Day 7 - Coast to Coast

Tree planting, the rugby world cup and school are to blame this time. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... DAY 7! (I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but in my defense this was one hell of a day).

I thrashed around blindly in an attempt to locate the screaming banshee that was my phone alarm at 5am, not that there are many spots in a two-person tent for it to hide.  At last I got a hold of it and the backlit screen confirmed my greatest fears… it was time to wake up. There are only a few people I know who can truly say that they wake up at 5am, I believe society refers to them as insomniacs.

Ah wonderful, now that I was stumbling about the campground I was to fulfill my duty of waking the rest of the troop and boy was that ever a mistake. As I went from tent to tent waking up my friends I could feel their eyes stabbing me through their tents, not that I blame them. Our departure time was set at 5:30am and I’ll be damned if we were going to leave a minute later on my watch, I was going to see my sunrise on time. I watched as all eleven zombies (Alex chose to use his brain and sleep in) piled stiffly into the vans and off we went to Cathedral Cove.

            The drive was only ten minutes but because a couple of the girls had slept in the van that night/morning, the windows were all fogged up making the ‘short drive’ I referred to earlier seem like we were driving through an endless cloud of doom the entire way there. I mean we would have defogged the windows or whatever but none of us could read Chinese in order to operate Jackie Chan’s climate control.

When we arrived in the parking lot nothing was said, because not a single person’s brain was awake enough to do anything other than breathe. It was still completely black at 5:45 am and we could not see a damn thing without our headlamps. We used these to light up the trail signs to Cathedral Cove, a 30 minute hike from the parking lot. When I read this my heart skipped a beat and the gears in my brain began to turn, albeit rather slowly; I was going to have to pick up the pace if I wanted to get to the cove for the very start of the sunrise. Using the stream of light from my headlamp I started off at a brisk pace, following the directions of each sign as I went. With a thermal, a long sleeve shirt and my sweater on, I was starting to get a little warm and with this increasing warmth I started to wake up.

As the excitement of making it to the Cove first overtook me I started to jog, and then run, backpack bouncing and the white light of my headlamp dancing dizzyingly before me. Tree roots tried to trip me as I ran but I was focused now, my vision clear ahead, my clothes clung damply to my skin and the sweat of determination started to drip down the side of my face. Finally I could feel the trail starting to descend steeply and with one final turn to a set of steps I stood there at the top of them, looked around and thought to myself, please, please be clear enough to see the sun.

 As I stepped off the bottom step onto a sandy beach the still air of the forest left me and I felt a light breeze on my face. The sky was lighter now and the silhouette of all things invisible in the night began to reveal themselves. A large cliff face ran along the beach to my right while the aptly named Cathedral Cove opened up on my left, its mouth open wide in an everlasting breath. I suppose if I was stuck in the Cove’s position I too would have left my jaw in the sand, a lifelong state of disbelief at the beauty of Mercury Bay as it ebbed and flowed before me. Statuesque rocks riddled the shoreline, wading giants turned to stone; arrested by the view before them. As I neared the cliff face that ran along the back of the beach I noticed that there was a ledge a few feet high that someone or something had made especially for my sunrise viewing session. I crawled up into the small overhang, laid my bag down beside me and allowed the waves to whisper into my ears.

It didn’t take long for the rest of the group to join me down at the beach and then up into the luxurious cliff seating for our much anticipated show. As the sky grew lighter clouds began to appear, drifting from right to left across the area where I thought the sun should be appearing soon. This disheartened me somewhat as I was hoping to see a clear burst of light being birthed from its watery bed; instead, I now thought I would be witnessing an anticlimactic increase in light like the end of a movie in a theatre. Regardless of these thoughts I was here and I was happy to be on a beach with my friends minutes from daybreak.  Many of them were exploring the shores, taking photos of the rocks, gulls and cloudy horizon as it primped and prepared itself for the arrival of the sun. 

