Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Here it is over a month later and I'm still catching up on sharing photos from our trip to New Zealand in April 2024. These pics are from our hike at Karekare Falls. It was on our last full day in the country, and we went on a driving loop out to the coast west and north of Auckland.



Usually I share pics in roughly chronological order, using them to illustrate my narrative. Here I'll start instead with my favorite pic from the bunch, this photo of us in front of Karekare Falls I posed with the help of my camera tripod. Yes, I carried my tripod for this hike since it wasn't that long.

Speaking of "not that long", as we parked for this hike we thought we could see the falls from the car....



It turned out this fairly tall falls dropping in multiple tiers behind some cliff-side houses is not Karekare Falls. It's an unnamed falls, at least on any of the maps we could find. Possibly it's a seasonal falls... "seasonal" in this case as it looks like it only appears when there's rainy weather, like there was this day.

In fact the rainy weather had us wondering whether it was worth it to go hiking— and we had identified at least 4 hiking trails we wanted to visit. We figured with that much on our to-do list we'd make the best of the weather. Thus we packed sweaters and rain jackets, which you see us wearing in the first photo, and braved the elements. While we were driving between locations the rain sometimes fell heavily. We managed to time our hikes for periods when it was only drizzling or merely overcast.

Anyway, the actual trail to Karekare Falls started a bit up the road from where we parked....



You can see Karekare Falls from where the trail forks off from the narrow road. The upside of rainy weather is that the falls are flowing well.

Just below this spot I took a spill on the trail. Everything was slick from the saturating rain, and my feet slipped out from under me. In the moment I didn't think anything was wrong other than feeling slightly bruised from the fall. By the next day, though, I realized I'd torqued my back and hurt one of my arms. That was as we headed to the airport for the long flight home to the US. A week later it was still hurting. In fact that spill is why I tried drug tourism in Mexico 2.5 weeks later. Even now, almost 6 weeks later, the aches are still with me.

But hey, back to the falls— I mean, the waterfalls— where it didn't yet hurt so bad. 😅



I took pictures from a few vantage points but mostly settled on this spot (photo above), up a slight rise from the edge of the pool at the base of Karekare Falls. This is also where I made the photo with us in the picture (top of this blog) using the tripod and timer.



Along the short trail to Karekare Falls we passed this smaller, unnamed falls. It's no more than 10-12' tall but falls nicely over a rocky apron. Again, I could make this photo with both of us in it because I carried my tripod on this trek.

Could I have gotten a similar photo by asking another visitor hiking the trail to use my camera? Almost certainly not. I'm circumspect about my skill in photography but I know I know enough about the art to know that nearly everyone else out there is a rank amateur at it. They'd have messed up the composition, likely centering the picture on us in our rain jackets and cutting off half the falls, as if we really traveled halfway around the world to get yet-another picture of us in our rain jackets. And there's almost no way they'd have gotten the exposure time I used without using my tripod anyway, so yay for carrying the tripod!

Saturday we made a day out of visiting Zim Zim Falls. It's a fairly tall waterfalls in a fairly remote corner of the Bay Area. It's technically in Napa County, but not the part you think of when you think "Napa Valley". It's out in the wilderness.

We set our alarms early for Saturday morning, thinking optimistically that we might actually get up at 6:30am. We hit the snooze button several times and got up closer to 7:30. Then we puttered around the house for more than an hour, continuing to wake ourselves up before packing for the trip. We left the house a bit after 9am, but that was okay.... With the long days this time of year we knew we'd have plenty of time, even with the round-trip drive being 5 hours.

We even had time for brunch along the way. We stopped at the Cordelia junction where I-680 ends and merges into I-80 and grabbed a fast-food quickie at Del Taco. Remember, eating at Del Taco is one of our guilty pleasures. We only get to do it on road trips, though. This one 73 miles away is practically the closest one to us!

The brunch stop was good because it split the drive roughly in half, time-wise. It also marked the shift from hammering along interstate highways at 70-80 mph to cruising winding country roads at 35-50.

The last bit— well, the next-to-last bit— of the drive to Zim Zim winds around the shore of Lake Berryessa. It's always a beautiful sight in the mornings not just because of the lake, which is beautiful, but because along the road are several nesting platforms for ospreys built by conservationists. And the ospreys have obliged by building nests in them. As we passed by this morning we saw an osprey in or near almost every one of them, their large, white heads and brown-and-white bodies poking up from their massive stick nests. Plus we saw a few of these birds on the wing.

