Saturday, March 12, 2005


Saturday, 12 Mar - Whitianga
Day breaks with a great view from our room over Cooks Beach, the sun shining across from the right. Our friend have no curtains or blinds in this room, nor in the shower with its full length windows, which appeals to the exhibitionist in me, except that the birds are my only victims.
Mid-morning we make a move for our walk in the bush, or tramp as it's called here. It's the Lynch Stream Walk, starting from 5 km north of Tairua and 2 km from the coast, the idea being to go up over a ridge and then down to the coast in 2h30m and then spend another hour walking along the beach to a carpark where the car will then be waiting for us.
It's a drizzly day, occasionally stopping raining for a while and then immediately compensating for this reprieve by pelting down for twice as long.
The walk isn't that strenuous but you certainly have to concentrate well on where to put your feet as it's pretty slippery, particularly when crossing the stream, which we do maybe 30 or 40 times. It's a very rewarding hike, giving us the feel of what fairly dense bush is like to travel through. Trees of interest are the Kauri that only grows in the Northland and where we are, on the Coromandel Peninsula. It can grow to 30 meters and can live for a couple of thousand years. Another tree is the Nikau which looks like a coconut tree but isn't: ni kau in Polynesian meaning 'no coconuts'. The last one I recall is the tall Rimu or red pine, with draping foliage.
When we get to the coast we stop for half an hour to have a picnic lunch. It's raining harder now.
A couple hundred meters further along two women have got a shelter set up and a fire going. Apparently they've been there since yesterday. We have a short chat and they offer us some tea, which we decline, despite the fire offering a nice contrast to our wet clothes. We push on, finding the last leg across plenty of rocks, some slippery, some not, quite challenging because of the concentration involved.
We finish up in sunshine at Sailors Grave where, not entirely to our surprise, we find the late 19th century grave of a young sailor.
After a warm shower and some dry clothes we talk about where we should go for the rest of our stay and get the main features pencilled in. We enjoy a meal of barbecued lamb chops, sausages and various vegetables including the sweet potato 'kumara', accompanied by some local Merlot.
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