(written on the 18th!)
It was quite the rainy morning this morning, on again and off again. Sometimes it was a powerful downpour, and sometimes just a gentle rain.
Love the downpours. π
Love it all, really. π
Spent a little while wandering around picking up trash, mostly little stuff, gratefully.
As it rained, I just sat in my van, sometimes with the doors open for the breeze, and sometimes with the doors closed for protection against the rain.
Watched a parent Australian magpie feed it’s full-sized (but not yet adult?) offspring.
In the early afternoon, other vehicles started showing up because it was going to be a low tide, and this was a hot water beach. I had hoped that it wasn’t going to fill up with people, and compared to Hot Water Beach in the Coromandel, it’s probably just about nothing. I think maybe there were a maximum of six or seven cars at any given time? Still, unless I’m with people I’m close to, I generally prefer to be the only one there.
Eventually, I decided to make my way to the beach and give digging a hot pool a shot. At first, it was a little bit of a challenge to even find the hot water.
My memory from my ’22 trip said that it was a direct shot from the path to the water once he’s climbed over the big Sand dune Hill that goes from the parking area to the beach.
And that turned out to be the case, it’s just that today’s low tide ended up being a lot higher than other low tides, so even at low tide, it was impossible to dig a hole without having waves come within a few minutes and fill up whatever you had managed to dig out.
I remember last time we had a similar challenge, though we were able to last maybe 15 minutes or 30 minutes before our little pool was decimated?
I don’t remember exactly, but it was much more effective last time than today, though both days had the same problem in the end.
At least I got to bury my feet in hot water and sand. π
Chatted with a German lady and also a couple of locals. Two of the locals I guess come out just about every day.
The one I talked to on the beach was named mike, and he was going around with a shovel hoping to find a place that was going to work, but with the waves and the tides the way they were today, even at low tide, it just wasn’t doable.
After enjoying the beach for a little while, playing in the hot water and whatnot, I headed back to the parking area where I had another local, Peter, stop over to see what had happened to my windows on my van, thinking that someone might have busted them out but finding that they were just covered in bug screen.
He and I chatted for a good little bit, an older gentleman, whom I had judged a little bit for walking out into the protected area behind the fence before I had met him. Of course, I still would rather he not walk out into the protected area where the vegetation is trying to grow back, but it’s a good reminder that good people do things that I may not agree with, and they are still good people.
We chatted about places that we’ve traveled, and he mentioned a Hot Springs in the South Island that’s right off the road in Lewis pass. I didn’t ask him the exact location, so it may be a little bit of a challenge to find, but I guess it’s similar to others that I’ve been to where people will wall off the Springs part that’s next to the main river so that it can hold the hot water.
With the one that he was describing, I guess the water gets high enough to knock over the walls, so people have to keep rebuilding them to hold the hot water in.
I’ll see if I can find it. Those hot springs right next to the really cold rivers are my absolute favorite. Love being able to just go back and forth. π
Peter mentioned that there were garbage cans in town where I could dump the litter that I picked up, and so on my way back, I stopped at one of the garbage cans and emptied my trash bag. I also picked up some trash that was scattered around the garbage can to clean up that area a little bit.
From there, it was off to another stop on memory lane–Marikopa Falls. That was a significant stop in the ’22 trip, because that’s where we said goodbye to our Austrian friends that we’d been traveling with for a good little while.
It was a sad parting in multiple ways, and it also turned out to be the same day that I would drop my brand new Google Pixel 7 Pro phone screen down on a rock standing in the middle of the river. π
Perhaps foolishly, upon arrival, I stayed barefoot walking the roughly 500 m from the parking area to the waterfall overlook.
The gravel that they use for those walkways in New Zealand can be rather sharp. It’s dark gray / black and small with sharp edges, and my little feet haven’t quite returned to Hobbit form. π
There’s also much bigger risk of being a food source for the sand flies, as I’m walking through the bush.
Memories flooded back… so many memories… I remember one of the Austrian girls declining to follow and do the more adventurous climb down from the overlook platform down to the river below the waterfall. There was a sign that asked people to not go down there at the time, and she decided not to go down out of respect. That’s how I would normally be myself, but I had allowed myself to ignore those kinds of signs for the first few weeks of the trip in favor of adventure, but her example reminded me of who I really want to be.
So I had that memory on my mind. I also recognized that the platform that was there when we were here back in 22 was no longer there. It had been removed, and a new platform had been built probably another 15 or 20 m away that gave you a better view of the falls.
There was no longer a sign asking people to not climb down to the water below, and clearly, people had made a pathway down from where the old lookout platform had been. But it was a muddy path because of all the rain, and there wasn’t really a place to swim, as it was mostly massive boulders below the falls, and it was a big enough Falls that there was a ton of mist.
All of those things combined together to deter me from adventuring that direction.
Instead, I decided to go back to the exact spot, probably a kilometer up the road, where I had explored the river by myself partially, and then much more in-depth with Chase.