The actual last part of the drive to the trail is where the adventure begins. The road up into the mountains from Lake Berryessa narrows and becomes rough. As it climbs higher it passes several water crossings. Here's a short video I made:



When we visited last year there was water in all the crossings. And it was deep enough that people who tried fording carelessly in ordinary passenger cars had trouble. I got through just fine in my sports car. That was in March 2023, so it was earlier in the season, and it was after a winter of record rainfall. Thus it was only slightly surprising that this year most of water crossings were dry. Only the last crossing had water, and it was maybe 2 inches deep.

Really the biggest "offroading" challenge this year was all the potholes in the road. I had to steer carefully around them to avoid bursting a sports-car tire. It wasn't so bad last year. The condition of the road clearly has deteriorated. I don't know how much longer it'll be before the county does repairs. Maybe next time we do this drive we'll take our 4x4 SUV— just to get past the potholes!

Our day in Tongariro National Park last month was a very packed day. I keep writing that over and over— because it's true. This is the tenth blog I've posted about our visit park and the twelfth from the whole day.

You might wonder with so much to write about, and especially with me still catching up on it over a month later, how I remember what I did. It's three things.

• First, I have a strong memory for things I've done and places I've gone.
• Second, the act of making photos helps— and sorting them into folders on my computer named with the location and date - e.g., 📁 Tawhai Falls Tongariro NP NZ 4-16-2024 - helps even more.
• Third, I try to start each batch of photos with a pic like this:

💡🧐🤣

We saved the Tawhai Falls Walk for last because it's a short hike, only about 1/2 mile round trip. And it's relatively easy.

About 1/4 mile down the trail we found a viewpoint of Tawhai Falls from above.



The trail continues past here, winding around and down to river level a bit downstream.



Here the trail ends abruptly at the river's edge to the right. Hawk and I hopped out onto a big rock in the middle of the water. That's where I made the photo above.

In the photo you can see a bit of a trail around the edge to the right. Well, "trail" may be a strong word. If you're a hiker you can definitely see a way that one might walk along the rocky bank, scramble over those big rocks about 20' upstream, and climb over the far side to get a better view of the falls.

Yeah, that's where I went next. Stay tuned for more photos!

Our hike out to Taranaki Falls in Tongariro National Park, New Zealand, felt long. I don't know that it was actually long but it sure felt long subjectively, in that way that some things seem to take forever when you're going to them. Then on the way back you're like, "Oh, that wasn't far." Well, we hadn't made our way back yet so we were still in the mode of, "Wow, we've hiked such a long way to get out here!"

Having hiked all that distance— objectively or subjectively— I wanted to stay put for a bit to rest and, more importantly, to enjoy the view I worked so hard for.



Fortunately the view was one I could just keep drinking in. I had fun photographing the falls from various angles and with various effects. There was a pro, or pro-looking, photographer working the falls at the same time. I stayed out of his way partly in case he was trying to earn a living... though he was constantly in my way. That's one thing I've found is typical of pros doing outdoor photography. They step in front of people with zero hesitation but scream loudly when anyone steps in front of them.

The other part of why I stayed out of the pro's (or wannabe-pro's) way is that he was taking all his pics from much closer to the falls, where the spray would've been covering his lenses in a matter of seconds. And he was taking no steps to protect or clean his lenses between shots. That's one reason why I suggest that maybe he was pro-looking..... He was clearly carrying an expensive set of camera of gear, easily $15k (US) original purchase price, but his technique raised major red flags in my mind that he was almost certainly failing to capture photos with critical detail and sharpness. If so it would hardly be the first time I saw someone with a small car worth of camera gear making total noob mistakes.

My gear? I'm still making pictures with my now 5-year old camera and a few good, but not overwhelmingly expensive, lenses. ...Okay, my workhorse is a $1,000 super wide-angle lens. (And do I baby such an investment? No. I drop it off mountains. And glaciers.)

And do I carry a big bag of gear? Heavens, no! The same part of me that doesn't want to drop 15 grand on a camera rig doesn't want to drag 30 lbs. of it all over tarnation. I'm not even carrying a tripod on this trip. Instead I'm snapping these long-exposure shots balancing my camera on the monopod my hiking staff serves dual purpose as.



