Our plan was to visit the wild pigs and the pig man, see the siamese kauri tree, and visit the waterfall. We really wanted to see the wild pigs because Lasma (Latvia), our fellow WWOOFer here at the cafe who left a few weeks back, did the same and seemed to really enjoy it. She also got a ride from Stu, the pig man, while she was out there so we were hoping to get one as well. It took us a bit of effort to get out there. We got a ride into town and a ride to the 309 road without trouble. Once on the 309 road the first car picked us up - a couple visiting from Prague. The problem, however, was that we didn't know exactly where the pigs were. We knew the pigs were before a place called Waterworks but on our ride we didn't see any pigs. When we got to Waterworks, without any luck of finding the pigs, we had them drop us off and decided we'd walk back the road to find the pigs as we didn't want to take up too much of these nice people's time. We went into the Waterworks to ask the people working where exactly the pig man lived. The woman who was working behind the desk was a bit stunned to find out we'd hitchhiked out to see a man who lives with pigs but gave us some information anyways. She obviously couldn't understand why we'd rather hang out with a man who lives with wild pigs instead of go to a water attraction but we didn't care. We took her directions and started our hike back. We got there in about 15 minutes and boy was it cool! Below are some photos. (Side note: if I ever see two girls walking down a dirt road in the middle of nowhere I will no longer find it weird. This is exactly what we were doing and to us it was totally normal.)
Alanna and the pigs didn't get along so well at first...
...but after Stu showed her how to hold the pig...
...it was love. This cute little piglet fell asleep in her arms.
Me with Stu, the pig man.
Here's a few videos from today as well:
Me holding a piglet.
A tour of the wild pigs' home.
After spending some time with Stu, he offered to give us a ride up the 309 road to the waterfall and the Kauri grove. We rode in the back of his pick-up truck.
Here's a video of us riding in the back of the truck.
Stu brought us first to the waterfall just to show us where it was and then up to the Kauri grove. Here are some photos of the Kauri trees. A quick fact, most Kauri trees were cut down on the Coromandel Peninsula when logging began here, thus most of the trees in the area are quite young and thus "small". At their largest, a Kauri tree would make a redwood or sequoia look like a dwarf - at least that's what people tell me. Here are a few photos from our time with the trees:
Me, above, and Alanna (Canada), below, with the Siamese Kauri. Here's the wikipedia page on the Siamese Kauri.
Hugging a different, but still large, Kauri on the Kauri walk.
Looking up the trunk of a Kauri.
We hiked around the Kauri walk area a bit. Here's a video of what it looked like on the track. After the Kauri trees we walked back down the 309 road to the waterfall. We wanted to go for a swim at the base of the waterfall and decided to culminate our time on the 309 road with the swim so we'd be clean for our ride home. Here's some photos of the waterfall:
Alanna.
Me and Alanna.
All of this excitment was over by 12:25 pm. It only took us the morning to pack in all this fun! It surprisingly didn't take us that long to get a ride back to town. There was not much traffic on the 309 and we were picked up by the 3rd car. A local guy, we can't remember his name, gave us a ride. He's a mussel farmer and pig hunter - apparently that's what everyone around here does. Probably like being a corn/soybean farmer and deer hunter in MN. Anyways when we got back into town we had lunch and then went out for coffee. It was all good until....
...around 4pm when we got back to the cafe. I started to feel quite sick quite quickly. Within 1 hour I threw up. It was the grossest vomit session I've ever had! Throwing up partially digested mussels is not fun. I actually can't imagine something more disgusting to throw up. The taste of vomit and mussels in your mouth, plus watching mussel chunks fly about is not good. But after 4 quick vomits I was feeling much better. I've taken it slow this evening but I think I'm in the clear. I think mussels just aren't in my future any time soon, and maybe never. Yuck! (Unfortunately this is probably just the beginning of sickness during my travels.)
Tomorrow I think I'm gonna try to get over to Whitianga to do the Kayak tour of Cathedral Cove. I'll check the weather in the morning but hopefully it'll be warm enough. Then tomorrow night the ladies and I are doing a final shared meal. They aren't leaving until Monday but since I work Thurs - Sun nights tomorrow is our last night together.
I've also started planning the adventures for my trip south through NZ. I'm going to work on finding specific tours, trips, activities, etc. over the next few weeks and then I'll let you know what you can expect in the coming month(s).
That's all.
Best!
No comments:
Post a Comment