Snorkeling and Hiking

Feb 25 – Cathedral Cove

Our plan today was to snorkel at Cathedral Cove. We headed up around 10am and already the parking lot was packed. We ended up parking down the hill a little on an empty lot. I was a little worried at first about parking there but then about 6 other cars pulled in beside us so I figured we'd be fine. We walked down to Gemstone Bay which has a little snorkel track. There were buoys set up for you to follow. We hopped in the frigid water and started swimming. We saw a ton of snapper. They were actually following us around. We saw quite a few other fish too. We were quite chilly at this point so we started swimming for shore. I looked up and Beau was swimming full tilt in the wrong direction. Turns out he saw a ray and swam after it taking video. We warmed up in the sun for a bit and then Beau decided to go out again. I decided against this because I was still cold. While Beau was out I had a brief chat with a couple and it turns out the boats will fee the snappers which is why they were following us around. They were hoping to get fed. Beau came back out of the water and we decided to head out. The sun had been in and out from behind the clouds and didn't look like the clouds would be clearing. We parked down at Hahei beach and had some lunch. Then we casually walked into the holiday park we had stayed at last night and borrowed their showers. Once we were nice and clean we headed to Thames. In Thames we stopped into the i-Site for a little info on the Pinnacles hike then went to the grocery store. We headed into Kauaeranga Valley and set up camp at the DOC site right before the start of the hike. We had bought venison sausage to have in our dinner and I wasn't a big fan. It had a very strange texture. Beau tried to get a fire going but the wood was quite damp and our fire pit had a permanent grill on it which impeded his efforts. One side of it was a flat metal plate so the smoke just kept blowing in our face. We gave up on it and headed to bed. We hope to be up early so we can get a reasonable start on our hike.

Some Snapper

Feb 26 – The Pinnacles

We had planned to get up relatively early this morning but it was so chilly outside our sleeping bags that we put it off and didn't get up till about 8 am. After having breakfast we got our hiking stuff together and set off at about 9:30am. It was as beautiful day. The track started off fairly steep. It was a bit over grown too. There was some very rocky sections and a bit of water was running down the path. We crisscrossed some rivers and along the way there were some historical information sign post. This area used to be a huge kauri forest but in the early 1900's it was almost totally deforested. The track we were hiking was once used to by pack horse to bring supplies into the loggers. In some areas there were carved stone steps. I'm not sure if they had been warn down like this from the horses or if they were man made. We also crossed a few little suspension bridges that cautioned only 1 person at a time. The track was pretty forested for the first 2/3s until we hit a stop called Hydro camp. Then it opened up and we could see some of the scenery around us. It was pretty spectacular. We also got a glimpse of the Pinnacles peak which looked a little daunting. We reached the Pinnacles Hut by about noon. You can camp over night at the hut which we would have done if we had done a little more research prior to the hike. We set off for the peak after a little break and snack. It was a lot of up hill climbing, about 542 steps to be exact. Once you had completed the stair master there was some more up hill but it was similar to rock climbing. There were ladders to get up some areas and bars that had been secured into the rocks to help you over some of the steeper bits. It was intense! At the top there was an incredible view. You could see either side of the Coromandel Peninsula. We enjoyed our lunch up at the top in the sun shine. Then we started the descent. Man were my knees aching by the time we got down. Back at the hut we took a little detour to a historic kauri dam. The loggers built many of these dams to help send the logs down stream. Apparently about 20% of logs were destroyed in these log drives. We took a slighlyt different track at Hydro camp down Billy Goat Track. Some how we ended up going up hill again! Even though we couldn't see the mountains anymore parts of the forest were quite interesting. There were many palm trees growing, it was hard to believe that we were in a mountain range in New Zealand. We finally made it back to our camp around 4:45pm so we had a 7 hour and 15 minute hike in total. We were hot and sweaty so we went for a rejuvenating dip in the river. It was pretty brisk but felt amazing on the feet. It was really nice to rinse all the sweat off too. We made another fairly interesting dinner of just whatever there was. We'll probably never be able to recreate any of these meals but for the most part I'm not disappointed. The sun had set so we had another stab at having a fire tonight. We used a different fire pit that had a removable grill. We enjoyed a lovely campfire some some drinking chocolate and chocolate chip cookies before we bundled up for bed. It was another very chilly night.

The Pinnacles

Almost at the top

Crazy Climbing

The view

Feb 27 – North of Auckland

We had were pretty slow getting moving this morning, the tent was wet from all the condensation so we moved it into the sunshine to dry. After the usual breakfast (sans coffee press, it broke), clean up and pack up we headed back into Thames. We went into McDonald's to try to use their internet and got a coffee. The internet wasn't working well at this McD's so it took forever to check our e-mail. We then went to Pak 'n' Save and picked up some groceries and goodies for lunch. We went a park in town to eat our lunch which was cheese, crackers and smoked salmon pate. After our yummy lunch we hit the road and headed towards Goat Island again. We had a brief detour to get cheap gas. We reached Goat Island and were going to stay at the camp ground next door but it said Closed for a Private Function. So we had to go in search of another camp site. The next place we checked out cost way too much money so we vetoed that. We ended up a bit of a ways from Goat Island at a nice, reasonable holiday park in Mangawhai. There was a pool so we went for a swim but then it started to rain. So we got out of the pool, grabbed stuff out of the car for dinner and had a nice hot shower. There was a lovely covered patio area outside that we sat in while it rained and we started chopping stuff for dinner. It poured for awhile then cleared up for the rest of the evening. We weren't sure if it would rain again overnight so we opted for sleeping in the car.

Feb 28 – Goat Island Again

Turns out we could have slept in the tent last night since it didn't end up raining. We had breakfast and got reorganized with our snorkel gear handy. We drove back to Goat Island along the gravely road we took to get here. It took about an hour but it wasn't too busy at Goat Island when we arrived. We got set up on the beach with our camp chairs and sunned ourselves for a bit before getting wet. The water was pretty chilly but we decided against renting wetsuits. The tide was high so it was pretty easy to get in the water. We saw lots of fishes including large snapper, some goatfish, and several schools of some pointy nosed fish too. We got out of the water and warmed up in the sun some before heading up to the picnic tables to make some lunch. We had some nice tuna sandwiches on buns. After we headed back down but moved ourselves over to another spot where we went for another snorkel. We saw much of the same but got lucky and saw a ray. I was so excited I popped my head up and yelled at Beau to get his attention but then forgot to stick my snorkel back in my mouth so I ended up with a mouthful of water. We followed the ray for a short ways before the visibility became awful and it disappeared. We were happy with our two snorkels so called it a day and got rinsed off in the cold outdoor showers. We also got our equipment all cleaned off too. We were headed to Waitakere just west of Auckland and stopped into an i-Site in Orewa to get some info on where to stay tonight and the best way to get there. Unfortunately our maps suck and we made some wrong turns but McDonald's wifi came to our rescue and we Google mapped our way to Karekare, a tiny beach village south of Piha. We arrived shortly before sunset so headed to the beach to watch. We walked across some dunes and arrived at a huge black sand beach. I was having fun goofing around on the beach and we watched the sunset while snacking on some very spice Doritos. We went to our campsite and started setting up in the dark. We had been told there would be an honour box to drop our camp fees off in but there was no such thing just a sign that camping was by permit only. We were the only people there, it was dark so we figured we'd deal with it in the morning if a camp ranger came by. The mosquito were the worst we had experienced. We struggled to make dinner in the dark while being attacked by mosquito looking for their dinner. We made the strangest meal which was fitting for our last camping. We went to bed in the tent shortly after dinner.

Karekare Beach

The sunset at Karekare beach