Spikey Spaniards, Matagauri ( Maori tattoo needles ), and Rose Hip thorns. Not the kind of thick foliage one wants to be pushing through in skimpy shorts. No. Not at all. That’s rather pierce-able soft flesh, and results in a surprising amount of blood loss. On entering deep into a vein on my shin, feeling much like the insertion of an intravenous drip by an inexperienced nurse, the Spikey Spaniard received a barrage of heated swears from my angry mouth. I would have punched or stamped on the evil thing, would that not have resulted in massive life-threatening blood loss on my part. Bastard things!
Bubbles and streaks of red blood down our legs we fought our assailants all the way… Perhaps we should have followed those poles after all… :)
The difficult part of this section isn’t navigation though, it’s avoiding the vegetation! We were told that a lot of the native NZ plants have evolved all these irritating spikes as protection against the browsing activities of the now extinct Moa.
Hopefully now the Moa’s are long gone, maybe they’ll evolve into something a bit more pleasant to walk through!
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