And shots with my iPhone? I'm free-handing those.

Soon enough it was time to head back to the start of the track. Remember what I wrote above about how far it seemed? I wasn't looking forward to hoofing it back. I also wasn't looking forward to starting the return trek with a climb up the switchbacks up that cliff. Trail signs showed that we could keep walking in the same direction, though, and catch a trail that looped back to almost the same trailhead. I pressed to go that way.



Hiking the loop was a plus because we got to see more than the same, frankly boring, trail across rolling hills of grass we hiked out. Instead we hiked down the stream canyon and saw a few more waterfalls. None were as grand as Taranaki but they were enjoyable.

The loop trail worried me, though. We were hiking down. Down a lot. Down, down down. And you know that when hiking a loop, what goes down must go up. I was really not looking forward to having to ascend hundreds of feet, probably even 1,000 feet, back up the mountain to return to our car.



Then, at what seemed like the low point of the trail, we saw a trail sign. It promised it was just 20 minutes of walking back to Whakapapa. Even if 20 minutes was an estimate for someone in great shape there's no way it means multiple miles and many hundreds of feet of ascent. And indeed it wasn't. After less than 200' feet of ascent, climbing out of the stream canyon, the end was in sight:



The trailhead is by that large, yellow-roofed building on the left. BTW, the large building on the right is a vintage hotel currently not in service.

We completed the loop appropriately tired but not completely spent. ...Which was good because we still had at least one more hike to do that day! Stay tuned.

We had a packed day at Tongariro National Park in New Zealand a few weeks ago. We continued on despite the cloudy, rainy weather. After bailing out of Waitonga Falls and finding a bonus falls, then enjoying a short hike Mangawhero Falls, we decided to explore up the park road. We figured maybe the morning clouds would burn off and we could go back and hike Waitonga Falls.

As we drove higher and higher up toward the 9,177' summit of Tongariro's Mt. Ruapehu, the clouds didn't burn off... but we did rise above them. Well, not all the clouds, but the main layer that was dropping rain lower down. Up at Turoa ski area, at the end of the road, the sky was almost clear!



Well, the part right around Mt. Ruapehu wasn't clear. The clouds kept shifting but never quite giving us a clear view of the mountain's distinctive triple peak. But we enjoyed the views we were able to get.

Oh, and it was cold up here. While temperatures were in the mid 50s down in Ohakune where we started the morning, it was only a bit above freezing up here. Temperature drops like that are typical for higher elevation.

BTW, yes, what you see in the mid-ground of the photo above is a ski area. It's just that it's out of season right now.



As we explored around the vacant, out-of-season ski area, bundled up in multiple layers of clothing to ward off the cold, we spotted a waterfall. Yes, up here near the top of the mountain there's a fairly sizable waterfall! This is almost certainly a seasonal waterfall that only appears (a) during snowmelt and (b) right after rain. The rocky terrain up here means water drains fast.

I've kind of fallen off the wagon the past few days on posting blogs & photos from our New Zealand trip in April. After posting an overview of the packed day-trip visit to the park in close to real-time, since returning home I've been going back through my photos to post more details— and photos. I was setting a swift pace with that last week up through Friday with 3-4 journals a day, then.... Honestly, what happened is then I got to a part of the trip that's hard to blog about.  I started telling myself, "Enh, maybe tomorrow I'll have energy for it." That tomorrow never came. And today's still not the day. So instead I'm going to skip ahead to another part of the trip.

In New Zealand we split our time between North Island and South Island, a week on each. North Island we flew to on Monday, landing in Wellington with the giant eagles, drove up to Ohakune with a brief visit to a waterfall just outside Wellington, and stayed the night at the ill-named Hobbit Motor Lodge. This set us up for a full day at Tongariro National Park.



Tongariro NP is home to volcanic Mount Ruapehu, the highest peak on North Island at 2,797 m (9,177 ft), and several waterfalls. We didn't care too much about the peak itself. We were there for the waterfalls. And we had a full day planned with four waterfall hikes!

