High up in the Treetops

Tuesday 4 November

Another score on the BookMe site - 40% off tickets for the West Coast Treetop Walk at 9am, so we were up & off early for the short drive up the coast & inland a bit.

The Treetop Walk was designed and built about a dozen years ago and is a series of high sided metal walkways, 20m above the ground, weaving through the canopy of an ancient podocarp forest in a valley next to Lake Mahināpua.

I was a bit worried about dropping my phone over the edge so was delighted to utilise the two hair elastics from around my wrist to create a makeshift safety strap for it. It was certainly a long way down to the ground! There were several platforms to stop on and admire the view while learning about the flora, fauna, birdlife, geology & history of the area. It was amazing looking down onto the umbrella tops of pongas/tree ferns below, but even more cool was seeing how the forest functions up at canopy level. There were sparrows nesting in dead, rotting tree trunks; several of the trunks were cloaked in assorted colourful mosses and lichens; branches were draped in lacy strings of lichens, and in one borer speckled tree trunk a weird fungus or creature was growing out into the world. We learned a new word - "Epiphytes" - which are plants which grow on a host tree, using their trunk & branches to climb up to the sunshine up in the canopy, but unlike parasites, these plants do no damage to their host tree.

Climbing the 45m high tower gave you an incredible 360* view of the experience and surrounding area, but more scary was walking along the cantilevered section 25m above the ground, which wobbled as you or other fellow visitors walked… like a swing bridge! 😬

We watched two staff members hitch up to the zip wire and ride down to the cafe - next time we visit, I wanna do that! As we left, several people in climbing harnesses were about to head up to the tower to ride the zipline down - so lucky!

Back in Ross we packed up Banjo , said farewell to Pete’s POP & the grumpy alpaca, and headed south on SH6 towards Franz Josef via Lake Ianthe/Matahi (for lunch), Harihari & Whataroa.

Sadly the curio shop in Whataroa closed 15 minutes before we arrived - I was planning to replace my pounamu earrings here as I had lost one of my current pair in Milford Sound back in June and I wanted to buy a new pair from the same store as the original ones. But I did get to have puppy cuddles with Bob the Jack Russell and Lola the Pomeranian instead.

Only 3 of us at the NZMCA site in Franz, and funnily enough one was our neighbour from Pete’s POP!

Pottered around in Banjo, had a wee wander into FJ then cooked an early dinner before I headed back into Franz Josef for a big catch up with Rebecca Hartnett who gave me my first job at University of Auckland back in 2021. Lots to gossip about and fun to hear about her recent relocation down here to work with the local health services - her partner pretty much runs Hato Hone St John here on the West Coast!