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I went on the coastal walk on the 12th on both the mainland side from Paihia to Opua (about a 5 km hike) and across the car ferry to the Russell side (about 11 km out of town in Okiato). I tagged along with another backpacker named Penny who wanted to do the trail as well, the hike was great on the Paihia side, a lot of beach and a some nice semi-tropical forest. The weather was alright at first, but about 3 hours into the walk when we were somewhere between Okiato and Russell the rain started to come down.
They love rats and possums here, love them in the sense that they would be happy if every one would stop living. Immediately. Rats as possums kill kiwi bird chicks as eat their eggs, and seeing as the kiwi bird’s populations is at a very low point, they are doing a lot of things to control vermin populations in kiwi bird habitats. The main way they’re doing that is by leaving “Rat and Possum Poison” boxes attached to trees. A fun game is trying to say “rat and possum poison” 5 times fast, and it becomes even more fun
when I attempt it because even slowly it seemed that all I could say was rat and patton poison (see the face book video).
Being the prepared guy I always am, I’d be bound to take a jacket with me for the hike right? Wrong. I thought we were only going out for a couple hours, but it turned out that our whole ordeal took us about 5 and a half hours. The temperature is still warm here rain or shine, and I was rather warm because the trail was rated as requiring a “High Level of Fitness” so my blood was pumping. We lost the trail about 4 km into it, so we followed the highway (see only road) toward Russell with the rain coming down the whole time.
The sympathy that I received from my traveling companion was staggering (see extreme sarcasm) with comments along the lines of “You should have brought a rain coat” and “Look at how much rain is coming down!” When we got to a crossroad that indicated 5 km to town we decided to stick our thumbs out for a ride, the first vehicle going in to town was a school
bus that was on it’s way there to pick up kids from school and he pulled over right away. People in New Zealand are very helpful but I think the fact that I look like a drowned rat probably helped us get a ride.
We hid from the rain in a pub called The Pub Around the Corner and had their fish and chips while we waited for the only passenger ferry that was operating that day. Even when we got on the ferry we had to wait for a while because the captain had to run to the store and pick up some groceries.
A couple of days after I went on a walk to the Haruru Falls with a couple of guys (Craig and Daniel) I met before in Auckland. We did loop instead of taking the path to the falls and heading back the way we came. The only other way is to take the highway to the falls and then go on the hiking trail (or vice versa) and you get to see the small town of Haruru Falls.
The falls were a little bit of a let down after all the effort
we went through to see them, but I did snap a good number of photos. The walk back was pretty good and the weather behaved for up until the end of the trip (which was fine because I learned my lesson from the first time). We saw a freaking amazing bolt of lightening from a look out point across a big valley, which prompted us to hurriedly leave the metal clad high point on the valley’s opposite side. Shortly after the lightening incident, the rain came down in sheets and Daniel was the poor guy who only had a pair of shorts, sandals, and a t-shirt so we had to chill out under some trees.
Today (2 days after the falls hike) I went for an outing with Elodie (a girl from Germany), Dan (a guy from England), and Penny to Russell and walked up to Flagstaff Hill and got a great view of everything! I snagged some fish and chips as we dashed back to the ferry and got back in time for Elodie and Dan to get on to the Kiwi Experience bus back to Auckland.
Talk to you all later!
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Dad
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Wet Rat?
Hope you did not partake of any of the Rat poison. And by the way, tell Penny a little water never hurt anyone! Keep up the great postings! Love, Dad