Tuesday, 22 March 2016

Sun 20th and Mon 21st March



We left Paeroa in the rain which put paid to our plans to bike in to the Karangahake Gorge on the cycle trail. Maybe we will do it on the way back down the East side. When the showers cleared a bit we did cycle 15kms of the Hauraki Cycle Trail and picked up a few geocaches. After a visit to Thames we made our way into the Coromandel Forest Park for the night.

We awoke to a showery morning so abandoned the planned walk on a mountainbike track. The road in to the Forest Park was very full of potholes so we didn’t venture beyond the first campsite. We called back in to the DOC Visitor Centre on the way out and were pleased we did. They had a brilliant video running about the history in the Kauaeranga Valley of logging kauri. It is just unbelievable the hardship, scale and engineering abilities of the guys. They used dams to collect the massive logs (most 2 mtrs diameter) and one time released a sequence of 28,000 logs down the river. When you see a huge living kauri now it just seems so sad to think they were cutting down trees over 1200 years old. When I see one I feel like hugging it!!! 

We made full use of the free library Wifi to pay some wages and bills then ventured further North up the pohutukawa lined coast to a free camp at Tapu. Even though there have been showers on and off it is still really warm.

 

No comments:

Post a Comment