(written on the 10th of December from notes taken previously)
I got up early for the BYU game, which started at 6:00 a.m.
I shouldn’t have. 😅
Poor BYU, after playing a great first quarter, and being completely in the game for the first half, they got trounced the rest of the way, the wheels coming completely off toward the end, with four turnovers in the second half.
Bear Bachmeier had gotten injured in the first quarter and just… wasn’t the same the rest of the game.
I don’t know if that would have made any appreciable difference, but it’s certainly seems like it might have been a fairly significant contributor to where things went from there, as he’s generally a huge threat as a runner on the ground.
Not so much with a sprained ankle. 😬
I had planned to go to church today, so I was driving around looking for a place to take a bath.
The place that I stayed at last night in the night before, the river before goes into the ocean looks pretty stagnant and nasty. It probably is just fine, but it doesn’t look like there’s any flow, and I don’t like getting in stagnant-looking water. 🙃
So I drove like 25 km back toward Gisborne, hoping that one of the little blue lines indicating fresh water coming from the hills toward the ocean would be big enough to rinse myself off in, but no such luck.
So I decided to give up and just jump in the ocean at a nearby beach, but there were people fishing there, so that was a little awkward. I didn’t want to be in the way of their lines, among other things.
So then I looks back at where I had stayed the night and saw a beach that was near there, all the way back the way that I had come plus another several kilometers. 🙃
Acting without planning… I’m so good at that these days. 😬
The freshwater river that runs through the town that I was in is super brown and dirty, so it doesn’t feel like much of a place to rinse off and actually feel cleaner.
But on the drive back to town, I remembered that yesterday I had driven by a river that was really clean and fresh looking, and wasn’t really much further away from me than that darn beach I had driven all the way out to in the hopes that one of those little blue streaks on the map would be big enough to take a little dip in.
Just a little bit of planning, Stephen. That’s all you need. 🤦
But I just… have no strength left, no resilience left. I’ve got little ability beyond making in-the-moment, spontaneous, decisions.
It seems like almost anything that requires trying to figure something out is just… too much. 😕
Anyway, I drove up to canyon back toward where I had spent the day yesterday, driving until I found a little turn off next to a cleaner section of the river, which also happened to be a place where someone had put a rope swing and mailed some wooden steps to the side of the tree hanging out over the water. 🙃
I noticed that the current was really strong right there, and it seems like it was really deep, but I wasn’t sure. I noticed that there were also fallen trees in the water and a massive old stump that looked like it was from a tree that had fallen over that was once on the bank.
A bit concerned about what I might find jumping into the water, not wanting to get pinned against any other underwater obstacles, I started off by just barely jumping off the bank into the river, planning on grabbing the huge stump that was submerged underneath the water just to my left.
What I didn’t expect was to hit the bottom jumping from just the bank. 😶
I did.
Fortunately, since I had jumped from the bank and not climbed way up into the tree first, I had been hurt in any way, but it certainly got me wondering why on the earth people had nailed wooden steps up into the tree to jump into the river when the bottom of the river was right there.
I don’t know how deep it was because it was moving so quickly, but I would be surprised if it was deeper than maybe six or eight feet?
Needless to say, I didn’t climb the tree and jump in from higher up.
But I stayed in the water long enough to rinse myself and my clothes off.
By that time, however, my temperament had changed significantly, and I was far from being in the mood of going to church, so… I didn’t. 😕
I spent some time cleaning up the trash, disappointed the BYU got absolutely thrashed.
Realized I was low on gas for heading into the bush, which was where I was going next, so I stopped off at the only gas station in town that I could find that I could actually pay at the counter instead of at the automatic machines, which don’t work for me because of the stupid digital pins that my American credit cards don’t have.
I thought about going back to Te Reinga Falls because I love it so much, and I could probably access it once the construction workers are done for the day, but it was just late morning, even though it was a Sunday, they had been working on Saturday, so I figured they were probably working on Sunday as well, so I let go of the desire to see that waterfall, one of my top two or three favorites from last time, and instead turned my attention to Shine Falls, another waterfall that Chase and I had visited last time we were in New Zealand.
The walking track to the Falls, about 45 minutes each way, was marked as being closed, a result of the damage caused by Cyclone Gabrielle that came through in February of 2023, just after I left New Zealand the last time.
I had hopes that maybe it was open, so I drove on out, also remembering that it was around that area that I had seen some of the most stunningly-green vistas I’d ever seen in New Zealand.
It really is the time of day that provides the most stunning contrasts. Certainly everything is green during the day, but when the sun is lower in the sky, those greens turn electric, and then the greens in the shadows where the sun can’t reach our deep green.
The bright greens feel brightest, and the contrasts are stunning. It’s just… I love it. 😊
When I arrived at the parking area for the walking track, I didn’t find the track marked as being closed.
