Last weekend we went
away with 3 friends/(ex)colleagues to a beautiful conservation park,
Hakatere. It was only a 2 hour drive away, and we have done other
trips in nearby areas, but this was new to us. And what an excellent
surprise it was. We had had a week of storm, rain, hail, snow in the
mountains and tornadoes around Auckland. This resulted in beautiful
snowy mountain tops for us to admire, and the weather had quieted
down to nice and sunny.
We stayed in a
holiday home for 2 nights which was very cosy, although for some
reason there was an incredible lack of spoons in the house.
On Saturday 4 of us
decided to climb Mount Barrosa. The fifth person had hip-problems and
couldn't walk uphill, so she biked around the lake instead. In
retrospect, 3 out of 4 felt a little insecure/painful in the knee
joints going down Mt Barrosa, but we made it without much (more)
lasting damage.
Mount Barrosa was
steep but rewarding. As we got higher more and more snow appeared, at
first this was very romantic but soon it became a bit slippery and
cold. However, we all had sufficient warm clothes, tea and big
lunches, so in the wind-shade of large rocks we enjoyed the
magnificent views for lunch.
In the evening we
cooked together. Someone had brought an enormous chicken to roast,
someone else had prepared mushroom soup, we had brought various fresh
ingredients from the garden, and we had a huge dinner. Then we wanted
to play a game called “exploding kittens”, but while some of us
were looking at the brilliant starry sky (someone finally pointed out
the Southern Cross constellation to me), the others fell asleep in
front of the fire. So we still have no idea how to play exploding
kittens.
Sunday morning we
had Mediterranean breakfast with eggs poached in tomato sauce. Thus
fuelled, we all together went up to Mount Sunday, as is the custom
there on Sunday. Mount Sunday also featured in Lord of the Rings and
was therefore relatively swarmed by hobbit-fans with drones.
Nevertheless, the views were once again breathtaking, especially for
those who appreciate glacial landscape features that the Frodo-fans
probably fail to recognize.
The area was full of
wild rose bushes with many rosehips, so Thomas and me collected a bag
of them to make jam. The others helped us somewhat, but the thorny
roses made for interesting sound effects.
And that was a
lovely weekend away, nice to catch up with our friends, good food and
nice walks.