At last around 6:40am we started to see some action. The clouds were still there but the sky was starting to change from blue and grey to a golden hue. Slowly, like the fighting embers of a forgotten fire, an orange heat rose from the depths of Mercury Bay and my eyes beheld a wealth of rich colour that began to grow, overtaking the clouds. The sun then reared its regal head ever so slightly and a mane of golden light spilled through the floorboards of heaven; in an instant all that I could see was painted in gold and I sat amongst riches that rivaled even the greatest of fortunes. I became a part of the treasured landscape that cradled me in its arms and nothing but the soothing sound of the ocean occupied my thoughts. (Precisely one second after the sun peaked through the clouds Benen chimed in “annnd cue the dolphins…”)

I sat there for a long time on that rock ledge. Long after my friends left to explore the other side of the cove, long after the gulls came and went in their endless search for food, I sat there listening to the waves and I sat there in peace.  There are very few times when I have experienced this kind of tranquility but one thing for certain is that it has always made itself present through nature.  I was quite sad to see that moment come to an end but there were people to meet, places to see and that was just the adventure of it all.

On our way back to the parking lot I was again met with beautiful outlooks that I had passed by in the darkness and atop one grassy knoll in particular a ewe and her two lambs watched us in curiosity. I wondered if they knew how lucky they were to dine before such a magnificent view on a daily basis.

When we got back to our campsite we packed up our gear as fast as we could and got back on the road, headed for Auckland. Danni’s dad has a house in the city and so her and Giso had planned on taking a few days off to relax and tour the city. For whatever reason whether it was simply a coincidence or a side effect from the lack of sleep, as we approached Auckland, Graeme and I both became ill; our stomachs started to bother us and brutal headaches started to set in as if the city itself was poisoning us. Being surrounded by buildings, towers, mazes of overpasses and cars flying every which way was dizzying and a shock to our senses.  When we finally found the house we kicked the happy couple out of the door and sped off towards the nearest safe haven of trees. We took sanctuary at the feet of the Waitakere Ranges on the west coast of New Zealand alongside the Tasman Sea. Our car and Bene’s car waited for Ross to show up and when they did we sent Benen, Ross and Zach off with the vehicles to meet us at the other end of the trail roughly three hours later. The rest of the group started off towards the trailhead that would welcome us to part of the Hilary Track.

I can honestly say without a single seed of doubt that this was the muddiest track I have ever even seen in my entire life. The trail was like a big waterslide with high walls on both sides and a corridor of mud down the middle. Going uphill felt as though we were walking up an icy treadmill and downhill was even worse because the only way to stop yourself was to grab hold of trees as you whizzed by them or to just wipe out entirely and hope that gravity and friction teamed up to save your life.  Amazingly nobody got hurt but the number of close calls was startling; if I had not played hockey for the majority of my life I doubt I would have come out of the forest in as good a condition as I did.

When we did emerge from the slippery slopes of sludge and slime we found ourselves in a scene from Jurassic Park. I kid you not, we had green mountains huddled around us with wild prehistoric plants hanging off vines and crawling through the ferns, the only thing missing were the actual dinosaurs and I’m pretty sure they were just taking an afternoon nap somewhere in the bushes.  After taking a few photos of this magical landscape we pressed on until we came upon a stream where the trail seemed to end, until we looked at the other side, so cool! I have hiked all over the world but this was the first time I would actually walk through a respectably deep stream to get to the next part of the trail. For the entire trip we had been calling Franzi “The Deer” because no matter the slippery conditions or muddiness of it all she never seemed to get dirty, until finally her title met its demise at the stream and she got the bottom of her pant legs a little wet. On the other side of the stream we kept walking through weeds that were twice as tall as I was and came to an opening that led to a beach on the Tasman Sea. Had we given ourselves a little more time we would have stayed and enjoyed the beach but we still had a fair bit of hiking to do and the cars would be waiting to pick us up at the end of the trail.

Upwards and onwards we went through the mud and the dinosaur stomping grounds until at last we arrived at a parking lot. Unfortunately nobody knew if it was the right one or not because our map didn’t correspond with the trail sign at the entrance to the parking lot. Regardless, we stopped for a much needed break during which I of course wolfed down some peanut butter and jelly wraps as the others looked on in horror and disgust. I still cant figure out how nearly none of them have dined on this delicacy. After a few minutes of holding up our phones with the hopes of a signal magically appearing, Graeme returned from a house across the street with the news that it would be a half hour walk along the road to our proper meeting spot. With that news we packed up our snacks and started walking down the mountain along the road.

