The Pinnacles!

Alright, so this past Saturday, Petro dropped Shaina and I off at the bottom of the Pinnacles. I have mentioned these in the past, and I have shown a picture of them (the hill/mountain with the three points). If you live or are visiting the Coromandel Peninsula, hiking up the Pinnacles is definitely the thing to do! In total, it took us a little over six hours. This was including multiple stops for pictures and eating. Since we didn't have a cell phone to contact Petro when we were done, she just gave us seven hours, so Shaina and I took our time.

We woke up early and headed to the Pinnacles around 8. They are located in a woodsy area that is also a campground. There are numerous different treks you can take, but we drove all the way to where the opening of the Pinnacles is. Our hike began at about 8:30AM.

This is the first thing you get to cross when heading up. It's a swing bridge. I have never been on one before so it was pretty neat. The picture is a little blurry because I was bouncing up and down while Shaina took my picture. 

This was mine and Shaina's first tramp by ourselves, but it was pretty easy since there was a pretty nice path. There was a point kind of in the beginning, however, where we had to cross a river. The path basically became just walking up a ton of stone steps and pathways. We weren't entirely sure we were on the right path, but we were! Apparently the stone steps were carved our to make it easier for horses to go up them, but I can't ever imagine horses getting up what we had to!

These are n't the stone steps I was talking about, but we just thought it was a cool place for a picture.

I thought this was a fun hike because you are walking on the rocks of the mountain and not all wooden steps like the last summit we went up. It was a really pretty walk through the woods.

Remember those Kauri trees NZ is famous for? This is one of them that was chillin on the ground. It was a little creepy sitting inside of it because I hate bugs, but I did it! 

Here is the tree from an outside perspective. I can only imagine the noise it made when it came down! It definitely provided some fortunate soul with a lot of Kauri wood!

After about two hours, we arrived at the hut and sat down for a snack and some water. At the time we got there, it was completely empty except for the guy that cleans it. You can choose to walk up to the hut, stay overnight for about $15 and then walk up the rest of the way to the Pinnacles in the morning and then walk all the way back. The only bad thing about that is that you have to sleep in a room with 40 other people, and they don't provide you with food or rubbish containers, so you need to carry all of your sleeping stuff, food, and rubbish with you on your trek. When we got there for lunch, everyone was gone (we had passed people on their way back down while we were heading up). Shaina and I decided just to do it in one day since we didn't really see the need to stay overnight. The guy that works there cleaning says that he walks up on a Monday, stays for a week, and then goes home on a Monday. That makes sense so that he doesn't have to walk two hours there and back each day! Plus someone has to stay overnight to make sure people are respecting the place.

I didn't take this picture, but this is what the hut looks like. It is pretty big. It has two rooms that sleep 40 people each, a kitchen, and many decks with tables where people can dine in. This is one of few huts that people can stay in that has both gas and electricity, so it's pretty nice.

Once we left the hut, we had about a half hour walk left, which included 565 steps and some rock climbing.

We're basically walking to the top of that high point in the picture. It doesn't look like it, but it is just all rock at the top where we were sitting.

In this picture, you can kind of follow the steps we had to take to start climbing to the top. Although 565 steps stinks, it was nothing compared to last weekend's 1349!

Being the tourists that we are, we stopped to take many pictures. This wasn't even all the way up yet and the view is amazing!

I look like I'm on top of the world! But I'm still not even to the top of the Pinnacles yet.

So once we got to the steps, there were two medal ladders we had to go up, and then it was rock climbing from there on to the top. You can see that they put in some handles and places to put your feet which was helpful, but it still felt pretty scary! You look behind you and all you see is open air and a lot of downhill. The trick was to just keep going up! I was really surprised that they let people just do this because it seemed kind of dangerous!

We made it! We made one final climb up some rocks (which has no boundaries  and was the highest you could possibly go). They have a little landing for you to stand on, but Shaina and I wanted the full view so we climbed up! It's about 759 meters up, or a about 2250 feet for us Americans. Therefore, according to Gary's standards, it's a MOUNTAIN, so I climbed a mountain!

One of the fabulous views. Everywhere I turned was just breathtaking. 

