December 28th, 2019
After leaving the bedlam of Wai-O-Tapu’s parking lot, about
5 kilometers up the road towards Rotorua I turned off the beaten path towards
Minginui. I didn’t know much about the place
other than Braden recommended it and from what I saw online, it looked like
some virgin forest, even equated to forests like those in the Avatar movie. I was primarily happy just to get away from
the tourist rush.
The highway was lined with planted pines that looked to be
20-30 years old. I stopped briefly in
one village called Murupara for a few groceries. Sadly, it had a real run down kinda feel to
it. At the centre of the town, three
quarters of the shops or businesses were closed or boarded up. It seems that the forestry industry has
suffered a blow thanks to changes in the contracting system. This area of the country has a high density
of Maori population and it’s sad to see it so dilapidated. This story seems to play out in many places
around the world where the indigenous people live in poverty yet thrived before
the European white man arrived.
The campsite was down “Sanctuary Road”, sounds promising…and
it was. It was a lovely little clearing
in the forest beside a small river.
There was only one other car when I arrived. A few others arrived later but there was
enough space for everyone to spread out and I scored the primo real estate by
the creek. I chilled out for the remainder
of the afternoon but decided to hike the trail on the other side of the river
for about an hour. This was supposedly
Kiwi country (the bird, not the fruit) but it was recommended to hike the trail
at dusk as the bird is nocturnal. I
figured I would see the forest in the daylight first.
Betty 2.0 by the creek on the right.
I’m glad I did as you can hike a 2-3 kilometer loop but at
night there’s just a one kilometer out and return part of the trail that has reflectors
on trees to guide your way. There were a
few informational signposts about the local flora and fauna and one included a
speaker on a post. You had to wind up
the battery and then could select one of eight items on a dial, each of them a
different sound of a bird or other animal.
I listened to the male and the female kiwi calls more than once to try
and remember it for the evening.
Not bad for propping up my phone on some stump.
After dinner and as it got dark, I headed back out on the
trail. I walked most of the way in the
dark, letting my eyes adjust to the oncoming darkness. As I rounded a bend beside a slanted tree, I’m
not sure who got more startled, me or the possum who was at about head height
on the trunk!
I made it to the bench with the kiwi bird shaped sign next
to it that I had seen earlier. Okay,
time to sit quietly and wait. Well I sat
quietly and waited for 20 plus minutes.
At the start I heard a few birds but then nothing, nothing at all, not
even crickets. It was dead silent for
10-15 minutes. Wow. I’ve heard about how devastating the
introduction of non-native mammals have been to the bird population in this
country, but now I’m seeing, or I guess not hearing, the effects. Possums, rats, stoats and cats have been
killing off a lot of the indigenous wildlife.
The government and wildlife societies have been battling back with tons
of traps but they still haven’t won the war yet. Defeated, I headed back to Betty 2.0 and went
to bed.
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