Why does time fly like a super fast magic carpet during weekends? This weekend I've attended a church wedding for the first time, witnessed highlining (that's slacklining at a height) in Wellington and managed to cook a four course meal at a friend's place! It's a weekend of firsts. All I'm trying to tell is that I have my excuses but I'll still see if I can quickly add some tea time nonsensical reading material for you. I believe I left you at the Anchorage hut, here's what happened after that ..
The morning of the second day was an early start.
Digression #1 - Haiping from our great walk #1 would've been extremely happy to have been on this hike. Haiping is a friend of mine whom I've met during my last great walk. Our time sense, or lack thereof, got her positively pissed with me and my friends. I wish I had footnotes. That would've saved you from digressions. Oh well.
.. second day, early start, blah blah. There was a distinct lack of coffee, I remember. And breakfast. The darn tide was turning on us quick and we had to take a low tide crossing shortcut to avoid walking up that darn hill we came down the day before. Breakfast wasn't a priority. I stuffed myself with nuts, M&Ms and an apple. I was still cranky about coffee though. The tidal crossing consisted mainly of some slimy bits, crunchy bits and watery bits - the slimy water-infused sand, cruncy corpses of countless crustaceans, watery streams that ran seawards. We walked bare-footed half the way due to the streams and let the shells have their way on our feet (Until a few days after that I found the crunch of crushing shells beneath my shoes oddly satisfying).
We skipped the Cleopatra pools and walked through the beautiful native forests adorned with silver ferns and beeches amongst others and elusive robins, fantails and wood pigeons chirping from the trees (The wood pigeon sounded like it was panting to be fair). Pat (Derek's dad) was very enthusiastic about birds and that got us all watching out for these amazing creatures for the rest of the walk. The only thought on my mind was 'when will it rain?'. I was plotting against it all the way while walking past haloed islands, brief stints of civilization and steep hills that somehow looked like tiny blips on our maps. We eventually crossed the 'Falls river bridge' from the brochure. It must've been beautiful. I was focussing on just getting across it, as it was busy as that day. Eventually, we spotted Sandfly bay.
Sandfly bay deserves it's own paragraph. It almost looked like a fat spit (a tad bit away from becoming a bar) at the edge of the estuary of Falls river, with a tiny island in the background. If I had a good camera, I could've shown off all the various hues of blues and greens that were on display. We were yet to have our swim break and from the first sight, that became our preferred choice. After some more flappy, sloppy wood pigeons and lush ferns, we reached Sandfly bay. We dropped our bags up the hill and walked downwards, seawards. Everything was so perfect, sans the bloodthirsty sandflies. Even after multiple layers of deet, they seem to successfully scout for an unsprayed patch of skin and go rampant. Without any delay, we all jumped in, swam to our heart's content and chilled ashore. That was followed by a quick cuppa and lunch. Any food climbs up the deliciousness scale when it's carried over your back for such long distances. And the lesser of it you have, the more valuable it keeps getting. We enjoyed every bite and thanks to Derek, were never in short supply of decadence (in camping terms).
We had a few stops on our way to Bark Bay, our next campsite, but they were not nearly as magnificent. Finally, we reached Bark Bay and set up our tents. Bark bay had a distinct 'why-is-this-so-fucking-beautiful' characteristic to it. Luckily, the park ranger delivered me from my raincoat dilemma with news of upcoming sunny days and let me soak in the splendid sunset. He also hinted us of the possibility of a stunner of a sunrise. A relatively quick dinner and we took to bed early so as to not miss the sunrise. And when we woke up, it was a sunrise like none other. Gotta crash now, so more about that in the next post.
Ciao !
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