I definitely took some selfies because I was on top of a mountain and was trying to show how high up I was.

While we were up there, there were only two other people at first. The first guy passed us on the way up while we were taking some pictures. He was up on the rocks as well and was from NZ. The guy in this picture is from France. He had been traveling for about 6 months on his own. He has mostly been to a lot of Asian countries, and he plans on going to Indonesia after he's done in NZ. Talk about an exciting trip! Then, while we were still sitting up there, we met a guy from Scotland and a guy from Germany. All of these people hiked up alone, so they must have all just been travelling alone. These two guys basically walked up and left right away (which I don't see the point in not enjoying it) and the other two stayed up and chilled for a little bit like we did (taking pictures on a GoPro and writing in a journal). We just sat on our rocks for like 15 min just taking pictures and enjoying the view. Once we got down, we climbed back down to the landing and ate our lunch. It was one of the most magnificent places I have every eaten a meal at, let me say that! It was so nice to just sit, relax, enjoy the view, and eat after walking up.

I suck at taking pictures, I know I'm blocking the lense, but to be honest, I don't even know what part of my body that is. I'd rather have a little bit of skin show though than try and get a perfect picture and fall off my rock to my death! Anyways, in the distance you can see a hill that looks pretty flat. This is called the Table Top (I think you're smart enough to figure out why) and Thames High School takes some students to stay overnight at the campgrounds and to hike up there. I'm not entirely sure what they do, but I think it is just an outdoor experience that they like to do with students.

The nice guy from NZ took our picture. We were staring into the sun, but you can see how high up we are!

Typical "I made it to the top so I through my hands up" pose. 

I know I should be making a scared face, and I have like four of these pictures, but all my not smiling faces just look ridiculous. So if you ignore the fact that I'm smiling, I'm falling off the edge!

This was the little landing that they have. It's really not that big, but it's a nice place to stand and take pictures.

This was taken as I was getting on the ladder ready to make our way back down.

This was taken on our way back down. The rocky part on the left is where we were...at the VERY top! The picture does not do a very good job at depicting what it actually looked like up there. It may not seem very high, but this picture was taken while we were still climbing down the steps, so we were still very high up ourselves.

We headed back around 12:30. We had planned for Petro to pick us up at 3:30, so we knew we would make it back in time. The walk back took us a little over two and a half hours since we were stopping and checking out some of the rivers. Hiking up to the Pinnacles was definitely one of the best things I have done so far here. It was challenging and super rewarding once you got to the top! I'm definitely glad we had time to fit it into our busy schedules and I can't wait for the next couple weekends when I get to do more hiking!

Geography Field Trip - Tairua

Alright, so today Shaina and I got to go to Tairua with the Year 11 geography students. The teachers here are so awesome that they just ask us to go on all these trips with them! I got really lucky because I only had one class today that I was missing, and it was a Year 11 class so the students wouldn't have been doing anything in class anyways since most were with me! If you can remember the map I showed you of the Coromandel Peninsula, Tairua is on the other side of the peninsula through the hills. The drive probably took about 45 minutes, so it wasn't too bad.

Once we got there, we drove up one of the hills to a walkway to take us to Paaku Summit. This summit was nothing like the 1349 steps we had to climb last weekend! It was probably only a ten minute walk up, but the view was absolutely beautiful!

Down in the bottome right, you see some dirt and some grass. This is basically just a drop off, so we had to make sure the students weren't goofing around! The area to stand on was just all rocks and dirt and wasn't that big, so it got pretty crowded with thirty students up there. 

They had this little bench thing up at the top which was cool because it is a map basically showing you where everything is. You can see most things and then just look in the general direction of others.

When we were up on the summit, it was low tide, which I'm sure you could tell. That whole sandy area tends to get filled with water at various times throughout the day. The houses you can see on the right are part of Pauanui (which is a stop we made when driving around on the peninsula last weekend) and you can just see some houses on the left which is Tairua. They are very clost to each other, but you have to drive around the bay to get from one to the other.

The reason the geography came up to the summit was because they were working on a traveling and tourism unit. Their goal was to draw a pictorial map of Pauanui. These maps had to include the mountains, the main road that can be seen going through the city, the grassy areas, the shopping center, and all the residency areas. These kinds of maps show a person the basic outline of the city, so their teacher thought it would help with the whole tourism thing if they were able to draw up a map like this for someone.

