Bits of my weekend in Singapore

I was determined to go and get some exercise after a sedentary week (and a cold) so headed up to Macritchie Reservoir. It's a great nature reserve, and again it was busy but not as bad as you might have expected in a city of 5 million!

View from the Treetop Walk

The first part of my run was in the muggy jungle and I have never been so sweaty in my life, not even close. Luckily I had brought my camelbak with me but even so I was glad to emerge next to the reservoir where there was a bit of air movement.

The asian guy is not me - I'm still a pakeha.

1.5 m-long monitior lizard hanging out in the reservoir. The reservoir is a major part of the water supply of Singapore and contains 5-10% treated wastewater. Yummy!

Marina Sands Resort Hotel, home of the famous Infinity Pool.

Beach on Sentosa Island where I spent a few hours on Sunday.

Merlion!

Singapore - Bukit Timah

My workmate Gary and I visited Bukit Timah nature reserve today, after first exploring out local surrounds and nutting out the public transport system.

It was really busy there but great to see so many people out walking, running and mountain biking. It was a bit weird seeing lots of Chinese walking backwards down a steep path as a form of exercise and we had to work quite hard to avoid them as we walked up. Once we got to the top of the hill via the main track it was easy to take a quieter path and ditch the crowds.

The trees here are cool - most of them have long straight trunks with an explosion of leaves at the top. Some of them have got more leafy biomass in parasites than on the tree itself.

No monkey photos unfortunately but there were heaps of them there!

Ngauruhoe and New Plymouth

Last weekend I headed up Mt Ngauruhoe with a bunch of people who had been my students on an introductory alpine course a couple of weeks earlier. We successfully met at the car park at the appointed time in light drizzle and clag but with high hopes that it would clear...

Not much to see so far.

Ngauruhoe teases us with a brief glimpse before disappearing again

Climbing up through the cloud

Dan perfects his "staunch pose", an outstanding matter from the course previously

Nearly there

It was really good to be on top of a mountain again!

A steaming fumarole at the summit. Great for melting snow in your water bottle. Eat that, South Islanders. Unfortunately the warm rocks near the summit meant the snow had been hollowed out from underneath and we fell into a lot of holes.

There were heaps of ice feathers and cool sastrugi

Ngauruhoe has interesting terrain on top - it has three summits (one of them is the crater) so we made sure to bag all of them.

Evidence of a fast and fun descent

I then drove to Taranaki to see Kyle and Betty and hopefully to climb Mt Taranaki. Unfortunately the route that looked the most direct on my (large-scale) map was apparently the worst road I could have taken. It was State Highway 43 from Taumaranui to Stratford and is known as "The Forgotten World Highway". I think this is because:

• They forgot to put any people in there. Sometimes I would drive for 1/2 hour without seeing the lights of farm houses and I saw five other cars in 150 km.
  
• They forgot to clear fallen trees and rocks off the road, luckily I was able to squeeze through
• They forgot to seal 20 km in the middle of it.
  

I didn't take any photos but I saw lots of these:


Apparently it's an amazing drive during the day (and when you're not in a hurry) so I'll have to go back sometime.

That night driving to New Plymouth, Mt Taranaki looked strikingly beautiful, standing above the plain in the crisp, clear moonlight. However the forecast wasn't great and sure enough, it was shrouded in cloud and showers the next day and I never saw it again. Instead, Kyle and I went mountain biking on some local tracks. The mountain biking was hardcore extreme so I didn't take any photos (actually I forgot my camera). We also visited a multi award-winning footbridge that is one of the nicest I've seen, it cleverly frames the mountain. Obviously I stole this photo off the web since you can see Mt Taranaki:


After lunch with Kyle and Betty (they look great but sorry no photos) I had the long drive back to Wellington - with the added interest of driving head-on into the Great Storm of 2011 on the way and having to wait at Pukerua Bay due to snow on the road to Porirua!

Easter in Turangi

Well hello - sorry it's been a while. It's been a few weeks since Easter so I'll make this a brief post. At Easter a bunch of us (11 people) headed up to Turangi, at the south end of Lake Taupo to hang out at a bach (holiday house).

Lots of hanging out was successfully done.

The weather wasn't amazing but occasionally the sun broke through and it didn't rain too much. We had a big group so we split up and did various things, but they mostly involved walking/running on various alpine and bush tracks in the area. The highlight for me was probably running the Tongariro Crossing with Neil and Frances - Neil and I ran in from the Ketatahi end to enable a car swap with the walkers coming from the other direction. Fortunately we didn't miss Frances in the mist at the top and the three of us descended through gradually-increasing views to the Mangatepopo car park. I was glad I'd been there before to see the views! I would have felt a bit ripped off if I was one of the hundreds of first-time walkers that day.

These photos are from Sylvia and Paula's run to the Tama Lakes nearby.






The next day a group visited the historic Waihohonu hut.


On Sunday we decided that group activities were in order to celebrate Easter. Of course we had the traditional egg hunt...

And the not-so-traditional lemon and spoon race.

We then went for a leisurely stroll on the Tongariro River walk above Turangi.

Holiday Tramping

Between Christmas and New Year, Sylvia and I went tramping for four days with Neil and Frances. Due to continuing strong westerlies we decided to go tramping as far eastwards as possible - which turned out to be the Seaward Kaikouras.

It's not an area many people go, and certainly not somewhere we'd have planned to go if we hadn't been scouring the guidebooks for ideas. Our tramp was in an area called the Clarence Reserve and is a mix of farmland, retired farmland and alpine tops/river valleys.

Quite a bit of the tramping was on gravel road or 4WD track. We thought it might have had the potential to be a bit lame but it worked out just fine. It was also more social because we could all bunch together and natter away!

We didn't start walking until after 4 pm on the first day and didn't get to the hut until 9.30. Late dinner then bed. It was quite a flash, modern hut and seems to get quite a bit of use by a variety of users - trampers, horse riders, MTB, 4WD and quad bikers.


We didn't see a lot of native bush on this trip, but there were other items of scenic interest, such as interesting geology, to keep us entertained. Definitely some scrambling possibilities.


There were also several historic huts. The route we followed for the first two days was a historic stock droving route from the Clarence Valley to Kaikoura.


On the third day we ditched the 4WD track and headed up the nearly dry Gore Stream...


...then the much more scenic Alfred Stream. Swimming stop compulsory.


The lovely but seldom-visited Alfred Hut (a standard NZFS 4-bunker in good condition). On the 29th December we were the second party to visit in 2010! Or at least the second party to write in the hut book. We didn't spend the night here since we arrived at 2.30 pm, but we did have dinner and wait for the day to cool down a bit before heading up a ridge to our evening's camp.


Speaking of which - a slight breeze to begin with but we awoke to a beautiful calm day and views of the Seaward and Inland Kaikoura Mountains.



The last day involved some slightly arduous scrambling and a short but dodgy loose descent before things got a bit easier. We finished with a bit of a water shortage and a 4WD and pasture walk back to the cars.