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On our final day in the Northland region, we headed to the west to the Waipoua Kauri Forest. The kauri is a pine-bearing tree that goes through remarkable changes in its stages in life. It starts off looking like a normal pine tree. As it matures in its middle age, the trunk widens (I can't relate to this mid-section widening during middle age) and the top thins out. The giants in this forest, that escaped logging have spread to boast vast cylindrical trunks that measure up to 14 meters.
The drive to the forest's visitor center took us about 2 1/2 hours. Gertrude prefers to take us off the state highways (which are nearly all just single-laned winding roads with occasional straight-aways). On this particular jaunt, she led us through vast farmland with occasional thick forest. The detour was at least 40 minutes on rain-soaked gravel roads. Occasionally we would dart out of the forest to be met by a light fog stretching out over the green hills of the farm land. Quite beautiful.
Since we couldn't program the actual visitor center into Gertrude, she took us to the south side of the forest. We finally made our way
Theo flies through the forest
Theo used a couple of fallen ferns to use as wings as he flew through the forest on the elevated wooden walkways.to the visitor center (there were actually signs to it!) where we inquired about the hikes. The visitor center was a small building of which half was being converted into a diner. The gift shop and visitor center displays were stuffed into the other half. We were only a short drive from the main hike which would take us on three different tracks. Upon leaving the visitor center we saw a small flock of rosella, a colorful parrot which was a flash of bright green and purple between the trees.
The first split in the trail brought us to the Four Sisters. Elegant boardwalks have been built over parts of all the trails in the Kauri Forest to protect the shallow and delicate roots of the kauri. Tramping over the roots has left them prone to disease. We actually had to scrape our shoes and spray them with an anti-bacterial formula to avoid tracking any unwanted fungus into the area.
The second trail led us to "Te Matua Ngahere" - The Father of the Forest. This was a lovely walk through a mature forest where we passed tree after massive tree on the way to the second-largest kauri
Ivy, Suzy and Geddy
A brief stop for a photo op...Theo was surely running off to terrorize the photo shoots of others on the track. tree. The forest was thick with life and the light drizzle that accompanied us through much of the hike did nothing but add to the atmosphere. Mosses and ferns filled every space on the forest floor and even the trunks of most trees. Some of the dead kauri were hosts to so many plants, that they were covered in bright green.
The third fork of this hike was a trail that was closed about 2 kilometers in, so we made a turn around at an overlook of a grove of kauri, Cathedral Grove. The setting was so serene and beautiful. Again, we had been in this section of the forest and our total non-family body count was at 3. About a quarter of the hike was on boardwalks which were overlaid in a hard rubber mesh to prevent slippage. This was nice as the last section of the trail where we turned around got rather steep.
Our final tramp had us driving another couple of kilometers to "Tane Mahuta" - the God of the Forest. This towering battlement of a tree may be over 2,000 years old and boasts a girth of 14 meters with 17 meters from
the ground to its first limbs. As large and impressive as Tane Mahuta is, it is amazing (and depressing) to find that the largest kauri tree had a 23 meter girth. The straight, clean and gorgeous wood of the kauri lead to its near total demise as it was used for ship-building and house-building. Tane Mahuta could provide enough wood to build 12 3-bedroom homes. Fortunately this section of Northland escaped the arboreal genocide. This was apparently more by dumb luck than actual conservation efforts. The country is trying to make strides toward expanding its national park system. Currently the Waipoua Kauri Forest is part of a regional park as are most of the other parklands that we have visited.
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Michelle
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Wow!
Your travels look so exciting! I am vicariously moving along while, in reality, we finish up the last few weeks of school. Best wished for continued safety and fun! Love, M