A walk in the park...

We've been here just over 2 weeks now, 16 days to be exact and had yet to get out of Auckland city.

What with cars to buy, bedrooms to view and furniture / crockery etc to buy we've just been too busy. All we had managed to date was some short walks along the coastal areas of the city. Pleasant, but still very much part of the city.

Well, today we finally made it out into the wilderness for our first proper tramp (hike). We decided to head west to a regional park called the Waitakere Ranges, just an hours drive away.

The drive itself was quite rewarding with some stunning views and twisting, undulating roads; although the drive would have been a bit more enjoyable in car with a bit more oomph - some of the steep uphills saw the little engine struggle, while the steep narrow downhills had the breaks very warm.

The place we were heading to was KareKare beach (http://tinyurl.com/6m3z7a2).

Well worth the drive though, as walked out from the small car park into the bay. WOW! What a sight. A wide open beach with crashing surf and volcanic black sand, framed to the right by a large volcanic headland and a dense rainforest behind.

Click any photo to see a larger version...






Not really a place to stop and relax. however, a howling wind was blowing straight off the Tasman Sea and whipping up the sand and stinging exposed flesh. Stopped to watch some people swimming in what is the smallest stretch of lifeguard patrolled beaches I think I've seen. The flags were about 20m apart!

Pressed on and followed the beach for about 2K, stopping frequently to take another photo or marvel at something on the beach.







The flat beach gave way to large undulating dunes, topped with reeds and shrubs, before changing again, becoming more bleak and moon-like. A little further on we entered a tunnel, which could easily have been a portal to a bygone era. The flora and fauna had changed again and we now appeared to be on the set of 'Jurassic Park' - though thankfully without the terrible lizards (although Amanda did find one terrifying specimen, fortuitously captured on film - see below...)



A quick rest here to avoid the midday sun and then on again. The scenery changed again as we headed inland towards the rainforest, large black dunes turning into marshland. It was at this point that the weather changed too, the brilliant sunshine quickly replaced by a torrential downpour.

Sheltering under some (silver?) ferns we donned waterproofs and sat out the worst before ploughing on into the cover of the rainforest. Now things got really interesting. Essentially we now needed to climb approx 200m to get to the top of the ridge we had been walking alongside.







No mean feat since the 'path' was almost non existent in some places, often just following somebody else's footprints. The recent weeks of rain had also turned the track into, essentially, a mudslide. Thankfully tree roots frequently crossed the track and provided some footing. The track was very steep and with some interesting drops in some places so every foot step had to be carefully placed and each little slip led to a yelp from Amanda. Despite being only a 200m climb it may well have been more challenging than our recent ascent of Mount Snowdon in Wales.







Unfortunately the whole track was like this from now on, although thankfully not as steep. It meant that progress was very slow, but with the rain now replaced by sunshine once more, a lot better than it could have been.

As we approached the end the track started moving out from the rainforest again and afforded some quite remarkable views of the bay and beach where we were just hours before.

All told, we walked about 10km in approx 4 hours. We were covered in black sand, mud and suncream but what an introduction to NZ tramping; and we have only ticked off 10km of the 250km+ in this park alone.