After tidying the house and packing with as much cat cuddling as possible I booked a last minute airbnb in Paeroa because its very near to Karangeheke Gorge.
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| Lovely Airbnb |
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| How cool is this place for $40! And I have my own bathroom! |
So off I went to the gorge, I got the last parking spot (clever Cuthbert) and straight away got onto the wrong walk, none of the signs made any sense as there was no map to give anything context. So I ended up walking through a massive 1.9km dark tunnel first and then ended back where I started. I tried again and this time ignored all the signs and turned the only other direction available and got onto the path I was looking for.
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| Feels like an Aztec ruin |
What a cool place, like some sort of Indiana Jones landscape.
And then I found this place, which is not on the map:
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| So spooky |
The walls were really high on both sides, at places along the length were thin oubliettes that disappeared into darkness... I carried on past the swimming hole through another tunnel and took Dubbo track over the hill back to make a loop walk instead of going back the same way. The sign said 2 hours to get back but I ran all the way in my sandals and managed it in 1 hour, the first half is muddy and rooty and goes up a lot, then you get to this point:
And after this point its all downhill on a much more even track, I passed lots more old mine oubliettes, cold air comes out of them, the first thing that came into my head was the film I am Legend and its horrific zombies that hide in dark cold places, I spooked myself out and carried on running which is how I managed the track in half the time. Near the end a tiny hedgehog was walking across the track, he wasn't afraid of the monsters in the oubliettes, so I stopped and shared my last Nature Crunch bar with him.
After a lot more walking than I had planned to do, I was pretty pooped and glad to have a nice place to go back to, with no oubliettes in.
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