Mt Haszard and Waimangu - 28th Dec. 2006

Another Rotorua walk (guess where Span went for her holiday!). Again this is not actually in Rotorua, but on a side road off State Highway 5, heading to Taupo. And this is the first walk I've paid for - $28 each for the privilege. This bought us access to the valley, with it's many thermal wonders, and a really quite comprehensive leaflet outlining the key points, local flora and fauna, the route, and with a timetable for the boat (extra, didn't use) and bus (included, used to get back to the start).

Everytime we go to 'vegas and have some spare time we try to go to one of the geothermal areas. Partly this is because I am trying to find the one that I visited when I was about 8, when I stayed for the first time ever in a hotel where they put mints on the pillow at night. Unfortunately Waimangu was not the right smelly part of Rotorua, but it was a good walk.

The whole main walk is downhill, starting with some beautiful panoramas from the top. You slowly wend your way down the valley to Lake Rotomahana, where you can pay extra to go on a cruise to where the pink and white terraces used to be.

The first geothermal wonder is the Emerald Pool in the Southern Crater, which has some very orderly algae and sphagnum moss. I'm not sure this counts as geothermal as it's cold.

Next though is the Echo Crater and Frying Pan Lake, as well as the Cathedral Rocks that loom over one end. Seriously large amounts of steam.

At the end of the lake you can walk right down to a hot water creek and springs, with mineral deposits creating a crazy palette.

Then there's the brilliant turquoise Inferno Crater and the Bird's Nest Terrace.

At this point we decided to head up. You can follow the main path along the floor of the valley, following the hot water stream, or you can climb the hiking trail up and over Mt Haszard. I was sure when we bought our tickets that the seller said it was only another 20 minutes, but the leaflet said an extra hour. We did it in about 40 minutes I think.

It is a very rugged track going up, and my there is a lot of up; even the down is very steep. Nice views of the Rift Valley (no, not the one in Africa) and the lake though.

And also some of these flowers.

Then it was back to the main track, with more mineral-painted terraces such as the Marble and Warbrick. Then a short nature walk to the lake and the bus back up the hill. I was pretty disappointed with the nature walk, until all of a sudden there was a crashing in the bush and a wallaby on the track. A bad time to run out of memory space, luckily it was patient with me.

There were two of the blighters, clearly hoping for some food. We callously did not indulge them.

And then we were at the lake.

All up I think the walk took us around two hours. Unfortunately Nickname Pending didn't check his watch at the start. It's a gentle downhill incline, suitable for wheeled conveniences, with the exception of the Mt Haszard part, as previously mentioned.

Tarawera Outlet to Tarawera Falls - 27th Dec. 2006

This is a Rotorua-based walk, although more accurately it ought to be called a Kawerau-based walk, as that's the closest town. To get to the start of the walk you need to go along the Forestry Tarawera Road, which is a private, unsealed, road, hence the need for a permit from the information centre in Kawerau. It's $2.50, and they give you two maps of the area and the road, as well as the permit itself.

Once you get to the camping ground by Lake Tarawera, it's a simple matter of walking over the new wooden bridge (which has replaced the swing bridge referred to in the Walks in the Rotorua Lakes area leaflet we bought from the Rotorua Information Centre). Then you can pick the walk left to Humphrey's Bay and ultimately meet up with the Lake Okataina tracks, or you can turn right, as we did, to the Tarawera Falls.

The Tarawera Outlet is where the river from the lake to the falls begins. It's a typical NZ freshwater estuary, complete with children jumping off the bridge when we were there.

The walk partly follows the river as it heads towards the falls, but wends away at times. Much of the bush has regenerated since the 1886 explosion of Tarawera, and there are massive rocks strewn through the surrounds - often with trees now growing around or through them. It gives you a sense of the power of the eruption to see these huge boulders thrown so far from the mountain. In places the ground is totally overgrown with odd little plants and mosses, in others ferns predominate. The bush here was not like in the Greater Auckland area - few kauri, no nikaus, mostly pohutukawa, rata, and other trees I wasn't familiar with. While we heard a lot of birdsong none came close enough to see or snap.

The track also goes through a particularly alien landscape at one point. Most of the time it's all reasonably typical native bush for this part of the country, but then you end up in this higher area, where it's all scrubby manuka, much of it covered in black moss. Perhaps a part of the land particularly scarred by the eruption.

