More unpronouncable places in New Zealand

Last weekend I hit the Putangirua Pinnacles with a couple of new friends, Virandra and Nalashi.  I found some pictures of the place on a random Facebook profile from New Zealand.  The picture showed a tiny hiker coming up on a massive rocky citadel looking formation.  At first glance I thought it must me somewhere exotic, but then noticed it was tagged as picture from NZ... Intrigued I thought well it must be some remote place on the South Island so I looked it up.  Turns out the Putangirua Pinnacles are probably on 40 miles away from my house over in the Wairarapa Valley on the other side of the Rimutaka mountains.  So there would have to be some sub-optimal driving to get there, but the whole trip time was listed as about 2 hours.  Remember there are no straight roads in NZ more than about 15 feet long.  Also remember that our speed limits are in kilometers.  The speed limit in the Rimutaka pass is 70 kmh... sounds fast, but that is only about 40 mph.  Anyone actually trying to maintain 40 mph on the bazillion hairpin turns through that pass is going to end up deadas at the bottom of the 300 foot valley.

Realizing then that some navigation was going to be required, I consulted Google Earth.  Getting throught the pass is easy so I started looking at the routes from the first town in the Wairarapa Valley, Featherston--one of the few pronouncable places in this odessy.  From Featherston I had follow to State Highway 53 to Kahutara Rd... no problem.  Kahutara Rd eventually crosses Martinborough Pirinoa Rd.  Since that sign is going to have to be 4 feet long, that should be easy to spot.  Martinborough is easy enough to deal with.  I still haven't attempted saying Piniroa outloud.  Martinborough Piniroa Rd (already tired of typing that) connected to Whakatomotomo Rd... hmmm... Well exercising my lore of NZ phonics I know that "wh" is the "f" sound and that you pretty much annunciate every vowel you see.  But I don't really have to know how to say it, I just spot it on a sign, right?  How many Whakatmmmmmmwhatever Rd's can their be?  Whakammmmmwhatever takes me straight to Putangirua Pinnacles right next to the Aotera Park.

So with Virandra and Nalashi in tow, off we go.  Everything went pretty well until we started looking for Whakammmwhatever.  I discovered that NZ is really only concerned about signage on the State Highways.  Once you get off of those, it is really a crapshoot whether you're going to see other road signs.  They are good about giving you sign about various features.  So you may not know wtf road you're on--and really, you couldn't pronounce it anyway--but it at least you know this road is going to Cape Palliser which is sort of on the way, right? My maps are limited to Wellington so I'm going on memory at this point. What concerns me is that the road to Cape Palliser is listed as "no outlet".  My brain works on this a bit as I whip by about 5 different roads all starting with Whakatxxxxwhatever.  So much for word matching.  At one point I was stopping at every intersection comparing road names letter by letter looking for a match.  But after a few wrongamotomo turns we found the pinnacles. 

What I didn't expect was the absolutely beautiful coastline right next to Putangirua.  A long stretch of open beach meeting aquamarine blue ocean.  I think I might have to come back just to enjoy the beach.  If you do ever make this drive, be sure to stock up on anything you may want before leaving Featherston... there isn't a single shop of any sort on the last hour of the drive.

If you have checked out the pinnacles link you might have noticed there are 2 trails discussed; the "river bed" and the "bush walk".  Both are listed a "easy".  Having experienced kiwi-easy on the Rimutaka Death March last month, I was prepared for "easy" this time.  The river bed was listed as shorter and imagined it as a nice trail only the bottom of the valley.  Something confirmed by the pictures I had found.  So I chose the river bed.  The trail started off a little weird as it wasn't really marked.  There was just a gap in the scrub leading to the wide rocky expanse that held a tiny stream.  Well I thought the trail would appear somewhere. I could actually see other folks returning from that direction.  After about 30 minutes I gave up trying to find a trail.  There really wasn't anything creating the trail other than what the stream had done over the last several hundred years.  It was rocky, unstable and winding... then it got steep.  It got steepas.  After about 45 minutes of steady, slippery climbing we hit the top of the river bed trail which put us in the bottom of the pinnacle valley where I got this pictures.  I'll have some more later.  It wasn't quite as challenging as the Rimutaka trip.  But I was still heaps puffed at the top.  The view was amazing and when all 3 of us stopped talking it was still as the moon.  The NZ bush contains few creatures and virtually no bugs.  There wasn't a chitter or a chirp--just the slight wind in the trees above.  Pretty amazing.

For additional torture and comic relief, Virandra and Nalashi made the round american climb to the top of the canyons on the bush walk.  Despite their best efforts, I didn't fall over dead or even fall off the numerious edges.  The view at the top was pretty cool.  The pinnacles on one side and the ocean on the other.  The bush walk back to the parking lot was a breeze as it was all downhill.

After the long trek we drove the rest of the way down the coast to Cape Palliser and then back reversed our route back to Martinborough where we had an excellent meal that more than negated every calorie we burned on the walk (victory was mine!)  Martinborough is the wine capital of the Wairarapa Valley.  While tiny town, it was a perfect dinner.

Overall it was a good walk with a couple of good friends and a great day.