For Christmas this year, we decided to go to Punakaiki and walk the Porariro River track. Some people wanted to go to the beach, but more of us wanted to do a bush walk, and this is the one that was chosen. We got there in time to eat our picnic lunch. Because it had been raining, the ground was quite wet, and of course we had forgotten our camping chairs, so we sat on the inner tubes the boys had taken along. That got pretty funny; the four boys who sat on one figured out that they could bounce in rhythm! I tried to get a video of it, but they always stopped as soon as I picked up the camera!
This is a twig that one of the children brought me.
Have a close look at how Simon parked. He was “trying to park beside us.”
The river was in flood; Esther said it was about two feet higher than the other time she walked this track. It was gorgeous!
I saw grooves on the underside of this rock from when they blasted it to form the track.
I’ve never noticed a bud on a Nikau Palm before. It’s huge!
I think this was a tree that fell over and an arch was formed for the track to go through. Gayle wanted a picture of me inside it!
The children all reached the swing bridge ahead of Gayle and I. Of course, James was bored and had to find ways to entertain himself and everyone else. This is what we saw!
We missed this. Esther captured this shot before we got there.
He quickly scooted down when we arrived–the same way he got up!
On the way back, Esther and I walked together. Gayle must have caught this picture of us going across the bridge. Everyone except the three of us walked back on a different track; we returned to the vehicles and drove around to pick them up.
I got a picture of this weka while it very busily searched for worms among the dead leaves.
As always, we enjoyed our day, and headed home quite tired. However, the boys dove right in to working on the barrel boat again!
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