It was one of my favorite places that we had gone in New Zealand last time, and I wanted to go back. π
It also happens to be a place that was a bit sketchy. π
I remember to get where we had explored last time, we had jumped over a rushing channel in the river that was maybe 6 ft wide at the narrowest, and if I had to guess, probably quite deep.
The one side where you’re jumping from originally is flat, maybe 2 to 6 in deep, and mossy, and you’re jumping from that side to a side that’s dry, but to get back, you’re jumping from dry to a mossy side.
That’s the reason that last time we spent a good while trying to find another way around, so we didn’t have to jump from dry across a pretty decent chasm that if we fell in might well take us over a relatively short but extremely powerful and rather rocky waterfall where you get hammered against rocks instead of going over into a pool of water.
That’s the time when I had zipped my phone into my waterproof jacket, already smashed, and tried to Wade across the river a good ways up River from that little gorge, but I think maybe I slipped? And ended up in the powerful current heading down river. Fortunately, I ran into a large Rock in the river fairly quickly, so I wasn’t sucked down that channel/chasm thing.
I don’t remember how I got away from that last time. I’ll have to go back and read that journal entry. π
Anyway, not really thinking too much about it, figuring I’d do what I did last time, and though nervous because the chasm is a decent little ways to jump, I went ahead and jumped from the mossy side to the dry side, figuring that I would get back across the same way as last time. Last time, we just eventually jumped right back the way we had come, depending on not slipping on the moss on the jump back, which we didn’t.
…
It was fun going back to this place. π
Last time, it was a bit of a sorrowful time after the parting with our friends, and I don’t think I got pictures of all of the exciting places because I dropped my phone, obliterating my screen? I don’t remember for sure. I’ll have to go back and look at the pictures from before.
Either way, it was fun to explore the area again. Unfortunately, I failed to adequately prepare bathroomtarily. π
So… A good ways downriver, past several obstacles, and in the middle of the rainforesty forest, little me needed Micro John, but Micro John was back through the forest, back up all the waterfall obstacles, and on the other side of that chasm. π¬
Soooo… For the first time in my life I think? I got to use leaves as toilet paper.
If you’ve never used leaves this toilet paper, let’s just say they are not quite adequate. π
Certainly better than leaving poo all over my swimming suit inside, butt… definitely lacking in polishability. π
I also felt bad about leaving a fair bit of excrement in the beauty of the outdoors, and in an area where I didn’t realize ahead of time couldn’t be buried. The roots of the trees were so thick that when you walked on the forest floor it was almost like a trampoline because you were basically walking all over interwoven roots that had built up over time but we’re a little teeny tiny.
So I piled up a bunch of leaves over the top of it, hoping that maybe that would allow the bugs to take care of it before the rain could wash it away.
I continued on exploring, but because of all the rain, and because I was by myself, I didn’t pursue the same object as during our first trip here. During our first trip here, I had slipped into the river above a fairly large unnamed waterfall and crossed just upstream of it, but with as much water as there was, I don’t think I would be in serious danger, but I didn’t have my waterproof cell phone thing with me, and I don’t have a screen protector right now on the phone as I haven’t taken the time to reapply the screen protector since getting the screen replaced back in WhangamatΔ.
I did look to see if I could find the exact rock that I dropped my phone on last time, just for memory sake, and I might have found it, but there was more water than last time, so it was hard to identify. I just remembered that it was a round rock protruding from the sedimentary rock layer in the middle of the river.
On the way back, I decided that I wasn’t happy reading the poo in the woods, so I found another way across the river, despite the seemingly higher flow rate from the rain.
I chose a spot one waterfall down where, yes, I had to jump from one side of a small chasm to another, from moss to moss, but it was more of the fluffy kind of moth instead of the slick kind of moss, and the fluffy moth is usually quite safe, so I made the jump, no sleeping, no problems, waited through knee high water in a couple of places with the water rushing past pretty quickly, and finally made my way up one of the waterfalls and back to the entry bank.
Scrambled up the side of the bank back to the road, walked back to the van, grabbed Micro John and a roll of toilet paper, and made my way back down and across and down the way I had come this last time, managed to find my same poo spot (remembering athen from the TV show Fringe where a character can’t remember where he put something, so the other character asks him where he would put something if he were to hide it again, and that ended up being the same place he had it originally.
So I sort of did the same thing and ended up in the same poo place. π©
π
Got myself cleaned up and then got the area cleaned up, a mix of poo and ferns. π
Thanks, Micro John. ππ
Gratefully, I managed to get all the way back across all the river obstacles, Micro John and one hand and toilet paper roll in the other hand, without getting toilet paper soaking wet. ππ
From there, I drove to the Piripiri Cave Walk, another place I’m pretty sure Chase and I visited last time.
I did a little bit more exploration this time then we did last time, climbing down a bit, and then following the creek just briefly before it seems to disappear, though I didn’t check. It was getting super muddy, sinking down several inches into the silt.
Last stop for the night also turned out to be a place where I could stay overnight–Mangapohue Natural Bridge.
I’m thinking I’ve been here before?
Not sure. I’ll find out in the morning. I’ve got the van parked on quite a tilt. Hopefully, I won’t have too much trouble sleeping (sideways tilt).
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 