A Hike

Greetings, Americans! I’m glad that Jen wrote about our restaurant – these things are also useful for me to know. : )

I just walked around town with our friend Tal, from Israel, but the walk lasted about ten minutes because it’s literally freezing outside. Also raining. New Zealand has confused itself with Michigan or something. We came back to the nice warm kitchen, and the Danish girls eating dinner with the Australian who lives here, and the creepy older English guy who’s missing a tooth.

But anyway, I was going to tell you all about the hike we took, to the Haruru Falls. Because it was awesome. It was about 11 km round trip; we walked through town, crossed the bridge, and went along the grass along the road for a ways to get to the start of the “track,” which is what they call hiking trails. There were lots of signs saying “No Dogs: Kiwi Habitat.” Unfortunately, kiwis are nocturnal, so we saw not a one.

Anyway, we walked all along through the forest; ate our lunch sitting in a giant tree; crossed some long boardwalks through a mangrove swamp (mangrove: Varicennia marina var resinifera); saw some wild birds (I mean, they were literally wild, but they were also very excitingly uncommon); took lots of pictures of trees and ferns and flowers; and befriended a rooster. The falls themselves were beautiful; not so big, but impressive enough, and falling into a gorge with steep walls. Jen had to book it back to work, sadly, but I sat on the rocks in the sun for awhile, and read my book, and stuck my feet in the water, before walking back.

Oh – some of the birds we saw were very big, crane or pelican looking things, nesting in big neighborhoods in the trees next to the trail. There were lots of fuzzy babies in the nests – but these babies were still like the size of adult robins, or something like that. Pretty big. One nest we saw, the babies were all dancing around the mom, squawking their heads off, and finally the mom ducked her head and one of the babies stuck its entire head into her throat. It looked like the mom was eating her child. You could see the throat bulging out with the head of the baby bird. Then finally the bird pulled its head out, apparently very satiated with its delicious meal. This whole process happened a couple more times. It was like watching Planet Earth.

We also experienced a salt marsh, heard the interesting sound effects of “snapping shrimp” (I poked around in the mud with a stick but couldn’t find any; the marsh sounded like people were hiding behind every tree popping popcorn, but apparently that’s the shrimp making these noises), and saw these big birds with curvy little yellow things hanging from their foreheads over the faces like dropping unicorn horns.

It was all extremely fascinating. I am more determined than ever to somehow find myself a New Zealand field guide.