the joys of walking on sand was an adventure all on its own, but the beach presented a wonderful second half to the walk. A world away from the enclosed trail by the caves, the wide open space leads you to towards a lovely lighthouse with a beautiful view of the coast.
And then you're spoilt again by the return view of the Waitakere Ranges.
Walk #10 on Sunday was one that I'd been really looking forward to. Not only did I get to enjoy a road trip out of Auckland with two lovely friends, we were joined on the walk by members of the Waikato Parkinson's Committee which had been organised with the help of Dilys Parker who contacted me after my first walk down in Hamilton. Dilys does a lot of great work for people with Parkison's and you can check out her Facebook page here
As much as I'd been looking forward to it, I almost messed up this trip. For some reason my muddled mind thought that Waitomo (our destination for this walk) was on the Auckland side of Hamilton, a leisurely 1 1/2 hours away, but the night before I checked my maps and no, that wasn't quite right. Waitomo is an extra hour on the other side of Hamilton so I had to send panicked messages to my friends Kim and Jill who were travelling with me to break the news that it was going to be an 8.30am start. Luckily they're both wonderful and nothing was a problem so early the next day we headed South.
Waitomo is a tourist hot spot, famous for the glow worm caves which bring visitors by the bus load to the tiny village every day which is only frustrating when you're stuck behind a couple of those buses. Our walk was another 10 minutes down the road after Tourist Central at Ruakuri Caves which was a nice, much quieter spot.
Once there we were joined by Peter and Kelvin and their wives from the committee and we were ready to set off.
This was a beautiful bush walk that took us up and past some fascinating limestone walls, through tunnels, across bridges and ultimately into a massive cavern which I'm told is even more impressive at night but was still amazing.
Sadly my camera (and its operator) are not very good at taking pictures in the dark...in a cave so please enjoy the worst photo you'll ever see of the inside of a cave...
I'm finding myself more and more obsessed with trees as we go along these walks and as we followed the loop back to the car park we passed some amazing examples. I'm starting to believe that I must have been a Woodland Elf in a previous life.
Once we were back we had a really nice lunch before the journey back and I'm so grateful to the whole group for their company and hope we're able to all meet up again for another walk sometime in the Waikato area....after April ;)
Monday 30 March 2015
Walk 08 - Kawau Island
One of the aspects of this journey that I'm really enjoying is getting to visit places that I've either not been to before, or was so teeny when I did go that it's visit has long been forgotten as was the case with Kawau Island. I have, it's been told to me, been there when I was very little but I had no memory of it until we arrived at Mansion House and I was flooded with the memory of a particularly large Moreton bay Fig Tree which stands on the grounds. I have no other recollection of it, aside from that one tree. It is, to be fair a very big tree.
Kawau Island is one of the bigger islands in the Hauraki Gulf, accessed by a ferry out of Sandspit which is an easy drive of less than an hour North of Auckland. The island was once owned by one of New Zealand's first governors who transformed the existing Copper Mine managers cottage into the extensive Mansion House which still stands today, is the main attraction of the island and will have you yearning for a lottery win as you depart and head back to your standard, normal sized home.
We caught the mail ferry out of Sandspit which makes a stop at a collection of bays around the island on the way to the final drop off point at Mansion House Bay. The weather was looking a little threatening as we headed out but aside from some aggressive wind out on the boat we got lucky again.
The run took us past a lovely collection of old batches and expensive new developments which must have had stunning views. Lovely sailboats sit waiting in the water beside private docks and life just suddenly felt a lot more lazy and relaxed.
We departed the ferry early on it's first stop at Mansion Bay as we wanted enough time for lunch and the hike before the boat ride back and it was hard for me not to feel like we were involved in a scene from an old Agatha Christie story as we pulled in to the bay, with the beautiful house dominating the view and peacocks patrolling the dock. I was primed and ready to solve a murder using the little grey cells.
Sadly their were no crimes that required our attention so we enjoyed our picnic lunch and the quiet that our early disembarkment had allowed us. As we ate we were visited by the peacocks, a pair of curious (and I would imagine well fed) ducks and some Weka which are a flightless bird about the size of a small chicken.