The town in the middle of the picture is Pauanui. In my picture, the tree is kind of in the way, and I have walked down on a dirt patch a little bit. All of the students were sitting in the good spots where they had a clear view of Pauanui to draw their map. It was an extremely clever project to have the students do because the view of the city was perfect from the summit. It was neat seeing how into their maps some of the students got.

Once the students were done with their maps, we were heading into town. The students were given two surveys and they had to find tourists and fill out the questions on it. I thought this was another neat activity to help students learn more about tourism. I thought that maybe some of the students would just fill in the answers themselves, but I saw a lot of them actually talking to people which was great! They were wearing their uniforms so they all looked nice! The students also had an outline of a map (with basically just the roads and the water indicated) and they had to draw in the rest of the items such as business, parks, houses, etc. on the map like they had done before.

There was something called the Beach Hop happening in Tairua that weekend, so there were a lot of tourists to be surveyed! Basically, it is just a parade of old/vintage cars. 

One of my personal favorites. It's baby pink!

They travel around the whole peninsula and make stops at the various cities. I think it is a week long process that ends here. From my blog last weekend, I think I mentioned seeing some old cars, so these were some of them! However, the amount of old cars that were here was absolutely INSANE! Apparently people come from all over NZ to come to this little festival.

It was pretty neat seeing all of the cars, especially the one with red, white, and blue flames with the license plate "USA SAM" and a bumper sticker that said "I want YOU to come to Beach Hop". I forgot to look what side of the car the wheel was on, so I don't know if the person brought their car over from the US or if it is someone who either lived in the US previously or just loves the country for some reason! 

It's kind of hard to tell, but this was a HUGE grassy area filled with old cars. Besides this area, cars could also be seen parked on the street everywhere, and there was also a park (where the pink car above was) with a strip going along the beach where they also had parked cars. There were seriously old cars everywhere.

While the students did their work, they were basically set free to go around the downtown area for a couple hours, but they just had to make sure to get their stuff done. Meanwhile, us teachers just got to enjoy a day out and make sure if we saw our students that they were maintaining a good name for the school. We got to sit down at a restaurant and eat some lunch (Shaina and I got a "Slipper Island" wood fired pizza. One of the islands that can be seen from the coast of Tairua is named Slipper Island. It kind of had an Asian taste to it, very sweet and delicious), and then we just got to walk around, shop in the stores along the main street (it seems like all these towns have their one main street with the essential shops and that's it), and then go look at some old cars. We told the students where and when to meet to go back, and they all were there on time! Overall, it was a very enjoyable day out and I am so grateful that all of these teachers have been so willing to take us along with them to get the full NZ experience!

Ngaruawahia - Hakarimata Range

So on Sunday when Shaina and I woke up, Gary asked us if we wanted to go for a walk. Their daughter Melissa studies plants and trees at her University, so she wanted to go on this walk to check out the trees in the area. They said it would be a couple hours out, so we headed down to Ngaruawahia, which was a little over an hour drive for us, and it was about 20 km away from Hamilton which is where Melissa lives/went to school.

Once we got there, we were told we were hiking to the top of the summit...1,349 steps to get to the top. We started off on our trek, and it wasn't too bad. Gary gave Melissa a little device so that they could do some geocaching. I had never heard of this before, so when people stopped at a bridge and randomly started looking under things, I was really confused. For those of you who don't know, geocaching is a worldwide recreational activity in which people hide little objects to be found. When you find it, there is a piece of paper inside of it in which you sign your name and date it. The device Melissa had pointed her in the direction of where the object was and provided her with clues on how to find it. It's a really neat idea, so if you still don't really get it, you should look it up! There is an official website and everything where it says it is a real-world treasure hunt! (www.geocaching.com) We were unsuccessful at finding the first object, so we moved on, and then we found the second one! It was a little box with a fake spider on it stuck into the hollow of a tree trunk (everyone we were with knows that nothing can really hurt you in NZ, so they are sticking their arms into the creepiest holes and crevices...no way! Even though I could tell the spider on the box was fake, there was no way I was reaching my hand in there to grab it). Inside this box was just a piece of paper, but then once we got to the third object and found it (which was under a short store case landing) there were different trinkets inside like a marble and mini sewing kit. The idea is to leave treasures for people, so if you take something, you need to put something in. We put in a US penny (which is basically worthless..) Anyways, Melissa was saying she liked doing the geocaching because it gave you an excuse to stop and look around on long hikes! Eventually, there was a fourth one on the path, but we needed to begin climbing up the never-ending staircase.

