Tag: Walking Track

Exploring Putangirua Pinnacles Scenic Reserve

On By exploringthelongwhitecloudIn North Island, Wellington RegionLeave a comment

I don’t know about you, but I have quite a long bucket list of places I want to visit and experiences I want to have in New Zealand and abroad. Some, like a weekend at Lakestone lodge, come with a rather large price ticket attached. Others can be enjoyed for free.

The Pinnacles Track is a walk in the Wairarapa that I have been wanting to do for some time. It featured in Peter Jackson’s LOTR – Return of the King film as The Path to the Dead. Whether you are a LOTR fan or not, this is an excellent walk and a great place to explore.

Let me set the scene; It is Matariki (Maori New Year, the first year this has been a public holiday here) and Daniel and I have decided to take the opportunity to go exploring. It’s a cold day, but the sun is trying to break through the clouds as we make the 1.5 hour drive to the reserve. I do love winter. Especially on a calm, still day. The soft blue hues of winter skies and cool mist hugging the bare trees, it’s quiet and peaceful. It’s a scenic drive, and even if we weren’t going for the walk, it would have been a nice day out.

We arrive late in the morning and I am quite surprised by the number of cars that are here. For a walk that is so remote, it seems pretty popular. We set out along the trail, if you can really call it that. You can’t really get lost (and that’s saying a lot coming from me) but the track is more just walking along the river stones, following the stream. It gets a bit muddy in parts and several times we have to cross the river, jumping across stones. (Flash back to our Abel Tasman Walk earlier in the year where I pulled a muscle in my leg from jumping over stones) Needless to say, I take a lot of care doing this. No injuries this time, and I stay dry. Good job!

The first half of the walk is flat, easy walking, following the river. Toi Toi and flax grow alongside the river and the surrounding hills are green with vegetation.

And then the landscape changes. We leave the river and the green hills behind us. This will be hard, I can see the incline goes on for sometime. I try to pace myself and watch my footing. We are walking on a mix of stones, gravel and shingle. And then Daniel calls out “Frog”. I look over to where he is pointing and just above his foot is a little green frog. I think it’s the first time I have seen a frog in the wild. It just sits there, its little webbed feet clinging onto its rock, not really bothered by us.

While part of me would like to hang out here for a while and continue watching the frog, I know I need to keep moving before I lose my momentum.

This is the first time since leaving the river that I have really looked up. We are in a fairly narrow channel, surrounded by tall, straight rock cliffs. It’s a really impressive sight. We make it to the top, stopping to take it all in and look at how high we climbed. The rock formations are something else, small and large rock chips fused together with a natural cement that has gradually been eroded away over time. They are so tall and straight, standing proud and towering overhead.

We head back along the same track to the river. The surface is rocky and uneven, so I spend a lot of time looking at my footing so I don’t trip. This does mean that I blindly follow Daniel into the mud. He is agile enough to be able to jump up onto the side of a hill and bypass it. Me on the other hand, well, I just have to go through it. (On reflection I could have back tracked and found a different route, but I didn’t have that thought at the time.) So I finish the walk covered in thick mud, well past my ankles. What an adventure.

We make it back to the car, and since we are in The Wairarapa, we head home via one of my favorite towns, Martinborough, to sit in the sun at The Village Cafe and refuel with some lunch. It was an excellent day out.

Turquoise Water, Swing Bridges and Pool

On By exploringthelongwhitecloudIn South Island, West Coast Region1 Comment

It’s a riding day today. We need to get from Hokitika to Mt Lyford. It’s a 4 hour ride, but as we only really need to get from A to B, we decide to head to Hokitika Gorge for a walk.

It’s an easy 30 minute walk, along a well maintained path, through forest, with lots of viewing platforms to stop and admire the view. The track snakes it’s way along, following the gorge. Not long into the walk, we get our first proper look at the gorge from a viewing platform.

It’s stunning. The water is a gorgeous, milky, turquoise blue. I am sure it’s probably quite fast flowing, but the water isn’t wild and raging like I had expected.

It feels peaceful.

Kereru (native wood pigeon) are swooping through the gorge, birds are chattering away and I can hear the sounds of the leaf litter and gravel beneath my feet. The sounds of the forest.

Along the walk we come to two swing bridges. The first holds up to 6 people at a time. It crosses over the gorge and swings about a bit in the air, but not too much. I am ok with this height. My knees aren’t buckling and I am able to get some excellent, uninterrupted views out across the gorge.

The second bridge is much newer. It can hold up to 20 people and doesn’t really move around. Daniel pauses for a while to admire it’s structure and foundations. I am sure if left him to take all the photos, the majority would be of structures, cranes and fancy cars. (We have a lot of motorbike photos from our Italy trip, and Daniel’s photo of the Colosseum is actually of some construction work with the Colosseum in the background!)

It’s quite a warm day. The downside to travelling on a motorbike is having to do the walk in all our protective gear, along with carrying our helmets, as we don’t have enough luggage space to store it with the bike. It’s a rather sweaty walk. But soon enough we are back on the bike and that cools me down pretty quickly. We have a long ride a head of us so we jump back on the motorbike and make our way to Greymouth for lunch.

It’s amazing the difference that weather makes to a place. The last time we stayed in Greymouth, the weather was very dreary, grey and bleak. I didn’t think much of the place. Today the sun is shining, Greymouth is sun kissed and seems rather nice.

We continue our journey, we are heading East, taking The Lewis Pass to get there. We travel through forest and I can smell it. Damp, earthy and fresh. Amazing. I love the way travelling by motorbike allows you to interact with your surrounding and environment, much more so than in a car.

We follow the river for a while and then the road turns up into the hills. Its a really quiet road. It’s normally quite a popular one I believe but with no international tourism at the moment, we have the whole road to ourselves! It’s nice not having to worry about meeting other vehicles driving on the wrong side of the road (which does seem to happen a bit in popular tourist destinations here.)

We arrive at My Lyford, a lodge nestled into the hills. 5 minutes later I am in the spa pool, soaking away the aches from a long ride. Dinner is at the lodge but we decide to have a few pre-dinner drinks over a few games of pool. We are both as bad as each other but it’s an enjoyable and relaxed way to spend the evening.