Our walking track took us up and above Mansion Bay before heading down to Two House Bay and then inland past a large Redwood tree that was planted by governor Sir George Grey, then up to the turning point at a lookout over the remains of the old copper mine before heading back towards Mansion house.
80% of the walk is in amongst the bush and at times the only noise is the wind in the tree tops which is quickly becoming one of my favourite sounds. Mum and Nikki were once again great company and were very supportive and comforting once I realised it was unlikely we were going to see any wild Wallabies bouncing about.
Once we had finished our hike we had just enough time for a quick tour of Mansion House (no photography allowed unfortunately) which I highly recommend if you're visiting Kawau. For only $4 per person you're treated to an extremely well preserved glimpse into the past and it was a wonderful way to end our visit before the quick, 20 minute trip back to Sandspit Wharf.
Coming up this week is the start of April and with it, Parkinson's Awareness Month. I'll be doing two walks this weekend including one in Hamilton with some people from the Waikato region who are coming out to support the walks and the Parkinson's community. I'm really looking forward to meeting them and expanding my circle of friends as I hit double digits with walk #10.
Kawau Island is one of the bigger islands in the Hauraki Gulf, accessed by a ferry out of Sandspit which is an easy drive of less than an hour North of Auckland. The island was once owned by one of New Zealand's first governors who transformed the existing Copper Mine managers cottage into the extensive Mansion House which still stands today, is the main attraction of the island and will have you yearning for a lottery win as you depart and head back to your standard, normal sized home.
We caught the mail ferry out of Sandspit which makes a stop at a collection of bays around the island on the way to the final drop off point at Mansion House Bay. The weather was looking a little threatening as we headed out but aside from some aggressive wind out on the boat we got lucky again.
We departed the ferry early on it's first stop at Mansion Bay as we wanted enough time for lunch and the hike before the boat ride back and it was hard for me not to feel like we were involved in a scene from an old Agatha Christie story as we pulled in to the bay, with the beautiful house dominating the view and peacocks patrolling the dock. I was primed and ready to solve a murder using the little grey cells.
80% of the walk is in amongst the bush and at times the only noise is the wind in the tree tops which is quickly becoming one of my favourite sounds. Mum and Nikki were once again great company and were very supportive and comforting once I realised it was unlikely we were going to see any wild Wallabies bouncing about.
Coming up this week is the start of April and with it, Parkinson's Awareness Month. I'll be doing two walks this weekend including one in Hamilton with some people from the Waikato region who are coming out to support the walks and the Parkinson's community. I'm really looking forward to meeting them and expanding my circle of friends as I hit double digits with walk #10.
Sunday 15 March 2015
Walk 07 - Kitekite Falls
Gosh it feels like an eternity since my last blog post...I was starting to have withdrawals! My apologies for falling a little behind, but it's been such a busy week. It was my intention to post this instead of going for a walk this past weekend and then suddenly it was Monday. Before I know it, it'll be March.....wait it's what?!?!?
So on the 8th my lovely mum and sister joined me for a little journey out to the Waitakere Ranges for a hike to the Kitekite Falls. The Ranges are about 40 minutes out of Auckland and encompass over 16,000 hectares of land including forest, beaches and waterfalls.
It's very dense in places and home to many native animals as well as wild pigs so is not the place to venture out alone, especially if you're a beginner and say, someone out for their 7th walk. On our way in to the park we stopped at the Arataki Visitor Centre to get a more detailed map of the area we were headed to. It's a fabulous place to visit and is stocked with a huge range of free travel guides for the whole of NZ as well as some exhibits showcasing the history of the area, clean toilets, a couple of reptile enclosures, amazing views, clean toilets, an ice cream truck and oh...clean toilets. And if you are braving the ranges by yourself it's a good idea to pop in and let the staff know who you are and where you're heading.
The start of our walk to the falls was just inland from Piha, a popular surf beach and home to Lion Rock, a rock which, now stay with me here...looks like a lion(ish). A large Kauri stump marks the start of the track and you're initially treated to a lovely graded walk past a stream and into the the ranges.
Though there are are indications of how treacherous the area can be as we passed an area of track which had broken away above the water and as we started the climb up, the area to the left became a sheer drop.