These are just a sample of some of the stairs. You would just look up and see stairs and more stairs. Like mentioned above, there are a total of 1,349. It was crazy. There were a surprising amount of people actually running up and down them (and one lady even had a baby on her back!)

They provide a bench half way up and then again at three-quarters of the way up. It was quite funny because it is normal for people to take breaks while walking up, so you kept passing the same people over and over again while each person stopped again. I think it probably took us about an hour and a half to get to the top, but we made it!

The top right city in this picture is Hamilton.

374 meters above sea level, or about 12,000 ft! Definitely the highest I've ever climbed before!

When we got to the top, we noticed some people filming something. Apparently they were filming this trail for part of a TV show. I'm not exactly sure what the show is, but they were describing it as something where he travels across many trails in NZ that are apparently connected. This particular show is mostly a Maori show, so not many people watch it, although I think the basic cable that Gary and Petro have has the channel.

This guy is Pio Terei. He is a famous Maori comedian, actor, and musician in NZ. You can look him up and see what stuff he does, but it's mostly just some nature stuff and some comedy shows. He's not like a movie star or anything. 

It was interesting watching them film because we got to watch how it was all done with retakes and just explaining what each person was to do in the scene. 

We got to be in the background shot while he finished walking up the hill! We had to just pretend to be talking to each other and then look at the camera and smile...so basically, I'll be signing autographs when I get home. Actually, like I said above, it's a Maori show, so not that many people will actually see it. That was my two seconds of fame.

We ate our lunch at the top, and then it was time to head back down. Rather than taking the steps, we took a more adventurous route through the bush. It was kind of challenging because we had to hop over tree roots and go down muddy paths and what not, but it was really fun and doing it that way!

Here is a sample of what the path looked like for part of it. There were a lot of steps to go down still towards the end of the path.

We stopped at a little waterfall to wait for Gary and Petro to catch up. It was a neat little area to relax, and there were some people there for the day just to swim.

We made it! That hill behind me is the one we went up. 

The way back probably took us another hour and a half, so it was a long adventure. I wish there were places like this in MN. It was really fun doing something like this, so I look forward to exploring the bush more at other places!

Adventures Around the Coromandel Peninsula

So this Saturday, I finally had a buddy to go out with me! We started off by exploring the Thames' Farmers Market which is every Saturday. There are a ton of cafe's down on the main street, so we walked through the market, found a nice little cafe to try, and got coffee and a bagel. It was very good! The farmers market was a usual farmers market with people in the town selling their veggies, fruits, breads, and crafts. It was neat seeing some of the things people did. We also got to watch an old car parade (to celebrate the end of Heritage Week) that was happening down on the main road.

Once we got back, we had planned on just going for a walk and lounging around until later in the night, but when we got back from the market, Petro asked us if we would like to take a drive to Coromandel Town. Shaina and I thought why not since we wanted to explore! If you look on the map, we drove from Thames along the coast to Coromandel Town. The drive was awesome because it was a narrow road between the Firth of Thames (or the Ocean) and some hills. As we were driving there, we passed a mussel farm so we got to see all of the boats parked out by the mussel ships. Apparently the side of the peninsula that we are on is the side people go to for fishing, and the other side is where people go to swim because the beaches are nicer (as pictured below). Mussels are a huge business in that area, so all of the restaurants sell fresh mussel (and some oysters since we passed a place where they get them from the ocean as well). We don't get sea food quite that fresh in MN!

Petro made sure to pull off and let us look around and explain things about the cities we went through!

This was on the way up to Coromandel. We had to go up a hill (or to me a mountain), so we saw some amazing scenery.

