Mt. Manaia with Kool Kel (Jan. 18-19)

The next day, Kel offered to take us out to his place at Whangarei Heads (on the water) and take us hiking. It sounded like a great time, so we all agreed. In the morning, Becky and I went to Whangarei Falls, the “Most photogenic falls in New Zealand.” Unable to resist, we visited. We were, however, able to resist emulating the Maori coming-of-age ritual of jumping off the falls.

Another nice set of falls in NZ

A word first about Kel: Kel’s a New Zealander in his mid-50’s who has lived about as interesting a life as you might be able to imagine. He worked for about 15 years as a professional deep sea diver, diving to great depths in oceans across the world, working in difficult and dangerous conditions, and then subjecting himself to the even more dangerous rigors of the professional party lifestyle with his diving mates in tropical locales between jobs. He now pilots tugboats for oil tankers docking at the plant in Whangarei Harbor. With a daughter who excels in several sports, a nephew who is a serious up-and-coming cricketer in NZ, and another nephew who introduced ‘drifiting’ to NZ, he’s got quite the family as well. In short, we thought he was a hell of a guy.

Becky was excited to ride Kel's motorbike

We took off with Kel around noon to avoid an early spate of cloudy raininess, and first took a quick ride up Pakihiri (Becky – spelling?) Mountain to see Whangarei from above, and then on to Kel’s. Becky is a bit of a secret motorbike fanatic, and relished the chance to put on the leathers for a hair-rising ride with Kel. I think they beat us to his house by about 10 minutes on a 25km ride.

Kel's crib in Whangarei Heads - not bad

Kel has a terrific house overlooking the harbor in Whangarei Heads, where we had a quick lunch before the hike. Just minutes from Kel’s house is Mt. Manaia, a mountain overlooking the harbor with a relatively easy hour-long hike to the summit. The trail considers the summit to be a wooden platform about 100 ft below the true top of the peak where the land survey station is located. Reaching the true top requires a bit of rock climbing skill, but more importantly a good bit of skill in not looking downwards.

A bit of rock climbing at the very top of the mountain

A view from the bottom, we reached the very top

As a bit of a mad man, Kel is an experienced hand at climbing Mt. Manaia, however, and he helped us all to reach the top. Hopefully you can get a good sense from the pictures how difficult the last part of the climb is. If not, take it from me, it’s a bit freaky up there! However, the view at the top more than rewarded the work and brief worry involved in reaching the summit, and the sense of accomplishment was great as well.

Happy to be at the summit of Mt. Manaia

Afterwards, we gathered for celebratory beers at the bar at the base of the hill and toasted a great climb. Stu then joined us, and we headed off to Kel’s for an impromptu barbie at their insistence. Not wanting to be bad guests, we reluctantly accepted their gesture of food and beer that evening, and had a great evening on Kel’s deck. Many thanks, Kel!

Matt, our host in Whangarei and grillmaster (and Vincent from France looking on)

After a few drinks, we decided to crash at Kel’s, as he had some spare rooms. Matt had offered to show us around his parents’ farm the next day, so we got up a bit early and took off for there, about 45 minutes inland. From there, Matt gave us the grand tour of the 600 acre farm, showing us the family’s cows, sheep, and vast forested sections. It was a great time, and Matt was rightly proud of his family’s environmentally friendly practices and the care that they’ve taken in cultivating the farm over the past 25 years.

Obligatory picture with a sheep, Brutus

Matt’s dad was also a riot, giving us the lowdown on New Zealand’s battle with possums and other topics. Apparently possums were introduced about 100 years ago to provide income in the fur trade, but with no indigenous mammals in New Zealand, their population quickly became out-of-hand. As with many introduced species, possums have become a significant ecological concern in the country. With the collapse of the fur trade in the last 40-50 years, possums lost nearly all of the little value they once had. Various government attempts to poison the creatures have also caused ecological problems, and attempts to induce the underemployed to hunt them seem to have only reinforce Conservative opinions about most of the unemployed. Although I might be the only one to find the idea of possums as a destructive force of nature hilarious.