First Hike in Wellington

Good day all. My, my, it’s been a while ay? I’ve been leaving all the heavy blogging to Elsje these last few weeks. Anyhoo, here we all are again. 

So Elsje, Cristina, Angelina and I took a leisurely drive around to the eastern side of the bay to a beautiful little town called Eastbourne. The weather has been a bit erratic of late and we were blessed with a beautiful day and on the way to the trailhead we saw loads of families taking advantage of the sunshine. 

A friend of ours who has lived here for a few months longer than us told us that Wellington is ‘all about the green.’ I went a bit nuts on the hike and took 150 photos, requisite ferns included of course – the below shots are some of the better ones.

We took a hike over a ridge to a beautiful little spot called Butterfly Creek. For Elsje and I it was an important outing. We had been feeling a little bit ‘out of the loop’ living in Wellington, like we hadn’t quite been ‘let in’ to our new land. We had a similar kind of experience when we first got to the States, but the experience of couchsurfing and camping opened the country up for us and allowed us to really get a feel for the place. This hike was a sort of like that; walking on the land, through the forest, gave me a sense of being grounded, like ‘ah yes, here I am, in New Zealand.’ Elsje mentioned that the land feels so benign compared to South Africa and Namibia – no dangerous or poisonous creatures to speak of – and yet it is both seismically and volcanically active. I really like that.   

 

Two avid hikers

Ah, the green

Kept looking behind me for elves...

The troops

The interesting patterns on the inside of the trunks of the tree-ferns

The awesome patterns on these leaves reminded me of Maori tattoo patterns - it actually only occurred to me then that the Maoris took their inspiration for their tattoo designs from nature. Especially the fern-shoot in the below photo, which I did not take.