Where the mountains meet the sea.

saturday april 4th, 8.00am I woke to the sun shining and the birds singing.

A Praying Mantis slowly moved from the shadows and into the sunshine with leaf like movements.

Kaka's (big brown parrots with vivid red on the underside of their wings, and huge hooked beaks) fly out of the old oak tree for the days feeding.

I started off at the base of Mt manaia which stands 403 m above sea level.

barefoot, and with just my trusty shorts on, I proceeded up the steep incline of the old track which is closed to the public due to deterioration of the track. as I proceeded up the steep and winding track, I experimented with ways to move, running forwards and backwards, crawling forwards and backwards with arms 1st and then changing to feet 1st approximately 3/4 of the way up, then It was an uphill sprint on rocky terrain through dense bush with average of a 50 degree incline. hard work.

Once I reached the top I was greeted with the sunshine once again and a crisp ocean breeze, and not to mention a 360 degree panoramic view of Whangarei, and the surrounding poor knight and the hen and chicken islands in the distance.

after a few attempts to climb a crumbling cliff edge I started my decent back down the closed track, (the open track takes longer but is of less intensity) once I picked up pace the sharp rocks didnt bother me at all, it was almost as if i didnt give my feet "gound time" to feel the sharpness.

it took me approx 35 mins to get to the top, but a mere 15 mins to get back down.

Next was the beach.

A quick run up and over the dunes, and down to the rocks at the end of the bay.

The swell had reached its maximum with the windy weather that had hammered the coast the night before.

I swam out to a small isle of rocks in the middle of the surf.

the waves were bigger than last time so i had to be 100% certain of myself and the surrounding conditions so i wasnt putting myself in a situation that i couldnt recover from.

grasping a barnacle clad rock ledge I braced myself just as a 6 metre wave hit the rocks and proceeded to dump what felt like a few good cubic metres of water on top of me.

The impact was in three stages, the initial "hit" of the wave, then the ingoing surge trying to peel my grasp from the rocks, then the last outgoing swell, that wants to pull you into the deep blue.

I took 3 of these waves as they come in sets, and as soon as the last one hit and subsided, I caught a wave and surfed it back to the safe regions of the shoreline.

I was pretty tired by this time, but as i was joggin back I found a rock of about 50kg, shaped like a kidney bean. I couldnt resist. that rock was asking to be picked up. So I heaved it up in a cradle position and waded back into the surf up to my waist and went about 200 m along the coast.

Then I threw it out to sea of about 2 m depth, and tried retreiving from the bottom, whilst navigating the surf. in the end the rock was lost as the waves became too big to carry a rock of that size while trying to maintain balance.

So it was lost to the sea, but I have a rough idea where it is, and that will be part of my next training session.