Hinewai Revisited

Last year, on October 18, 2013, I visited Hinewai Reserve for the first time (see blog post). Yesterday, on December 13th, I revisited it with two new friends: Alfonso and Teun. It was raining on the way to Hinewai, but later the clouds all cleared up as expected.

Not much has changed in the fourteen months, it is beautiful as ever.

We walked all way to the sea and back uphill through the forest, in about 6 hours of walking.

It should be obvious enough which one is Teun and which is Alfonso. One is Dutch, the other is Italian.

All going well!

The famous manager, the white-bearded Hugh Wilson, painting his maquette of the Banks Peninsula. He still remembered me from last year's visit and was happy to see me again!

Back to the car, a nasty surprise was waiting us: I had forgotten to turn off the lights and now the battery was completely flat! There was no mobile phone coverage, and being an automatic you cannot push the car downhill for a rolling start. Hugh himself does not use machines or cars, he maintains the entire forest with his bare hands (with help of a few friends) so would not be able to help us. Visitors were quite rare, and if there were any, they could be anywhere in the forest, and how many of them do have jumper cables?

So how was it that we got the car driving again after five minutes?! By sheer luck, we met another visitor who parked his well-filled van next to ours, and we jump-started our car. Phew.

After enjoying one well-deserved fish-and-chips meal in Akaroa, we finally drove home.

Full album here!