Manawatu Gorge Walk Pictures

These pictures are quite belated, as we actually went on this walk almost a month ago, I think. But it took a while to get my pictures, Anna's pictures, and Harry's pictures all in the same place, and it seemed like all the good ones were on their cameras. It's nice to get pictures with both J and I in them, but it doesn't happen very often.

This is actually at the end of the 3.5 hour walk that we did, but the sign is a nice introduction, and it's the only picture with all 4 of us in it. We actually hiked almost the entire gorge, from the parking lot right outside the town at one end, to the bridge that takes you to the town at the other end. In addition to being 10 kilometres long, this track was up and down the side of the gorge, meaning a lot of climbing. Also, as you will see later, there were lots of lookouts, which were 10-15 minutes off the actual trail. Let's just say we were tired at the end. Tired and happy.

We found this delightful tree that was completely hollow, and a very reasonable tent size. In fact, it had rained that morning, and inside that tree was the only dry place I saw. I would definitely shelter there if the weather turned bad!

This was one of the lookouts. That's Anna in the bottom right, and Harry a bit further away.

Here's me and Anna at the lookout. J decided that he didn't want to climb down the multitude of stairs, just to see the view and then climb back up. I thought that that was okay for him, but of course I headed down, and then deeply regretted it when I looked back up those stairs. But I made it eventually.

This is a fallen silver tree fern trunk (I think). You can see where each individual branch attached, which I think is so neat! It looks like ornamental tiles, or pottery.

This is my favourite thing that we saw - a whole little ecosystem suspended in a tree, 15 feet off the ground! It's hard to tell in the picture, but it has ground plants growing in it and everything! Don't know how it happened, but it is so neat!

(Also, I don't know why there is a line down the side of the picture, with weird lighting. It doesn't look like that in my iPhoto, but it does it when I upload it. Odd.)

The intrepid explorers! Anna and Harry are both in great shape, so J and I just did our best to keep up, but it was an adventure, and lots of fun.

(Also, J would like me to reiterate that although our hats - especially his - are rather ridiculous looking, they are charmingly appreciated in NZ.)

The path that we walked was on the left side of the gorge, and went up and down it, but tended to stay higher rather than lower - we never got very close to the road or the river.

Well, there we have it! The longest hike we've done in NZ, and a definite success! We'll see where we end up next.

By the way, in NZ they say "tramping" instead of "hiking," but I am not succeeding at getting the negative association with "tramp" out of my head, so I'm not quite using that word yet.