Bára & Kuba On the Road

It was Saturday morning and the sun was peeping out from the clouds. The weather seemed to be better than the forecast had predicted and so we quickly started to plan our day trip.

Since I came back from Prague about month ago, I haven’t made any trip out off Wellington and now I was really keen to go a bit further than to Petone where I work. So, the choice was made to go to Putangirua Pinnacles and do a 3-hours loop track close to Palliser Bay.

Even though we managed to pack everything necessary in a really short time the clouds all around us were already dark grey when we left Wellington. As we reached the top of Rimutaka Hills everything was covered in mist and eventually the real shower started at Cape Palliser.

Fortunately, as we got off the car it was already only drizzling and our jackets could cope with that easily.

Few meters after beginning of the track a narrow path disappeared and we followed muddy paths which meandered between tufts of tall grass until a point where a proper path appeared again. From that point the track ascended along a ridge up to a lookout which enabled a great view of pinnacles - earth pillars tens of meters tall formed by erosion. The drizzle gave them even more mysterious look….kind of…..ehm, of course we would prefer sunny weather.

From there the track descended to the stream bed. We followed a white coloured stream up into the valley to the base of the pinnacles, keeping our eyes on rocks falling from surrounded pillars. It happens quite often. After a while the valley narrowed and split into two tiny branches. That’s probably where the track ends, so we turned back and walked towards car park.

On the way back we had to cross the stream twice - the first time we had to take our shoes off, the second time we jumped over a few big stones. But there were some people who apparently didn’t bother with taking their shoes off and simply just walked through the stream.

Yep, we are still rookies.