I hemmed and hawed for a bit, I think finishing up a movie that I had downloaded? And then finally decided to just go ahead and walk the track anyway. 😅
So I put my pack on, filled with a bottle of water, sunscreen, a charging brick, and my waterproof cell phone case. Then I, much less than intelligently, removed my headlamps from the pack 😶 before heading out on the walk through the rugged hills into the little gorge where the waterfall was.
Shine Falls is about a 58 m waterfall. Beautiful.
I think I remember thinking the falls was beautiful last time, but I don’t remember it sticking out as one of my favorites?
Why, I have no idea. It was gorgeous.
After walking the track to the Falls, including passing by I think at least three areas where the hill sides had collapsed right where the trail was, leaving the trail disappearing into a drop off on either side of the collapse in each collapse.
District council or department of conservation people or somebody had gone and made rough track reroutes, but there was certainly a lot of work left to do to make it as easy to follow as it used to be, and one of the small bridges was ruined.
It was definitely a little more challenging getting to the Falls, but not really anything that I would think twice about myself giving all my previous hiking experience and preferences.
What a beautiful falls.
It’s beautiful from a distance, but it’s even more spectacular if you wade out into the fall pool and walk all the way up to the shower and water. The 58 meter falls has a few very minor cascades, but it feels pretty much like it drops almost straight down when you’re standing below it.
Such a beautiful Vista. Such a gorgeous place.
Shine Falls has now become one of my favorite waterfalls in all of New Zealand. I thought about staying there longer, maybe a couple of days. It would be really awesome to camp out by the river, though I’m sure I’d probably get eaten alive by bugs at night if I didn’t have a tent. 😅
For the walk back, little Stephen decided to do a little bit of exploration. River / Creek walking is my favorite type of hiking, so I decided to walk the river back, not knowing if I would come to other waterfalls that were impassable, requiring a return the way that I had come and then going all the way back via the trail anyway, and I didn’t have my headlamps with me anymore, but I figured I’d give it a try.
So down I went. Almost immediately, I started seeing eels in the river in almost every single part of the river where the current was slow. Some of the eels were quite large.
I tried to grab one once, but their skin is so slippery that there was no way that I could grip on to it, and it was so big that there was no way that my hand would have been able to hold onto it even if it could grip it with the sliminess.
There’s a chance I could have gripped it successfully if I tried to grab it with both my hands, but I’d have to probably squeeze hard enough to injure the poor thing if I did that.
Down and down and down I went, the walls of the gorge closing in at times with cliffs on each side sometimes. Sometimes I was walking through flatter areas with smaller rocks, and sometimes I was climbing down sections with huge boulders.
Hiking back the other river was much more beautiful, but also much slower going.
But I love river hiking. 😊
So I enjoyed the hike back, though at one point, realizing that it was quite late in the day, I recognized that if I had to turn around and go back because of As of yet not encountered obstacle, there was a good chance I would be hiking back in the dark.
I also wasn’t 100% sure where I was going to be coming out. I thought I remembered that the river came to a point somewhere down River from where I parked my car where there was a bridge that went over, so I figured I could at least get out at that point and walk back up the road to the car, but I wasn’t 100% sure of my exit point.
Gratefully, after a bazillion eel sightings, lots of boulder hopping, and not a single slip on a slimy rock (many of the rocks being sandstone maybe? And much more grippy than other rocks in the river and other rocks I’ve encountered in other rivers to this point), and after a few stops to take pictures of beautiful scenery in the gorge itself, I made it all the way back to a very easy exit point just before the parking area. 🥳
Chatted briefly with a trio of German boys who were all set up for the night, close the drying on a clothesline, stuff string all over the gazebo area. 🙃
As I was driving away, the sunset was beautiful, orange colors starting to appear in the clouds on the horizon with deep greens still visible on the hills nearby.
I kept hoping to come to the top of a hill and find a pull out where I could get a view of the valleys before me and the sun set in the distance, but it never came. I did get a few pictures of the very beginning of the sunset, but I was never able to get that view from up above looking down like I had hoped.
Still, it was a beautiful vista to take in as I drove back toward the coast.
Once back in reception range, I caught up on what had happened in all the rest of the football games for the day, some fun surprises that I didn’t expect, although they don’t really make much difference for BYU, which I think is pretty well hosed for getting into the playoff.
A reality that I think is simply big-brand bias, as their metrics, according to the playoff selection committee’s own criteria, has BYU statistically ahead of multiple teams that are going to be in the playoff.
The only reason to keep them out is simply because the committee members just don’t think they’re good enough despite their record and metrics being ahead of several other teams that are considered a lock for the playoffs.
Pretty crappy place to be if you’re BYU or fans of BYU.
Stopped for the night at a little gravel turnout off the main gravel road between Lakes Turita and Waikopiro (a grand total of maybe 10 meters separating the two lakes where the road goes from what I guess might be the day-use area to the camping area).
Veged out for a bit and then called it a night.
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 