Kaiuma Saddle

With the day to ourselves (Mr B drove south on Monday to deal with the importation of his motorbike and the admin surrounding that), Scully and I started early with some kayaking.

The fancy-dancy waterproof camera went into some kind of lock mode after the first three or four photos.  

Frustrating. (Back ashore it was only resolved by taking the battery out. Dashed electronic digital super-clever things....)

Camera freeze means there are no photos of the black and white shag that was drying its laundry on the foredeck of the wreck that is aground in the middle of the bay. NZ has a few species of black/white shag - one called 'Pied Shag' so I was careful not to describe it as a pied example. Even though we are not in the outer Sounds it, and others we have seen in recent days, appears to have been a 'King Shag'  Maybe those we have seen are on their annual holiday; gone fishing (so to speak).

Back ashore and suitably fortified with pumpkin and peanut butter flavoured porridge (yup, I put all kinds of madness in oat porridge) dog and human set off for the main event of the day....

WALK.

Scully knows that word so well she can pick it out of human conversation. It makes her start tap-dancing. (We are careful to substitute the word 'stroll' now but how long before we are rumbled on that? Like Billy Connelly's song about D-I-V-O-R-C-E)

We live at one end of a DOC (dept of Conservation) trail called Nydia Track.  It's long past time I put feet to trail and hiked over the first hill on the track.  It winds up-down-up to a pass called the Kaiuma Saddle  from which we could look down on Nydia Bay.

Three and a half hours round trip (including dog-watering stops and chats with another walker called Ros - from Cairns Aus) plus 2 kilometres each way from home to start point.

My main objective was to find a a branch-off track for tackling this high bit of local topography (at some stage)

Actually I'm not sure it even has a name and at 976 metres isn't exactly a mountain but it will be a longish day there and back.

Here's dog-watering for you and I'll let Scully report on the walk itself tomorrow