Te Urewera National Park is the third largest in New Zealand, has one Great Walk here (and you have to order it in advance as well as any huts you want to use during this four days trip) and a lot of shorter one.
We decided to go the Waipai-Ruapani Track which has about 15km and should be done in 6 hours. At the beginning we saw the huge trailer, which was used to move the equipment for water power station. It weight about 7 tonnes and was able to take another 21 tonnes and then the route from Wairoa took between 16 and 18 hours. A lot of time.
The nature here is beautiful, a lot of lakes just next to the track (but you cannot really swim in them, just in the last or first one, depends which way you go). The nature is totally different compared to Czech Republic, you really aren’t able to go off track as the vegetation is dense around.
Vlada did his shooting with ferns, with whom he felt in love here, and wanted to be snapped with small, medium or even large one. A lot of fun we have with him over the last two weeks.
It took us about 4 hours to get to our „end“, to the Lake Waikareiti
, where we wanted to swim a bit. The lake is shallow, so we expected warm water and it really was – first 30 meters, when it reach just to our knees. Then it became cooler and cooler and we almost weren’t able to swim there. But the rest on hot rock was awesome, much better.
It was just another hour to get to our starting place where we took another walk – to Aniwaniwa Falls. They are two huge waterfalls, which are really photogenic.
Second evening and we were still doing the first video – it takes a lot of time to put it together.