Kauto Boulders and the Northern Rainforests

Steve had been re-reading some Kafka recently (God, he is so pretentious! Ed.) and had had a torrid night (dream on...Ed.) replete with vivid and inescapable nightmares that he had turned into a dung beetle in human form! Luckily, for posterity, Karen was around to record the dreamscape ...

 

 

... And then on to the northern rainforests populated by vast kauri trees ... Huge monsters (the photos can't capture the scale). Perhaps not quite as jaw dropping as the Californian sequoia but one can do little other than stand and look in awe and wonder ...(This one is called Tane Mahute, the god of the forest. Ed.)

The forests are wonderful and unless the wine and Talisker gets the better of us (me, actually) we plan a short night walk from our van through the forest. This would be quite terrifying were it not for the fact that there is an impossible-to-lose track ...

The ferns look like they're on steroids!

We did manage to do our nocturnal forest walk and whilst the sounds of the nighttime forest echoed loud, the only wildlife we encountered was a guided group which we followed for 10 minutes or so and got the benefit of the guide's expertise for free ... A bit of offline piracy, if you like!

Here's a few photos taken by torchlight .. (On reflection, the first ones's a bit dull, but it was very dark!)




Oh, and to finish off this post Karen asked that I include a photo of her in a typical adventurous pose ... Here it is (I'll get my coat now ...)

He is such a wag, isn't he? But, Dear Reader, look carefully in the photo to see where I have carefully positioned the knife...




 

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