Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Day 10

Today was slow, I didn't have anything booked or planned ahead of time (my wifi limit ran out before I could figure out which one to book).  So I took it easy for a while.  As I was sitting in bed I realize the sun is deciding to peak through and decided I had to get my act together and get out and do something.  When I wandered out I ran into one of the guys that joined me when we wandered the night market and the local geothermal park.  We decided to do a hike in a redwood park just outside of town in the afternoon.  Yes, I said redwood, as in California Coast Redwood.  Just another nonnative species that is taking advantage of the kiwi climate.  I still however needed to find something to do before we headed that way.  So I went for a walk near the big lake and ran into a bunch of cool birds and geothermal sites.
Have you ever seen an actual black swan? They look really mean.

These are just some cool flowers and plants and geothermal sites I happened upon as I wandered near the lake (there is a little flower garden near the lake in the Government Gardens)

Anyway, we went for a hike and I was blown away with all the cool mountain bike tracks, kinda jealous of all the riders and wishing the forecast would have said sun and not scared me off.  The views on the hike that we did were just spectacular so it ended up an awesome day anyway, except for the bit when the bus back to town just drove past us.  Yeah, that added another couple miles.  By the end of the day I had hiked about 13 miles and I had these to show for it:
 Yes that is a geyser going off in the background.
My friend and I at the peak
 Awesome tree ferns
And one more epic tree fern (like 30 feet tall)

After all that I was exhausted but it was my last chance to do any rock climbing so I ran in there and bouldered as hard as I could for a half hour before they closed, it was EPIC and I was terrible at it.

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