As you can see in the photo above, the day did not start off very promising. We drove through town outside the park with heavy clouds hanging low overhead. As we drove up the flanks of the volcano into the park the clouds turned to mist and then rain. Basically we were in the clouds. By the time we got to the trailhead for our first planned hike, Waitonga Falls, we were having serious second thoughts. Hiking a trek of 4 miles in the rain did not seem like fun.

We decided to see if we could wait out the weather. Perhaps if we did something else for an hour the skies would clear up and we could go do that hike. So we drove further up the park road toward our second planned hike.



We didn't get as far as the second planned trail when we spotted this falls off the side of the road, in the distance. We pulled over to the side of the road and enjoyed the view from next to the car. The falls was actually was a good distance away. The photo above I made with a moderate telephoto lens.

"Could this be Waitonga Falls?" we asked ourselves. "If so we've saved ourselves 2 hours of hiking in the rain!"

We checked our trail map, and alas, no, this was not Waitonga Falls. We didn't save ourselves 2 hours of hiking in the rain. But we did get an unexpected bonus falls that is not Waitonga Falls.



Here's a photo I made with a longer telephoto lens. If there were a trail to these falls, about 1/4 mile up the canyon, we probably would have hiked it. Hiking a short distance like that in the drizzling rain isn't too bad.

One thing you can see in these latter two photos is that cloudy, damp days are actually good conditions for photos of waterfalls. The light is even and the foliage seems to pop and glisten with the moisture. Cloudy, damp days just are not good conditions for enjoying lengthy hikes to get to the falls. 😅

Having hiked all the way out to McLean Falls, not that "all the way" was very far (I think it was about a mile), we lingered for a while. Of course, with the beauty of these falls it's hard to rationalize leaving.



As I remarked in my previous blog, I didn't carry my tripod with me on this hike, a decision I regretted by the time I got to these falls, but I free-handed these slow exposure pictures as best I could. For some of them (I forget which now) I braced my camera atop my knee while sitting on a wet rock.



At the bottom of the steep hill below McLean Falls there's a trail sign that points to "The Chute" in the other direction. We saw it on the way in, a much smaller falls that we could really only glimpse through the trees alongside the path. "Let see if we can get a better view of those falls on the way out," we agreed on the way in.



While there no good view from the main trail we found a footpath down to the creek below the falls. It required careful footwork not to slip on mud and wet rocks, but we're experienced hikers wearing good boots.
Still to come: time for one more waterfall today!

Wednesday a few weeks ago in New Zealand was a busy day. I'm going to say that in a lot of blogs because... well, it was a busy day, so there's lots to write about. After hiking Purakaunui Falls in the Catlins region of South Island we drove on a bit further to a two-fer: Matai Falls and Horseshoe Falls.

We started down the trail to Matai Falls. Yes, down— meaning it'd be up on the way back. Again. Matai Falls did not disappoint.



Again, as with Purakaunui Falls, we shared the trail with a small number of other hikers. They were enough to spoil any sense of "Wow, we're out here in the middle of nowhere" but thankfully not enough to spoil our enjoyment of nature's own sights and sounds,.

We were also few enough in total that we could snap pictures without getting in each other's way.



Yes, I carried my tripod again on this hike. I debated whether or not to do so as this trail is longer than the previous one, but I'm glad I did. Capturing photos like this makes it worth the effort to carry.



Horseshoe Falls (photo above) was an unexpected bonus on this trip. It in the lists of waterfalls we hastily researched this morning (in calling an audible on the day's plans) but it was an easy add-on of just a few extra minutes of walking each way. Bonus! It'd bring to at least five the number of waterfalls we'd see today.

On Tuesday (two weeks ago) on New Zealand's South Island we drove out from Queenstown to make what we could of the rainy day. Our plan had been to hike a mountainous trail but the weather boded against that. Still, we hiked a few miles around Bob's Cove in drizzling rain the whole time.

Further around the shores of the Lake Wakatipu we spotted on our maps a trail to Lake Face Falls. It was raining more heavily when we reached the trailhead so we decided to continue on (driving) and try again on the way back.