The river itself has a number of minor waterfalls along it,

and also a very inviting water hole, complete with several rope swings. Very tranquil and restful.

Other parts are reasonably wild, and at several points various parts of the river plunge down into the rock and disappear underground,

Ultimately we ended up at Tarawera Falls, where the river spurts out of the cliffs. There's a cobbled area there with a few benches and we stopped to have a picnic before heading back.

It took us about an hour and a half to get to the falls, stopping a lot for photos. On the way back it started to rain a little so we pushed the pace a bit and made it the whole way back in only an hour. The signs (and leaflet) say two hours each way, and there is quite a bit of up (some with stairs) but mostly it's a gentle slope down on the way to the falls, and obviously the reverse on the way back. I would also advise wearing closed shoes. The track is maintained through small stones which are really annoying if you are wearing sandals, even decent ones like Tevas.

If you wanted to see the falls but didn't want to walk so far you can also access them through a 20 minute walk from Waterfall Road, where there is a carpark and toilets apparently. But that would be cheating.

Again no walking - weather inclement

We even drove to the carpark for the start of my bad weather back-up walk, but the weather is just too cold to risk the showers.

Cornwall Park and One Tree Hill - 16th Dec. 2006

Today Nickname Pending and I didn't go too far afield - it's about a twenty minute drive from our place to One Tree Hill, which we would be able to see out our lounge window if it wasn't for the cursed trees across the road and their damnable upward growth.

Following the instructions in Day Walks of Greater Auckland, we entered Cornwall Park from the north entrance, which is off Greenlane, on to Pohutukawa Drive. There is a stone wall on the lefthand side as you drive in, and at the end of this, where it meets a wire fence, is a style, and on the other side of that begins the narrow dirt track around the permiter of the Park.

We roughly followed this, through paddocks with sheep,

cattle (including one that wanted me to go away) ,

and lots of nice (largely exotic) trees and long grass.

We made it most of the way around in plenty of time, so decided to go up to the summit once we hit the west entrance road, as recommended in the book. We basically just followed the road up, along with many others, some of whom were disturbingly running and/or pushing baby buggies. Here's a pic of the summit, while walking up to it:

And here's the obligatory child-running-around-the-plaque shot,

Followed by the now mandatory tree's-eye-view(if-there-were-a-tree) pic

From the top we could see a lot of the peaks we have already visited; the Devonport volcanoes, Mt Albert and Mt Roskill, and the Big King (I think, there was a hill with a water tower on top anyway). Then there was my nemesis, Mt Eden, looming malevolently. And of course some lovely views of the city in general, such as the outlook towards the Manukau:

The walking is largely easy, although I would recommend wearing long trousers if you have sensitive skin - I had a lot of welts on my legs from reacting to the grasses. There is a surprising amount of up going around the perimeter, and obviously the summit itself is a hill, but not challenging. Watch out for the animals - most are fine but some are not. In total this walk took us around two and a bit hours, including the detour to the summit. Bird-life is mainly exotic (although we did see a dead tui), as are the trees. If anything it reminded me of walking in a less-tame version of Chatsworth, the English estate.

Waitakere Dam & Tramline Walks - 9th Dec. 2006

Yesterday we drove out along the North-Western Motorway, got off at Lincoln Rd, then headed through Swanson and Ranui (old leafleting haunts both) to Scenic Dr and the Waitakeres.

We did the Dam walk first, which leaves from a carpark on Scenic Dr, handily festooned with a Waitakere Dam Carpark sign. Other signs however were misleading. One said it would take 1 and a quarter hours to get to the dam from the carpark. It took us only about half an hour, following the road down the hill. It's quite a boring walk there really, although we took two short bush diversions - one to a large kauri just off the road, the other was a track than ran below the road for a few minutes with some great views towards the Cascades Golf Course, which we had seen when we did the Auckland City Walk a while back.

Here's the typical view walking along the road to the dam.

The dam itself is quite spectacular, much bigger than I'd expected. There is a noticeboard explaining some of the history of the dam, the tramline, and of course the vital pipeline that carries the water from the reservoir to the city.

The dam from the hill wot you walk down to get to it.

Looking up at the dam from beneath.

There are nice toilets (longdrops of course) and there's a little section of bush below the damn, with some beautiful tui - it's strange seeing them from above and noticing the beautiful teal plummage that we miss from our usual vantage point.

