The wind in Ngwai
Saturday 2004-03-27
Today our adventures in Ngwai begin! The weather was clear and beautiful as it has been for the entire trip. The difference today was the wind. Lots of wind. We found out just how much wind a bit later... After breakfast we started the day by driving down the beach a few km to the lighthouse. Climbed the (hundreds of) steps to the base of the lighthouse. That gave us a great view of the area. Then we walked along the rocky shoreline looking for seals. We didn't have to look very hard - we quickly found several colonies of seals. Some were very tolerant of our presence, but most of them we scared and would hobble away if we got too close. I could count something like 40 seals in one of the colonies. We both took lots of photos of the seals. The wind started to pick up and at one point I opened the car door only to have it slammed shut on my leg by the wind. Ouch. I literally couldn't get out of the car until the wind died down a little. Then we went back to the bach for lunch. After lunch we went for a hike in the foothills behind the house. There's a loop trail that is supposed to take about 3 hours to complete. The trail is actually a farm trail and so was not on our topo map. Once we started we were both surprised at how steep the climb was. We gained quite a bit of elevation in a short time. Since the trail wasn't on our map we weren't exactly sure how high we had to go. The trail started in rolling hills and finally became forest (or 'bush' as they call it in New Zealand) as we got higher. Oh, and did I mention that it was still windy? It was windy at the beginning of the climb, but once we got into the bush we were protected from the wind. After about 1 1/2 hours we finally got to the high elevation point and started just traversing the crest of the hills. We left the wooded area and started crossing a very open area when suddenly we were in really, really windy conditions. So windy that we couldn't even begin to walk straight. We continued on for a short time hoping that the wind would die down. But since we were in such an exposed area it didn't. It quickly became impossible to continue walking. We had to stop where we were and almost crawl. We had to decide what to do and quickly. Going forward was out of the question because it was so exposed and we didn't know the route and whether it would become sheltered from the wind. Going straight down the hill cross-country was a possibility but that would also leave us exposed to the wind and in addition we'd then be off the established trail. So we decided to turn back and go down the way we came. It took us several minutes to get out of the windy exposed area, but we finally got to a calmer spot. Unfortunately we were now already part way down the mountain, so in order to retrace our steps we had to again climb up. Something that neither Carol or I were very happy about. The walk back to our starting point was uneventful, just a bit longer than we would have liked. We finally got back to the main road about 6 pm. Whew! Time for dinner... We cooked some lamb steaks, potatoes and a salad. And of course had another bottle of wine, along with more conversations into the night.