This is a little bit further up again. On one side you can see the water, and across the water is about where Auckland is. Then on the other side, there are just a ton of hills. It was really beautiful. I have rarely seen those kinds of views in my life so far.

Here are the hills that are on the other side when facing away from the water. These hills actually seem like hills to me and not mountains, but apparently everything on this peninsula is considered a hill (or range) but not a mountain.

Once we got to Coromandel, we did some shopping around. The city was smaller than Thames, so we went to the main street that had a couple blocks worth of shops and looked around. The only thing Shaina and I bought was ice cream. I got banana berry which basically tasted like banana laffy taffy with boysenberries. It was AMAZING! So far Gary's statement about New Zealand having good ice cream is spot on (granted I don't think I've ever had bad ice cream in the US either).

This picture is from Google which is why there are no people outside, but I just wanted to show you what it looked like. It's a usual small town with some cool little shops and A LOT of cafes. You can buy "take away" coffee at almost any restaurant you pass. Kiwis here love their coffee!

This is Coromandel Town from the top of hill that we drove up.
You can mostly see all of the houses and the main street.

Rather than taking the same way back to Thames, we decided to drive all the way around the peninsula. You can go back to the map on top if you want to look at the route. To start the drive back, we had to drive over a large hill (which some people call a mountain). It was a really cool drive because it was very windy with the rocky part on one side and many trees and essentially a drop off on the other. I've seen roads like that in the movies, but we never experience anything like that in MN.

We made it to the top! They have a nice place where you can walk to go take a scenic picture (which we obviously did!) The islands in the background are mostly used for farming and don't really have people living on them.

Here is the other side. You can just see hills and hills and hills. It's very beautiful. I can't wait until it turns green!

Obviously when we made it to the top, we had to go back down the hill. We drove around the point and the first place we stopped was Matarangi. It was basically a little community where people go on their holiday. There are a lot of houses within it, but Petro said people buy the houses to stay there on holiday and don't live there the whole year. It's pretty nice inside and there is a little shopping center that has the essentials (including takeaway coffee of course!) This side of the peninsula has really nice beaches where a lot of people go to do their surfing and swimming, so it would make sense for people to go to this place if they live in the cities or on the other side of the peninsula where we are. Then we kept heading south along the main road and drove through Whitianga and looked at some more beaches and then drove past Hahei. Although we didn't go exactly through Hahei and see the hot water springs (you have to drive out off the main road to get to them) we still just drove past it and are considering heading to those on a weekend if we get the chance. We drove through Tairua which is just another town in the peninsula that is similar to the others.

Here are some of the hills we drove through to get back to Thames. If you can see the hill that has the three points on it, they are called the Pinnacles. These are one of the top places to go tramping if you come to New Zealand. Apparently there is a great view. It's about a 3 hour hike one way, and there is a hut you can stay in overnight if you wish, but you have to provide all of your own cooking utensils and sleeping stuff. If you want you can just walk the three hours there, rest, and then walk the three hours back. I think that is me and Shaina's plan next weekend!

We took a mini detour to go drive through Pauanui. This was similar to Matarangi except for some people live there all year long. Many people in Thames have a place in this city to go to on holiday because there is a nice beach area. The shopping center here is bigger than the one in Matarangi, but it still doesn't have as many stores as an actual city. The area around Pauanui and within it is very flat, so a lot of people do there biking around it.

This is the beach at Pauanui. It was starting to get pretty cloudy, but it was still a really nice day out. You can see why people come here to surf and swim. The waves weren't crazy big, but they were still big enough for some entertainment! 

This was our last stop until we got back to Thames. Our entire adventure probably took us a total of 7 hours. That's including about an hour and a half-ish drive to Coromandel Town, an hour and a half shopping in the town, and then like four hours on the way back. We stopped MANY times to take pictures and to just get out to look at the views and stretch our legs, plus Petro took many side roads to show us little areas around the peninsula, so it normally wouldn't take someone that long to get around the peninsula. It was really cool seeing how the different sides of the peninsula were similar and different at the same time. If we get the chance, we would like to venture over to the other side and possibly go to the hot springs. It was awesome of Petro to take us on this tour because it is definitely something I wasn't thinking we were going to do. Definitely a fun way to spend a Saturday!