Akaroa

Up early again, we made a nice breakfast of yogurt and granola and waited for the tourist office to open. The plan for the day was to do some local hikes. Akaroa is located on a peninsula surrounded by mountains. We were able to connect a few trails and turn the day into 6+ hours of hiking. The route actually was quite challenging for the first hour. Our goal was to summit one of the surrounding mountains. The road leading out of town slowly got steeper and steeper. We passed the point where the road was too steep for cars and continued on up the mountain. The trail changed from road to gravel to grassy pastures as we climbed 800 meters. The last 100 meters we climbed through dense shrubbery and thistle with lots of sharp plants grabbing at us. We reached the top in 2 hours to behold views of the town, harbour and surrounding mountains. In the opposite direction we saw the wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean. The trail followed the mountain spine and slowly swung and wound itself around the mountains and back down to town. We did a quick detour to a small waterfall on the way down. It was a very warm day and felt great to cool down under the falls. We treated ourselves to some delicious fudge freshly made in town after a hard day of hiking.Read more