The Pinnacles

A relatively early morning for us - The Pinnacles are not an easy hike and a bit of a longer one: 16 km in total (8 km each way), and we didn’t want the burning midday sun to be an obstacle. The path there is simply stunning. Quite a few streams of water (as one ranger said, it’s not drinking water, but he’s been drinking it for as long as he’s been working as a ranger—let’s hope that wasn’t his first day), a very lush forest, and many, many stairs.
At one point—one hour from the summit (I think we took about six hours for the whole hike)—there were no more stairs, only rocks and your potentially questionable ability to climb them safely. Maddie’s ability was well-founded in her extensive rock-climbing career, and she moved about the Pinnacles with an ease that would have put any alpine goat to shame. I didn’t do badly myself, though the heavy backpack was an unwelcome hindrance.
The view from the summit was breathtaking and, I think, worth the effort. I’m almost certain.
It was one of the few days during which I burned more than 3,000 calories—at least according to my watch. ^^
In the evening, we arrived at our new campsite in Long Bay, overlooking the ocean.
We had a bunch of fresh mussels for dinner with garlic bread and some corn on the cob—one of the best meals since I came to NZ. I was wondering, though, why my mussels were so crunchy. It couldn’t have been the barnacles. Soon after this question arose, Maddie found two tiny crabs inside her mussels. I then found three in my remaining ones. I had already eaten two crunchy ones. So, a wee bit more protein.
We even got some fish from a family there who bonded with Maddie over Scottish ancestry. They also gave us a homegrown avocado from their orchard. Apparently, every second person here has some Scottish ancestry (I’m basing that purely on the fact that people are a lot more engaged in conversations with a Scot than a German, and because we’ve met quite a few people who mentioned some connection to Scotland).

BTW. Isn‘t the second to last picture the coolest moss you‘ve ever seen?

The last picture shows the view from our campsite. :)Leia mais