Kaitaia Walkway

 

 

 

On Saturday we finally completed the Kaitaia Walkway from start to finish!
We have attacked this bush walk a number of times from the Kaitaia end, but had never got very far.
Now that the boys are older and have done more walking with me and the ATC, it wa stime to nail this one. Chantelle very kindly agreed to drive us to the start and to pick us up at the end.

It was a pretty easy walk - 4 hours, well marked, fairly even gradient and just the odd boggy patch. We met some angry wasps who gave Eric and Amos a few stings. Paddy struggled at the end with his shoes and went barefoot. We saw a lot of pig sign and heard some crashing in the undergrowth deep in the bush that might have been porcine.

Around Kaitaia

 

 

 

 

More Paua Pictures

 

 

 

 

Part One
Last weekend we went to Paua for a couple of nights camping. It is a small peninsular that sticks out into the Parengarenga harbour on the East Coast about 100km North of Kaitaia. It is a special place to me on account of being very beautiful, remote, unpopulated, clean and full of interesting plants and animals. Just around the corner on the harbour is the most northern settlement of New Zealand - Te Hapua.

Paua is reknowned for its strong winds and the campsite is a field on the edge of the estuary with no real shelter from these strong winds. Can you see where this one is going? The happy campers that left town on Saturday were Patrick, Stuart, their friend Lance and myself. We spent hours gathering bits of gear from where it had all been stored, spent more time trying to squeeze it into the Capella. The petrol station was heaving with tourists and Pak'N'Save was likewise busy as. We stopped at Te Kao store for the obligatory icecream and to pick up the key to get into the field. They only charge $5 per night per vehicle, so it is possibly the cheapest campsite we have ever paid to stay on.

On arrival we found the field less busy than I had expected, given that camping over the New Year is a great NZ tradition. We selected a site close to the boat ramp so as to be able to launch the kayak easily. I noted that a)the other tents were clustered around what shelter there was - in the form of a couple of small mounds and b) that our tent was a lot bigger than the others.

Tent erection is one of those activities fraught with stress especially when the conditions are in any way non-ideal. In this case I was the sole adult and some of the helpers were not as co-operative as they might have been. Added to that I soon realized that our trusty tent had suddenly gone grey, it was old and worn with a tear here, a bent pole there and a few fastenings that were broken. We bought it for 100 quid from a wharehouse in Blackburn in 2002. And did I mention that it was windy? Not a gentle sea-breeze playing with us, but a persistent canvas flapping, no-messing proper Far North wind.

Well, the tent was finally erected and looked like it would cope. The gear was unloaded and stashed away and it was play time. Lovely view an expanse of sand uncovered by the low tide, a deep channel and the white sands of Kokota in the background separating us from the Pacific Ocean. The boys were happy playing in the sand, making fortifications and getting wet. It was warm and clean and very lovely.

Stuart decided that he was going to be chef that night and we started to assemble the cooking gear. Pans, plate, onions, mince, spagetti, gas bottle and stove. Something was not quite right, but I could not put my finger on it. Then it clicked! The gas bottle needed to be connected to the burner by a small innocuous looking tube that at that precise moment was attached to the other gas bottle on our deck back in Kaitaia. Duh!

We had our evening meal up at Waitiki Landing, which is a service area that will be familiar to those of you who have been to the light house at the Cape. The lad who served us was in my science class at Te Hapua, and he very kindly let me use the phone to ring Chantelle to ask her to bring said tube next day when she was going to join us.

Paua Pictures

 

 

 

 

Paua Two
The susnset that night was fanatstic and the wind had dropped quite a bit. We had full bellies and life was good. The boys palyed hide and seek and we all retired early to our sleeping bags.

I was up before dawn the next morning and was amazed at how calm was! Check out the sunrise in the almost cloudless sky. I wandered over to the wharf and found a lady there from Kaitaia, making a seroius attempt to catch kingfish. She had staked out her claim to one side of the wharf and was using 3 livebait rods and several other to catch pipers to use as bait. I had a good yarn and watched all the parore and tother fish in the clear water. I walked down the track to the fish farm and watched a van load of blokes getting ready to fish the shallows. In a dry and dusty paddock just over the road were a dispersed flock of at least 10 banded dotterels. I had never really watched this bird before, so gave them some time. Back to the tent and the boys had not stirred. It was very relaxing just sitting and watching the tide slowly coming in. I could see small flocks of kuaka - bar tailed godwit moving from their feedng areas to higher ground as the waters rose. Watching the kuaka was one of the highlights of the trip for me, as I had been up to Paua on day-trips before to count them. This time I witnessed 2 tidal cycles of their comings and goings.

Mid-morning Stuart and I paddled the kayak over to the Kokota and had a walk on the famous white sands. I had seen a large flock of kuaka flying to a roost site somewhere on the spit and was keen to count them at high tide. The spit was deceptively wide. I walked across it and found many interesting things - tracks of small animals, a couple of shell middens from ancient Maori camps, a trio of whale skeletons , incredibly clear greenish blue water. A coconut and a small amount of trash, but no flock of kuaka. They can fly a lot faster than I can walk, so I returned to where Stuart was waiting with the kayak and we paddled back to camp.

Other activities that day included reading, snorkelling, making a huge doughnut in the sand and fishing. Chantelle arrived with the gas pipe, so we could make a nice spag bol for lunch. The wind gradually got strong again and started to mash the tent. Chantelle was keen to try out her Xmas present - a rod and reel - so we had a fish in the channel at low tide. She christened it with lots of little snapper and then finally a bigger one that we could take home to eat.

Meanwhile, my prediction that the wind would drop as it had done the previous night was not being fulfilled. The tent was getting hammered. It was horrible to watch this inanimate object basically being "killed" by the cruel wind. The tent was just a pile of synthetic material held up with fibreglass poles. But it had also been our home in countless paddocks raging from the Isle of Man to the South Island of New Zealand. It had sheltered us on the major faultline in Wellington, from torrential rain in East Anglia and was now being trashed by the Paua wind. When two of the fibreglass poles split, the shape went very unnatural and it was all off. The decision to abort camp was made at 6.30pm and a very co-operative team of boys bundled everything into 2 cars in a short time and that was that. We arrived home expecting Eric to be put out that we had returned early. He was relieved that we were back as he was just starting to feel lonely!

Postscript: our lovely tent now lies abandoned on the back lawn. It will spend its latter years in close contact with the earth stopping grass from coming up down in the garden. Stuart has requisitioned the poles.