Hoodoos! 'Nuff said.

Saturday, October 4
Wairarapa

We woke up early-ish to the sounds and smells of breakfast. The B&B owner, a tanned, white-haired man, was busy making us a fresh, hot breakfast. We ate in a window-laden dining room, joined by a few cats and a little terrier. I think it’s an unwritten rule that B&Bs have cute animals to entertain and charm the guests with.

The breakfast was delicious, and we chatted for a short time with the B&B owner about our studies and our travels. We told him we were headed out to the Putangirua Pinnacles that day, and he went to get us a book to show us what to expect. The Pinnacles are an example of “badlands erosion,” meaning that all the softer rock in an area has been eroded away, leaving the harder rock behind in interesting formations. In this particular case, the rock has formed into pillars, also called “hoodoos.” And if that’s not a fun word, I do not know what is.

After packing up and paying, we headed out to see the hoodoos. It was a little over an hour’s drive out to the Pinnacles, which are located southeast of Lake Ferry in the Putangirua Pinnacles Scenic Reserve (see, what did I tell you about those scenic reserves?). Saturday was cloudy, and a few raindrops dotted our windshield as we drove.

We arrived at the scenic reserve in the late morning, and headed off in search of the pinnacles. We hiked for about 15 minutes through a dry riverbed, over big, smooth rocks and patches of fine, cream-colored sand. We got our first glimpse of pinnacles not long after.

Finding thin fissures in the oddly-eroded rock (hoodoos!), Jamie and Andrea decided they wanted to climb up into them. I followed at first, but I didn’t trust the steep ground and loose boulders just waiting to come tumbling down the fissure. It didn’t help that a little boy was watching us, and looked really interested in following. I nearly smooshed him when I bumped a good-sized rock and sent it rolling.

I decided that, after a few photos, I would get out of the way of falling rocks, should Jamie and Andrea send them falling. They were much higher up in the fissure than I was.

I climbed down, and headed for another set of hoodoos (seriously, how great is this word?) on the opposite side of the riverbed. These ones were much more pronounced, and looked a lot cooler. Andrea and Jamie eventually followed, and we climbed up the steep hill to get closer to the pinnacles. You could tell by the smooth, haphazardly-deposited rocks that this hill – the whole area, really – probably floods like mad when it rains. All I could think about was Bear from Man vs. Wild talking about flash floods, and how dangerous they could be. I kept my eye on those rain clouds.

After climbing up as far as our tired legs would allow, we headed back down and decided to go further into the reserve. In the distance, we could see ever bigger pinnacles further up the riverbed.

The climb to the bigger hoodoos was on a much milder grade, but we still took it slow. Jamie took it upon herself to find a walking stick, and tramped partway up the long hill with a ridiculously large, bent stick. Andrea followed suit with a pathetically short, bendy stick. But Jamie, not to be outdone, foraged around in the riverbed and emerged with a small tree. And I don’t just mean a stick that could pass for a tree – I mean an actual small tree with branches and roots and everything. She proceeded to name it Tyrone, and drag it halfway up the hill only to “replant” it near the base of a pinnacle. I love her, I really do.

When we got up into the pinnacles, the wind died down, and it was dusty. And eerily quiet. I’ve read that they filmed bits of the Paths of the Dead scenes for The Lord of the Rings here, and I can definitely understand why. They pinnacles reach up hundreds of feet into the sky, like weird skeletal fingers. The only sound besides our footsteps was the clattering of small pebbles every time a light breeze worked its way up into the valley. Had it been a little darker, I would have definitely been a bit creeped out.

We walked around for a bit, then decided to head back. It had been a long morning/afternoon of hiking and climbing, and we wanted to get back into the car before the rain really started. We walked back down through the riverbed, the yellow flowers of the prickly gorse bushes standing out starkly after having been up in the towering grey pinnacles for so long.

Jamie stopped to take a drink out of the “river,” which, that day, was nothing more than a trickling stream. Andrea was mortified, and was convinced Jamie was going to die from a bacterial infection. I had a hunch that the water she was drinking was probably cleaner than anything that’s ever come out of any of our taps or water bottles, however. And, for the record Drebo, Jamie was fine.

We got back to the car and decided to make the drive out to Cape Palliser before heading back into civilization. Cape Palliser is… well, I’m not exactly sure why it’s so cool, but the B&B owner told us we should check it out. It has a lighthouse high up on an outcrop of rock that can only be reached by climbing some ridiculous number of stairs.

By the time we made our way there on a windy, narrow dirt road, however, the wind had picked up, the rain clouds had rolled in, and none of us felt like climbing up hundreds of stairs. So we simply turned around and headed back the other way.

We pointed the car in the direction of Featherston, and arrived with the rain. We fueled up the car, grabbed some linner (it was late afternoon, so technically it was both lunch and dinner), then headed back to Wellington. The storm was fairly strong, and made driving the Rimutaka road nerve-wracking. Jamie was going 40 kph, if that, and the traffic behind us wasn’t very happy. But, when you are approaching a curve and can see only a flimsy guardrail between you and the edge of a cliff and the wind is blowing so hard that you can literally see the sheets of rain being whipped across the narrow road, you’d drive that slow, too.

We made it safely back into the city, however, and navigated our way off the motorway with surprising ease. Jamie dropped Andrea and I off at our respective flats, then took the car back with her to Brooklyn, planning to return it the next morning.

After our eventful, adventurous weekend, my nice, soft bed never looked so inviting.