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 ;)

 













4 comments:

  1. So happy you are hiking and blogging again! I missed reading of your adventures and seeing pictures of the beautiful places you visit for your walks! Both these walks looked like fun, despite the spiders! Love the pictures of the beach. So happy to see you went to Waitomo because I have been there! Woohoo! I saw the amazing glow worm caves!
    Great fun! Glad you're back!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'll have to go back on a quieter day for the Waitomo tour as the number of tour buses there was really off-putting. Maybe next holidays :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. "...this blog is three weeks late and as punishment I shall force myself to eat this chocolate bar which is bad for me" LMAO :-P

    Those trees are beautiful indeed ^_^
    So pleased to virtually travel with you!

    ReplyDelete