Friday, 24 May 2013

An afternoon tramp up the mountain

Well, last week I took the time to wonder up a trail that runs behind laboratory. I figured it was just a quick jog up the hillside next to the farm, so I figured it would be good for a quick stretch of the legs. It starts in a little bush, moving into open area near the pastures.


 I was pleasantly surprised of the spectacular views from the hillside, and was thankful I decided to bring the camera. The hillside is covered with open pastures (including a cow that I somehow managed to startle), the walkway, and the rest consists of large yuccas and grasses. The yucca have clearly flowered and the temporary flower stem is dying off, but there are still numerous little birds darting in and around these large bunching plants, as there is little in the way of bushes on the hillside.




Towards the top of the hill, the trail continued, and so I followed on, but decided to snap a photo of the lab, and much of the marine reserve landscape (from above water, as the reserve is basically only covered below the sea.


 Over the top of the hillside the trial ran along parallel with the shore. After taking a nice picture of Goat Island, I ventured on enjoying the fenced trail and the flowering bushes filled with small birds, chirping and chasing each other. These were the only flowering plants at the moment, except for a few low ground plants which were overwhelming smothered by grass. The beautiful yellow flowers were great against the dark green of the brush behind. They almost appeared to be a weed plant except for their size, overgrowing grasses and even into trees and brush. And much like a good weed, a beautiful flower, accompanied by thorny leaves.




It started to cloud over behind me, and for fear of it raining a put the camera away for a while as I walked along the hilltop, but shot a picture of the clouds as the sky went from a light, baby blue to a darker grey and swirls of white.


But the weather cleared eventually, as the trail started to near a forested area, a few trees clung to the cliffside, again filled with these same small birds.


 Then to my surprise the trail dipped down into the forested gully between the hillsides. Not a big fan of dark places like this, and it was a long way off, but what the heck. Along the way, they had name tags for some of the trees. One more notable tree was the cabbage tree below.


So, in I went under palms and great trees, over brooks and under tree sized silver ferns. It turned out to be a beautiful trail. Long and not so dark, with decent light permeating through the canopy above. There was so much to see, it was hard to choose what pictures to put up, but I did decide to put up this cool orange fungus  that scalloped at the edge.




(Silver Fern)


When I finally emerged on the other side, I was greeted by more pastures. The trail did not take long at this point to end clearly at a fence and lack of trail. At the end though, there was a spectacular view of the cliff side, that otherwise would only be visible by boat. The high winds were beating the shore with surf, creating a white foam around the base of the cliffs.



The weather seemed to be turning again as you can see from the dark clouds above, so I packed the camera up and headed back through the forest and down the hillside to the station while running between the rain drops. The rain actually was just some spitting, nothing terrible, but as I got over the hill I was glad that I was almost home, as I could see the rain coming over Pakiri Beach. I toddled back down the trail and back to work. A wonderful little gem of a trail sitting under my nose this entire time. Sometimes it pays off to take that "other" road.


No comments:

Post a Comment