We reached the small town of Glenorchy at the end of the road. We figured we'd get lunch there. We figured if it was big enough to earn a dot on the map it'd have restaurants, right? Haha. It's such a small town that it has one general store that's basically everything: coffee shop, lunch counter, grocery, gift shop, and outdoor clothing store. Well, we were successful at getting lunch there. And we bought a memento, a hand-knotted wool sheep pillow. And we shopped outdoors clothes. Hawk and I were interested in better rain jackets but didn't find anything in our size/price range. Hawk did buy a wide-brimmed hat to help keep the rain off her face. (I already had one, which is how she got the idea to buy one.)

We drove out to a park at the foot of Lake Wakatipu to see if the rain would pass, but it didn't. What would we have done if it was clearer? Well, just north of Glenorchy is an interesting glacial valley. There's a mountain in the middle of the valley. Basically a glacier split around a small mountain and rejoined on the other side. It was the subject of many of the prints and art at the general store and makes a great view— when you can see it.

As we headed back toward home we stopped again at Lake Face Falls. It was still raining, but we decided to hike it anyway. It was a matter of "Do it in the rain or don't do it at all."



One upside of the rain today is that the falls were full. They looked very compelling to visit. Plus, the rain wasn't that bad. Until it started raining harder. 😂

Oh, but don't let the telephoto picture above fool you. It's easy to focus on the falls, but they're also kind of far away. Here's another photo from as we crossed the road to begin the trail:



The trail led uphill through tall grass and bushes. The trail was wildly overgrown, as we were warned by postings on hiker social media sites. We weren't too worried as we were wearing long pants and long sleeves anyway. But pushing through the brush and tall grass amplified how wet we got. Within minutes our clothes were drenched. And then the trail got even more overgrown.



The trail went from "cuts through tall grass and bushes" to "Duck under this thicket to follow the trail." We could tell we were close, and reasoned "In for a penny, in for a pound."

On the other side of the thicket we broke out onto a view of the lowest part of the falls.



These lower falls are a nice view. We could barely make out the bottom of the big falls in the distance up the ravine. We could not see the tall part of the falls at all.

From here a narrow footpath continues up the ravine. It's fairly steep, though, and with all today's rain quite slippery. Hawk decided to wait at the bottom while I scouted ahead to see how passable it was and if it yielded more views. I never got to the views as the trail was too slippery with mud on steep hillsides. We turned around and headed back toward the car.

Once at the car we changed out of our soaked clothes as much as we could. Some of the quick-drying materials aired out nicely by the time we got back to the hotel. Everything else we spread out across the suite's ample space to dry as we headed over to the hotel's pool area for a soak in the hot tub. Yes, we were already soaked, but this would be a pleasantly warm soak!

New Zealand Travelog #31
Rotorua, NZ - Wed, 17 Apr 2024, 6pm

Today was another busy day, combining getting from point A to point B with several hiking treks. A and B were respectively, leaving the small motor lodge with natural hot spring pools and checking in to a nice hotel in Rotorua with views over Lake Rotorua.

In between those and with a route of 180km— which, at this point, is one of our easier days of driving— we did several things:

• We hiked at Huka Falls, a park in the town of Taupo where the Waikato River draining Lake Taupo plunges over a small drop. What's impressive here isn't the height of the waterfall but the enormous amount of water pouring through it. The flow averages 200,000 liters per second.


• We also drove through Taupo, a resort town on the lake. It was very... resort-y. I looked at staying there when I was planning bookings for this trip, but the cheapest hotels were 2x what we spent on the old time-y, middle-of-nowhere one with hot springs.


• We visited Okere Falls, near the town of the same name. This park is home to not one but several waterfalls. We hiked a walking track that visited two of them then drove a short distance to a short hike for a third.


• Te Puia, on the edge of Rotorua, is both a geothermal park and a Maori cultural center. We walked around for a few hours, first with a guided tour group, then on our own, seeing the geothermal features and learning about Maori culture and history. We managed to time a viewing of the park's biggest geysers erupting as a pair late in the afternoon— and with literally nobody else around at the time!


• In terms of learning about Maori culture, we confirmed a wild notion we'd had since last week, "Hey, these Maori place-names read kind of like Hawaiian place names... they're both Polynesian; are they from the same people?" Yes! The Maori who settled in New Zealand, which they named Aotearoa in the 12th and 13th centuries CE, were seafaring people who explored from Taiwan to the Easter Islands to Hawaii to as far as South America before arriving here.

As with yesterday's busy day, I will followup with additional blog entries later to expand on these activities and share photos.