This weekend I thought would be a write-off, as rain was forcasted for the entire weekend. Not just in Auckland, but in all the places I have left to get to on my 'list' before I leave in only a month and half!

Luckily though, on Saturday it only rained in the morning, and by the afternoon, it had pretty much cleared up and was a great day. It was a little late to do anything on Saturday, but I watched the weather carefully on the news that night and they were calling for clear skies all day Sunday. So, on Sunday I headed out to the Coramandel region, about a couple of hours drive from Auckland.

There was an 7-8 hour hike up the Pinnacles, which is at the base of the Coramandel region that I wanted to do. I knew it would be a long day, but it was the absolutely perfect thing to do on a single sunny Sunday. It was fantastic! The day was amazing, and surprisingly hot. I was in my t-shirt all day and could have been in shorts too, if I had worn them. Quite surprising for this time of year.

So, the majority of the hike was the fairly standard New Zealand scenery that I have seen a few times now. Lush forests with many different types of trees from palm trees to pine tress. Winding up a river valley, occationally using swing bridges to cross back and forth over a river or stream.

Then, a short way up the hike, I started walking up stairs that were literally carved into the rock. I have never seen this many rock stairs before and it was quite cool. I guess (according to the sign) the steps were carved in the 1920s to provide packhorses better grip for bringing supplies into the logging camps. There was thousands of stairs. It was quite amazing.

The next few kilometres were the hardest part of the hike, and there was rock stairs all over, very cool. I guess a lot of that area was formed by volcanoes and somehow a lot of solid rock has been left behind. That's also how the pinnacles were formed, but get to that later.

So after the hardest part near the beggining, it actually became a lot easier near the middle, and all the way to the Pinnacles hut. This was actually the nicest hut I have seen yet, it was quite clean, modern, new beds, very livable. I think it probably has had a recent major upgrade. Probably because it gets used a great deal being so close to Auckland and all.

So after the hut it was pretty much straight uphill again to the top of the Pinnacles. These are named because of the sheer height and straight cliff faces. Luckily one side of a group of the highest pinnacles is scalable, so you can hike up to the very top of the highest mountain in that area. It is literally straight up in some places, and probably because of the number of people, they have put stairs and even metal ladders in order to make it easier to get up. Let me tell you after 3 hours of hiking I was quite grateful for the assistance! At points, they even have metal rungs drilled right into the side of the rocks in order to help you get up. I have never seen anywhere in the world like New Zealand that maintains such good hiking tracks.

So after about 45 minutes, I arrived at the top. The view over the entire surronding valley was amazing. I could see all the way east to the pacific ocean (I had come from the west), and all the way back to where I had come from. But the view to the southwest was blocked by rocks about an additional about 3 meters high. It looked like you could climb up to get a little bit higher and possibly see what was on the other side. So, of course, I had to do this.

So, some challenging rock climbing and I am able to almost pull myself up to the very top of these rocks. Then, all of a sudden I am able to see the top of the rocks and there is only about 1/2 a meter or 3-4 feet of rock on the very top. Then I pull myself up another half a step and I see that on the other side of the rocks it just seems to drop away into nothing, for what looks to be hundreds of meters. MY HEART STOPS. Oh shit! I step back down half a step and try to calm down. So, here I am clinging onto the side of a 3 meter drop on the top of a very steep mountain side and the other side seems to drop even more steeply. Shit! My fear of height is just going crazy. But of course I have to make sure of what I saw. So, I pull myself up just a little bit higher than the first time and get a good look over the top of the rocks. Sure enough it is sheer drop, straight down on the other side. All the way to the forest below, many many many stories below. I am surprised my heart did not burst out of my chest at this point!

So, after quite a few minutes needed to calm my heart down before I did anything, I made my way back down to safety. Once calmed down though, I was still determined to get a good look at this increadible drop. There was another slightly used path that lead away from the top to what looked possibly like another pinnacle, so I followed that for a short way. I was rewarded with a much safer approach to a lookout over the other side. It was an increadible sheer drop all the way to the forest below. I don't think I have ever been on solid ground, so high up, and been so scared, as I was there. It was very very cool! It was however scary to the point that I didn't spend too much time looking over because although fun it was also far too unconfortable, and a quick look was quite enough.

After the summit, it was a much easier hike back down to the hut and then onward back to the start. At one point, after about 4 hours of hiking, I was faced with a decision of which track to take back to the start. I could either take the same Kauaeranga Track back that I had come on (2hrs), or I could take the Billygoat Track back (3hrs). Well with a name like Billygoat, the fact it was only an additional hour, I was not yet tired, and it was seeing other scenery I of course chose the billygoat. Ouch do my legs ever regret it days later!! Oh well. It actually ended up not being that exciting. Being named billygoat, I expected it to cling the sides of cliffs or somethng. It actually did go quite a bit higher than the other track, and there were extreame dropoffs, but they were always hidden by the trees.

The only time I was able to see just how high I was, was a couple of lookout spots over the very distant Billygoat Falls. It was 180 meters high and very far away. Would have been nice to be closer, but again this track was made long ago by the loggers and thus took the most traversable track through the forest. It even had some of the very old railtracks that they used to haul the logs out of the forest on. That was quite interesting. Unfortunately they took down the old tresle bridges that they used to have over some canyons. Those would have been cool to see, but probably too dangerous to leave intact (or they would have people like me trying to get accross them :).

So, that was a very awesome Sunday afternoon. Sundays here are so much better than in Europe. There is absolutely nothing to do on a Sunday there. Well, I suppose there is not much to do here on a Saturday night either though... so it's give and take I guess.