Then we walked back up the hill a little to the start of the Tramline Walk. It doesn't follow the tramline the whole way, as it is too dangerous near the dam itself due to a fragile cliff face. But it was a pleasant and interesting walk including:

Looking back along the track, and the pipeline

A narrow but very high waterfall you walk under:

The first, short, tunnel, going in:

The Tramline Society's mini train - stopped at Picnic Flats when we came across it.

And the second tunnel, which is closed off and apparently quite long (with glowworms!).

It marks the end of the Tramline track and from there you can either turn around and go back to the Dam track to get out, or head along the West Tunnel track. We chose the latter.

Which turned out to be a grand decision, because not only was there cool moss,

there was also impressive fungi.

The West Tunnel track was pretty muddy in parts, and at one point, where we had to cross a stream, it was very difficult to work out where the track went next. There's evidence that the ARC is starting to put boardwalks through, but the work is only just begun and at the moment the track is quite a challenge in parts.

Eventually we met the Anderson Track and turned along that towards Scenic Dr. All well and good until we got to a fork in the track...

In the end we just picked one, no science to it. It took longer than 5 minutes to get there, but we did end up out on Scenic Dr. Unfortunately there was no indication of the direction of the carpark from the bush exit, so again we picked a direction and walked along the road, until we established that we had gone the wrong way, then we walked all the way back to our starting point, and then about another twenty minutes further to the car.

All up I think we walked for about two and a half hours. It would have been just over two without the mistake at the end. The walk to the dam is easy going down, but would be a bit of a puff coming back. The tramline walk is great, but the way out from there is soggy and difficult in parts. Once the boardwalking is complete it will be fantastic.

Perimeter Track, Wenderholm Regional Park - 2nd Dec. 2006

Today we headed north, along State Highway One, past Orewa, and then Waiwera, to sunny Wenderholm and it's Regional Park. As with Cascades Kauri Regional Park, the walks here are well organised - with a useful map at the start of the tracks which takes you through the options, including which are suitable for buggies (or not ok for jandals). The tracks are clearly sign-posted throughout, for the most part, and when it might get confusing, with a number of tracks converging, their are colour-coded posts to help. Big ups to the ARC.

We picked the Perimeter Track, recommended in our Day Walks of Auckland book. This involved a lot of up at the start, as we climbed Maungatauhoro, a former pa site. The tracks up included a lot of steps and boardwalks, as well as several well placed lookouts and a chance to see an old midden (which rather reminded me of why I found archaeology so boring at university).

The views from Maungatauhoro were great, and luckily the weather just got better as the day progressed.

The start of the Puhoi river, below:

Looking east from the top:

Once you reach the top you can either walk back the way you came or take the tramping track down, which is largely unformed and would be very difficult in wet weather. We both had decent walking shoes so we headed down the tougher section, and the grips on my Tevas were indispensable.

Eventually we came out at Kokoru Bay, where in a former life I once cleared some bush (for reasons unknown) during one of those pointless weeks at the end of Sixth Form. Nice view across the river to Waiwera itself.

However the noise from State Highway One is pretty full on from about half-way down the hill until the track stops following the road and turns back into the park around half an hour later. At one point there was a whole gaggle of loud motorbikes heading across the Waiwera bridge, and even though we were a considerable distance away the noise reverberated around the bush and disturbed the peace.

The bush is not as regenerated as at Cascades Kauri, and I don't think I've ever seen so many nikaus in one place. Bird-wise we heard tui, saw piwakawaka (fantails), and of course blackbirds and thrush. My moss obsession continued.

Almost the entire walk is through bush cover, until you start walking back to the carparks, along the road into the park itself. Here there are cows and sheep, not to mention a really large number of ducks. Before heading back to the car, after about an hour and a quarter of walking, we decided to have a quick squizz at Couldrey House.

Lovely spot, unfortunately it was $2 each to go in, which is fine except when you don't have any cash on you.

Then we decided to walk back to our vehicle along the beach. In a vain attempt to extend the tan on my feet beyond the patches my sandals expose I took my Tevas off, forgetting how hot the sand can get on a sunny day. The beach and picnic areas were being well used, and we spotted some oystercatchers on the sand, and of course the ubiquitous gulls.

Great set-up, interesting walk with information points along the way, definitely keen to come back and do some of the other tracks in the area, particularly the Puhoi walk which includes the pa area itself.

(Pictures added 7th Dec)