The weather was perfect so there were no complaints about spending more time outside and the concrete under our feet nearly gave us land sickness after the slipping and sliding we had been doing all afternoon. Fifteen minutes into our walk a familiar grey van came careening around the corner and with it Benen’s laughter at the sorry sight of ten mud balls slogging along the road. There was only room to pile eight of us into the van so Graeme and I agreed to wait, or rather run down the road because we were rid of our packs and… crazed idiots I suppose? There we were at a full run down the winding single lane road wondering how long our knees would support us before they disintegrated. Thoughts like these occupied my mind until we came barreling around one particular corner and all of a sudden it was if we were hit by a wall. The mountains parted to the side and like a big green carpet, a view unrolled itself all the way to the sea, and the low lying sun put its spotlight directly onto our muddied faces as if we were entering some climactic theatrical scene in which two masochistic simpletons frolic down a mountainside. We slowed down for a short while to soak in the view before continuing on down the mountain where we turned down a ride from Ross who had come to pick us up, bad idea.  When Graeme and I finally got to the bottom we realized that we had no idea where we were going or where to meet the rest of the group and so we were relieved when Ross returned to pick our dumb asses up.

It turns out we had stopped only a few minutes short of our campsite, essentially flat ground along a stream with an outhouse and a small shelter but it looked like a palace to me. It was starting to get dark and so we decided to head to nearby Piha Beach to see if we could catch the sunset. By the time we got to the beach the sun hovered just about the clouds on the horizon, turning everything on shore into a silhouette. It was kind of strange seeing these sharp shadows that had peeled themselves from the ground, especially when they were on the black sand of the west coast beach. A few members of the group went for a quick dip in the sea but for once I couldn’t be bothered, I was shivering in the wind as it was. I chose instead to stand up on a wooden lookout that was nestled in the dunes and take it all in, wave after wave on the shore, shade after shade of blue and purple floating into the night sky to meet the stars. A large rock formation called Lion Rock sat in the middle of the beach looking out to sea. Named precisely for its appearance, the rock was the shape of a lion lying down with its paws in front of it, guarding the land from the threats of the sea. It was such a strange sight to see and I half expected him to yawn, stretch his legs out, swish his tail around and let out a terrific roar. It would do no such thing though, and as the sun disappeared so did everything else. Sunrise on the east coast and sunset on the west coast in the same day, not bad New Zealand.

When we returned to camp we cooked up some dinner and welcomed a guest that came in the form of a chocolate lab that I named Hershey after a friends dog. It was quite entertaining to watch him disappear into the night only to hear the shriek of one of the girls a few seconds later when they felt the brush of fur and wet nose on their hands.  When I finished eating I went down to the stream to wash my pots and pans where I was met with yet another surprise. As I rinsed the couscous and tuna from my pan I noticed something quite long and tube-like that seemed to be stunned by the light of my headlamp. Fresh water eels, two of them each about a foot long squirmed around in the water, their grimacing faces and dead eyes looking on as if I was the dullest thing they’d ever seen. I cannot say the same for myself as I nearly cried out when I first saw them and went running back to the shelter to tell the others of my discovery. They were still there when we returned but three smaller ones had joined them, prompting me to think, “hmmm, I’m going to go ahead and rinse off my pans with some drinking water”.

After another few hours of storytelling about world travels, worst jobs ever, college stories and such we retired to bed; for some of the group this was the last night of travel while others like me had one last night left in the woods. As I put my head down on my pillow made from a bunched up sweatshirt and my lovely thermals I heard something I had never been treated to before while camping; to my right I heard the stream trickling past while to my left the distant sound of crashing waves could be heard from the Tasman Sea (luckily I went to the bathroom before I went to bed), and with that thought day seven came to a close.

Thanks again for reading, I apologize for the overuse of metaphors in some spots (or all) I just get way too excited rewriting these stories and feel that in order to do even a little justice to the actual thing they need to be exaggerated to epic proportion. I am working on being a little more consistent with posting these blogs but life tends to get in the way. Hope all is well on your end!

Cheers,

Brayden