Adventure! The Otaika Valley

Hello All,

First I want to let everyone know that the cats got to their new home safe and sound. Yeti was even checked out by the local vet...no not me, a local Kiwi vet...who was kind enough to draw his blood for me since I have no syringes and blood tubes here to do it myself. His cancer levels seem to be in check at the moment, so we are holding off on chemotherapy, and just keeping him on his daily Prednisolone which he is taking like a good boy (mainly because it is hidden in a treat...and he gets more treats afterwards).

In other news, I have decided to dub Auckland the "Land of the Winter Rainbow" due to the fact that now that it is winter, it rains about every day but usually the sun is also shining.
This just in. About 5 minutes ago we got a knock on our door from the New Zealand Transport Agency. They just wanted to let us know that they are going to be building a tunnel underneath the road right in front of our house and that they may need to take a bit of the property that our rental house is on to do it. This news is somewhat discouraging as it will almost certainly disrupt our now rather convenient access to bus routes. Grumble! Scott and I have been arg...er discussing this all morning. I say don't build more roads, have less cars. Anyways, I will be sure to update you as events unfold, but you can check out www.waterviewconnection.co.nz to see the tunnel and our proximately to it (we live on Great North Road between Alford and Alverton).

Now for fun news! Well, admittedly the definition of fun used here is Scott and my definition of fun, which may be slightly different than normal definitions of fun. Allow me to explain. On Saturday (or Caturday if you will), Scott and I rented a car to pick up the cats from the quarantine facility. When we have access to a car, we have a strong desire to take advantage of this and to try to do a bit of travelling. So, on Sunday, after the cats were settled in, we decided to take a roadtrip up North a bit to a place called The Otaika Valley where there was a 6km long scenic trail. The weather was supposed to be rainy, windy, and chilly, but none-the-less, we had a car, so we layered our clothing and off we went. The drive itself was about 2 hours and along the way we stopped at a bakery in a little town for some hot meat pies to fuel us for our hike. It took us a little while to find the start of the trail, since there is only a small sign and little turn off along a country road for marking. Obviously, due to the miserable weather, we were the only people on the trail this day. Also to be kept in mind is the fact that although the trail was only 6km long, it wasn't a loop, so we were also going to have to walk the 6km back to the car. We were a little concerned about this fact, but, hey adventure!


This picture give a good idea of the rustic character of the trail...i.e. had it not been for the orange markers, it would not have been abundantly clear that there even was a trail.

This is a picture of a Kumara Pit...I think. Kumara are root vegetable things kinda like sweet potatoes that are very common in this part of the world. There were a bunch of these pits, so we are guessing that this was a site where the native Maori grew kumara?
These are photos of Scott and I about 1ish km in. Notice orange marker on tree.

This bench was about 2.5-3km in.

View of surrounding countryside standing on top of the bench.
This is a section of relatively flat trail. About 3km of the trail was at closer to a 30 degree angle, and slippery and muddy due to the rain.

This was a cool, huge tree that at some point in time had a post with a description on it, but now only has a post. Note raindrop on camera lens.

Bridge over Te Waiiti Stream.
For one brief moment, the sun burst through the cloud cover, just in time for us to reach...
This view!

And another bench.
This shot is at the other end of the trail which deposits you into a cow pasture. Note the ingenious gate that only allows one person through at a time (and no cows).
View of pasture.
We could not see the end of the marked orange post path into the pasture, and ultimately decided that it would be best to be off the more treacherous end of the trail that we started on before nightfall, so we didn't actually end up hiking all 12km, only about ten.
We had to keep a pretty brisk pace and the steep trail proved quite a problem for my tired legs on the way back, so no more pictures. But we did make it back to the car in one wet, muddy, tired piece (more or less) before nightfall.
But only just barely...

All in all, it was a fun experience to look back on, even if we are both lucky not to have caught pneumonia after coming home soaking wet to a freezing cold house.

Well, my total projects is back up to 4, soon to be five, so I must sign off now and get back to work!

Cheers!
Jen (and Scott)