New Zealand-Anzac Day April 25th

After a tough day yesterday we took it easy this morning and lay in bed listening to some of our neighbours getting up and about early for the Dawn service.

Information was scant about how to find the service here.  We opted for our own bacon and egg breakfast cooked on the basic facilities of our kitchen (missing an electric fry pan ) before finally getting ourselves into gear and doing some planning for the next couple of days.

We now have a basic plan for adventures to come, which meant that if we were going to find time to do the walk around Lake Rotopounamu it needed to happen today. Trev needed a bit of a stretch for his hips and calves anyway, so we decided to go for it and have a bit of a look at this walk which is a favourite around here.  It was another mild sunny day, so perfect weather for a walk.

It didn't disappoint.

The circuit walk of around 6 km reminded us of some of the walks we have done in Qld, with many ferns and lush growth surrounding the track.

 In wet weather it would be spectacular but possibly a miserable and slippery walk in places. As we have found with other walks, the fact that it is around the lake does not necessarily mean that you are walking with views of the lake. Quite a lot of the time the track was bordered with growth and no hints of the lake below. There were a few patches of beach with fine gravel sand (one long area of beach)

Fine gravel sand

We walked along this beach on the gravel sand as part of the track. It sounded like a steam train quietly puffing away in a tunnel!

This beach was called 10 minute beach-a lovely calm spot about 25 minutes from the end of the loop walk. !!

We have seen warnings about baiting on a number of walks, and this was no exception. Baiting is used for a number of  animals -primarily possums, but also rats, cats, and others. They are spreading TB to cow and deer herds and endangering these industries. Today we saw the blue arrows on the trees and the small boxes where the bait is laid. We even saw a dead body in one of them! Mr sharp eyes figured out what the blue arrows were and spotted the boxes and continued to be much better than me at this game as we walked along. 

For our team of "The Diment Invincibles" he will definitely be required to take the lead in bait spotting, should it be required. He is also kicking goals in finding good Aussie red-he came home from a venture to buy parmesan cheese last  night with 2 bottles of Pepperjack shiraz. Now we will be forced to drink them both before we head for home🍷🍷

Bait indicator

You should always have at least on photo of the hire car.  This is our little Honda Fit-which is a bit gutless but pretty easy to drive. 

Here is Trev's track of the walk/stroll. As you can see from the time we took, we were not pushing very hard, although I am a bit surprised that it didn't show more climb. The track was lovely and wide enough for us to walk side by side pretty much all the way. This was great as we could just stroll along at an easy pace and chat away as we went. What an ideal way to spend a day of holidays!