Thursday, March 21: Sunny the whole day, quite warm, a couple of clouds towards evening
Tramping: 13.1 km
Funky Green Voyager (Genevieve)
The kitchen was rather full this morning, but I somehow managed to squeeze my breakfast preparations in between the many French guests. Packing seemed to go quite easily, and just after 9:00 I was looking for destinations for an activity today and saw that a bus could take me (almost) to the Redwoods and was leaving @ 9:48.
Dragged my stuff to the reception and was down at the bus stop in a few minutes. Bus was a little late, but for $2.8 I was at the corner where the Rifle Ridge Road begins in a few minutes.
Bit of a walk to the i-site where all the tracks begin and noticed that the night time illumination was a guided tour for $29. I thought I would take the longest track I could find (Tokorangi Pa Track, 11.5 km) and set off through the redwoods when I found a place for a couple of extreme brackets (nine-fold ±1 EV). There was hope of a lookout along the way. A short distance along the track I met up with Ms Nolometangere, the ukelele player from the hostel, but she was taking the track very slowly and I charged on. The lookout wasn’t really signposted, so having the brochure might have been useful.
Just before reaching the road the track became more open, in contrast to the cooler forests, it was now rather warm. The open track now meanders back and forth between mountain bike access points and eventually a map was reached which showed that the end of the track was nigh.
Slide Show
Click on the image to stop/start the animation
I had apparently just missed a bus when I was back at the main road, and could see a bus that would eventually pick me up on its outward trip. Another couple of walkers turned up closer to the time and soon the bus was there.
I was still trying to get my head around how the buses negotiated the CBD and was expecting the bus to start an outward journey after passing a couple of shops in town back towards Redwoods passing through the shopping center where I had embarked this morning, but its route was actually tangential and the stop after town was way out by the Rotorua Boys High School. Long walk back which could have been avoided.
Interactive Map
Got my new room here, had lunch (last of the ham), went shopping, put the brackets together, had a shower, and started on some tour planning for post sea kayaking. Then I had to decide on something for dinner. Couldn’t really stomach Cobb & Co for lamb, so went down to Pizzeria Imperfetto, 1176 Pukaki St, for a pizza instead. Capricciosa for $25 with a Croucher Ultra for $10.5. Pizza dough was good and the crusts were crispy, but the middle was only firm, so imperfetto indeed. On the way there I had run across Nele, Sophie and Ross at the night market.
That gave me the time & opportunity to try shooting the sunset from the point north of the museum, which was the right view. Held out for as long as I could, with plenty of other people shooting the sunset as well. A couple of cheap campers were parked there for the night (toilets), but of course they had to wash their dishes in the lake.
At the end of this I decided on a short cut through the “park” which turned out to be a golf course with fences. One friendly taniwha directed me to a gap in the bushes which led to a road and then the exit.
Back here I stubbed my right little toe on the bunk ladder so I had to arrange my stuff around that to prevent a repeat. One elderly guest wanted to mark her stuff in the fridge and borrowed my permanent marker for a bit while I made a sketch of the sunset timelapse.
