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Wednesday, November 21, 2012

21st November – Forest Pools to Trounsen Kauri Park


There were lots of trails from the campground and we would have like to go for a walk but the DOC book warned that cars had been broken into so we didn't dare. Matt did accidentally indulge in a bout of thuggery himself though and somehow broke the doorframe of the toilet.

Halfway between Omapere and Waimamaku on the maps was ‘labyrinth woodworks’. We took a detour and found a little wooden puzzle shop on stilts with a massive great peacock sat on the balcony. I was greeted by a toweringly tall man with a long beard, who immediately engaged me with a simple-looking puzzle, handed it to me to work out and then showed me around his shop - while I pretended that I wasn't becoming extremely frustrated with not being able to work it out.

Louis told me about the puzzle society that he belonged to. They meet every year, in a different country and he had a selection of glossy brochures detailing the attendees and the puzzles that they had brought with them. It was actually pretty serious stuff, with membership being invite- only, and some of the best minds in puzzle-making. The ‘magic-circle’ of puzzlers, including such innovators as the creator of Sudoku. Every year, each one of them brought a new puzzle for their peers to try out. They brought enough copies of it for everyone to take one home and so they all left with over 100 new puzzles.

Louis talked me through some of the puzzles that were in the magazines and showed me the ones that he had created. They were mostly based around a system of building blocks with letters on them and they would have had me tearing my hair out in minutes. It was all pretty impressive stuff though and I would have liked to chat to him for longer but he had to go and bid for a giant sheep on an online auction!

Louis and his wife were in the process of developing a new garden maze – hence the giant sheep. He told me about his first experience of mazes as a kid in Holland, and how he’d sneaked into one without paying and just been enthralled. He was too scared to leave via the main entrance because he was certain the lady would know and so had to find the hole in the fence to sneak back out again. He went back years later to pay the money he owed and to maybe do some publicity but there was a young girl working the gate and she’d just thought he was crackers and so he just paid and had another look.

Given all this I had pretty high hopes for the existing maze. We paid our $4 to his wife Sue, and she gave us tiny pencils and bits of paper to go hunt down the 16 letters we needed to find and unscramble to earn our prize.

As we crossed the little footbridge in the rain, what we actually found was a load of string tied around tall plants with the occasional scrap of soggy cardboard box with a letter written on it. It was bad enough to be good fun so I still enjoyed it.

We were struggling to unscramble the letters until we got back to the shop and had a flash of inspiration. We asked Sue of the sentence was ‘five baby peacocks’ and I was quite excited that maybe we might get to see them. As impressed as Sue was that we guessed it without any clues, it turned out that the letters were as old as the maze and the baby peacocks were long gone, having been sold on ‘Trade-me’ along with their mother!

The area was famous for its giant auri trees so we stopped off on the way for a look. We followed the path through the forest to Tane Mahuta, the oldest kauri in New Zealand. When we turned the corner and saw him I actually had to catch my breath – he was humungous! A whopping 51.5 metres tall and with a 13.8 metre girth, he was 244.5 cubic metres of tree!

Next we went to see Te Matua Ngahere – the 2nd biggest and named the ‘father of the forest’. He wasn't as tall as Tane Mahuta but was even fatter with a 16.4m girth.

It was also possible to take a different path to see the 7th biggest kauri, Yakas. We were in need of a bit of exercise so we followed that too. I guess this poor fella wasn't as popular as the ‘lord’ and the ‘father’ because we didn’t see another soul. His delicate roots were protected by a walkway though so we did get close enough to throw our arms around him and really get a sense of how truly massive he was.

We made our way to Trounsen Kauri Park to stay the night. It’s apparently one of the best examples of podocarp hardwood forest and the book said it was possible to do a night walk and see kiwi, weta, bats, kauri snails and glow-worms. After dinner and a hot shower, we headed off with our red-light torch to see what we could find. Not much as it turned out. Our footfalls were noisy and so we must have scared off everything but the glow-worms. We did hear a rustling at one point and Matt thought he may have seen the shape of a bird but that was about it. The quest to see a kiwi before we leave continues.

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