Brook Waimāmara Sanctuary
I wanted to go into the woods, the mountains. Doing the best possible. There is a bus from the city center up to the sanctuary. Sounded good. Until… the bus driver told me, that he only could go half way because of road works. His colleaque said, from that last possible busstop, it would be about 1 km to the sanctuary. Okay. Should be fine.
Thus, I took the bus and walked up the last part… seemed to be more like 2 miles than 1km, all paved. Well. It is what it is.
In the sanctuary, there are basically 3 possibilties: the shortest round is about an hour, the second a little less than 2 hours, the biggest goes all the way up to the top… about 4 hours. As I also had to walk back to the bus stopp, the big loop wasn’t an option to me, not now.
The sanctuary is a community project, where people work on reviving a natural aotearoa forest: native plants, native animals… keeping intruders out. This starts with rodents – not an easy job.
I walked along the river, right in the beginning, I could see a tuatara, sleeping through the day. A tuatara is an acient reptile, lived all together with dinosaurs! One of the special things about them: adults are active at night, juveniles at daytime. Two reasons: Juveniles have a different diet. And they would become part of their parents diet, when they would be active at night… Wisdom of nature.
Along the walk, I saw a lot of birds, heart much more. This was the first time in NZ I used an insect repellent! (Haven’t had seen many insects or bugs until now at all!) At the first bridge, the first turning point, I decided to take the walk further uphill. Became quite steep, and was worth every step! With the landscape, the vegetation was changing, as the sounds as well. At the second bridge, I turned to take the way back down to the visitor center. And again, different vegetation, different views. Not long before the end of this walk, I found a path down to the river bed. Lovely place, with a waterfall 🙂 And perfect to cool down my knee a bit. Ready for the last part of the walk.
Right outside of the visitor center, a man stopt with his car, asking if he could give me a lift back to the city. Thank you, universe! He told me about his trip, the challenges he faced with it and his plans for the rest of the day. Loved to listen. In the city, I took a little D-tour to a sushi bar, which I had seen the first day. Nice place, bufet style, nice people.
