We didn’t expect to be fighting our way through thick jungle today, only went to find the local DOC (Department of Conservation) office! Word of warning to anyone else using google maps to find it, this is where they’ve put the pin and there’s certainly no office here..
Here’s the first section of video from our walk across New Zealand, I’ll be uploading the rest as I get them finished. From Cape Reinga at the top of the North Island we walked down 90 Mile Beach, across to the east coast via the Herekino and Raetea forests, along the Bay of Islands and then through the Russell Forest.
I was eager to get into the jungle after the epically long ’90 mile beach’. I’d been pretty excited on the approach up the hill to see how the forest trees and kauri were mixed in with giant ferns and palm trees of all sorts. Proper jungle! I have a bit of a thing about palm trees having grown up in Cornwall. And this didn’t disappoint, stuffed full of cordyline australis, vines, tree ferns and even date palms, paired with exotic sounding bird calls. Woohoo tropical!
A leisurely 5 mile road walk out of town ended abruptly when we entered the Herekino Forest, it felt like we stumbled into Apocalypse Now / Vietnam jungle rather than a ‘forest’. It’s nothing like forest walks back home, in fact it was more like doing an assault course than going for a walk!
Very beautiful though, and really interesting as just about everything growing is totally new and fascinating to me.
Kauri. They’re big buggers and no mistake. Alan our tour guide on the bus to the cape had told us how in ancient times NZ’s northland was covered in Kauri but a super tsumami had come and all but wiped them out. Many of these giant trees were upturned and driven meters underground into the sand and perfectly preserved for thousands of years - and at the turn if the 19/20th century the kauri gum ‘gold rush’ had begun. Thousands of gum diggers dug the land for decades, selling the gum, wearing rubber boots, giving rise to the term ‘gumboots’ apparently…. ( Or something like that ).. Alan was our walking kiwi wikipedia ;)
Earlier in the trip we’d walked up an ample sized spiral staircase hollowed out within a single slice of kauri trunk. And the structure, whilst scooped out was strong enough to hold up the second floor a building. So that might give you a sense of how large these monsters can get. Very impressive! And no doubt the inspiration for those tree fellas in Lord of the Rings.
Saw our first Kauri trees today, well other than the ones being cut up and turned into coffee tables at the Kauri tree workshop on our tour to Cape Reinga. Truly amazing to see them in the forest, so massive & enormous can’t even get it all in-frame on a wide angle 16mm lens. Each one of those branches at the top is as thick as a normal tree trunk!
Exausted and feeling rough as a badger’s arse, frankly I’d have been happy sleeping on the floor of Fabric’s base-enhanced dancefloor just so long as there wasn’t any mud or biting insects. As it was this was the only one horizontal piece of ground that was dry enough and wide enough to fit a slim tent in. So it would have to do…One of the things we quickly learned about camping in the jungle - there aren’t many options for placing your tent. This is the spot we deemed most suitable, right in the middle of the path!
I have no idea how Cookie knew whether we were up down or sideways from anywhere. I could just see plants. Plants up in my face, for days. Thank god he was navigating or I’d have been in there until George Lucas had completed the next 8 episodes of Star Wars. And even then I’d only have just caught them when they came out on telle.Our first mountain! Well hill really, it’s only 558m high, but the first thing we’ve climbed non the less. Not too bad going up, followed some old logging tracks most of the way which made for faster progress. Note to hikers behind us - your best bet for camping in this forest is by the old logging cabins at the end of this track.
Down was much the same as up, except more slippery and harder to see where your feet were. Generally I saw most of my feet when they were above my head, while righting myself from being unexpectedly thrust face down in the mud. yeh..erm, brilliant fun ;)Coming down was another matter, quite a few obstacles to get over and under (massive rucksack wasn’t helping much) and generally very steep.
The riggers of coming down Taumatamahoe took the wind out of Nicky and the next section was supposedly ‘no camping’, so we treated ourselves to an early camp at the edge of the forest.
OMG that was hard. When they say ‘it’s a jungle out there’ they must have been talking about Raetea ‘Forest’… Being a novice hiker i’ve been expecting this trip to be hard, but seriously this was tough going! I even spotted veteran explorer Cookie mopping his brow and mumbling ‘Jesus Christ’ a few times.
Proud to have made it through and out the other side! :D
It was full-on hacking through foliage on steep boggy ground, absolutely root riddled for extra slippery jeopardy. We were enclosed in thick wet green-ness, battling up and down the dimly lit, densely vegetated ridges and peaks. Clambering under and over fallen trees, scratched to buggery and bitten to high heaven. Itchy, stinking and dehydrated, pushing through bushes, branches, and fallen palms, hunting for small trail markers nailed to trees. With salty sweat trickling into our eyes and mouths, areas of low flax, sharp pampas grass gave light relief from the darkness of the canopy looming over, but cobwebs and spiders in the face were always a hazard when going first :) In fact - Rule #1 in the jungle - keep your gob shut! ( Unless you want it full if bugs ;) )
Other hikers talk about this section, and I don’t know if they are modest, or just don’t want to say how tough it was. But it was pretty intense! Perhaps they are just much faster than us and smashed through it quite swiftly. Cookie on his own could have got through there in half the time with out Captain Slow here! Fingers crossed I get fitter faster so there’s less time to be had loitering about in disorientating claustrophobic semi-tropical jungle ;)
Keep your wits about you in the jungle.. You never know what’s peering at you through the foliage! We camped in the jungle 3 nights ( and one more nearby ) and once the sun goes down all sorts of mysterious things start to squeak, stomp, flap, trot, and heavy breath over your tent! I swore blind that someone crept past our tent at 2am the first night mumbling… A hunter maybe.. “Or was it a large bird? Or wait a minute there’s a horse print there.. Are there wild horse here?? Or was it a wild pig you reckon ?” Whatever it was it shit me right up! :D
The half asleep paranoid thoughts of all sorts of hoofed animals and hunters with guns roaming about at night swirling around my head made it tricky to sleep even after a full days exploring :) But the weirdest thing was these shrieking noises. I think they might have been possums. Only heard these one evening ( you’ll find it why in the Possum post )…
Update: When we finally got to town a few days later I kept hearing on the news how this school teacher from Kawakawa (not far away) had been shot in the head by a deer hunter a few days ago while brushing her teeth only 4 meters inside in the forest… Really sad news, and also pretty worrying as a tourist sleeping in the forest at night.
