Weekending - Mt Pirongia

After a rather sad start to our week, in which we fare welled our beloved 20 year old cat, it was lovely to escape Auckland for a long weekend and have some family time camping and hiking at Mt Pirongia, before school starts again. The campground is in a DOC site, so this means no hot showers or flushing toilets. A small river nearby provided us with fresh drinking water.  The Scout, was camp cook, so he tried out some lovely  recipes from a new book he received for Christmas.  Miss B and Mr J, taught me some new card games, I relaxed and read The Light Between Oceans, if I hadn't been to worried about extra weight in my pack, I probably would have taken some hand sewing.

On  our second day there, we explored the Kaniwhaniwha caves which were not very deep or wide, but still got the adrenalin going - I am not terribly keen on caves, especially when you look up and see the cave wetas gathered on the roof.  Any way I survived ,and so we continued on our hike to see New Zealand's tallest living native tree - this Kahikatea is aged between 400-500 years old and stands at 66.5m tall.  It wasn't a hard hike, however the track was very muddy in places, narrow in others and full of tree roots, still a fun day and the views were great.

Now it's back to real life, washing, work, school lunches and homework .