You couldn't help but have a conversation about how solo walkers were only one slip away from being swallowed up by the bush. I don't intend to make it sound like a scary place, but I'm becoming more mindful of the safety aspects of these adventures.
We noted there weren't as many bird sounds on this walk and I did miss the Tui and Bellbird calls which I was becoming used to. Cicada chirps filled the air on this day, though we were fortunate enough to spot a Wood Pigeon on the return hike which was a treat, especially for Nikki on her first hike with us.
The climb was pretty steady and we were feeling it by the time we reached our highest point, though we were passed by a large walking group who had some kind words of encouragement, especially from a member of Parkinson's NZ who was amongst them and that helped us dig deep. The people we're meeting along the way who stop and talk to us about what we're doing have such an impact and really motivate us to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
We stopped at our first glimpse of the falls which looked especially lovely on such a hot day.
and a fellow walker offered to take a picture for us which was sweet.
Heading down to the base of the falls was an adventure all on it's own. The well maintained track becomes muddy steps, which in turn becomes a rocky, rope climb that opens up to an access point that sees you making a couple of brave steps across the stream itself to a rocky area that had swimmers and sun lovers scattered about it. We weren't dressed for swimming or stream hopping so only made a quick stop before hauling ourselves back up the incline.
The route back was much easier as it was downhill for most of the way and we made frequent stops to admire the views.
It's the first walk where I've really felt hidden away in the heart of something uniquely Kiwi and it was a great day out.
So on the 8th my lovely mum and sister joined me for a little journey out to the Waitakere Ranges for a hike to the Kitekite Falls. The Ranges are about 40 minutes out of Auckland and encompass over 16,000 hectares of land including forest, beaches and waterfalls.
It's very dense in places and home to many native animals as well as wild pigs so is not the place to venture out alone, especially if you're a beginner and say, someone out for their 7th walk. On our way in to the park we stopped at the Arataki Visitor Centre to get a more detailed map of the area we were headed to. It's a fabulous place to visit and is stocked with a huge range of free travel guides for the whole of NZ as well as some exhibits showcasing the history of the area, clean toilets, a couple of reptile enclosures, amazing views, clean toilets, an ice cream truck and oh...clean toilets. And if you are braving the ranges by yourself it's a good idea to pop in and let the staff know who you are and where you're heading.
The start of our walk to the falls was just inland from Piha, a popular surf beach and home to Lion Rock, a rock which, now stay with me here...looks like a lion(ish). A large Kauri stump marks the start of the track and you're initially treated to a lovely graded walk past a stream and into the the ranges.
Though there are are indications of how treacherous the area can be as we passed an area of track which had broken away above the water and as we started the climb up, the area to the left became a sheer drop.
You couldn't help but have a conversation about how solo walkers were only one slip away from being swallowed up by the bush. I don't intend to make it sound like a scary place, but I'm becoming more mindful of the safety aspects of these adventures.
We noted there weren't as many bird sounds on this walk and I did miss the Tui and Bellbird calls which I was becoming used to. Cicada chirps filled the air on this day, though we were fortunate enough to spot a Wood Pigeon on the return hike which was a treat, especially for Nikki on her first hike with us.
The climb was pretty steady and we were feeling it by the time we reached our highest point, though we were passed by a large walking group who had some kind words of encouragement, especially from a member of Parkinson's NZ who was amongst them and that helped us dig deep. The people we're meeting along the way who stop and talk to us about what we're doing have such an impact and really motivate us to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
We stopped at our first glimpse of the falls which looked especially lovely on such a hot day.
and a fellow walker offered to take a picture for us which was sweet.
Heading down to the base of the falls was an adventure all on it's own. The well maintained track becomes muddy steps, which in turn becomes a rocky, rope climb that opens up to an access point that sees you making a couple of brave steps across the stream itself to a rocky area that had swimmers and sun lovers scattered about it. We weren't dressed for swimming or stream hopping so only made a quick stop before hauling ourselves back up the incline.
The route back was much easier as it was downhill for most of the way and we made frequent stops to admire the views.
It's the first walk where I've really felt hidden away in the heart of something uniquely Kiwi and it was a great day out.
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