All things considered, day 52 was an easy day. We rested in the morning. Julie and I caught up on work a bit. The kids went out to lunch together, and I got a haircut at a local barbershop. Since we had a bit more time, we also went to the grocery store to get some green mussels for dinner.

After dinner we headed off to the nearby redwood forest for a nighttime walk along a 700 meter long canopy walkway of platforms and suspension bridges connecting 27 redwood trees. The trees are about 120 years old, relatively young and small by redwood standards. But redwoods grow faster in New Zealand than in the US due to the more generous rainfall here, and even these young trees were massive. The height of the platforms ranged between 20 to 65 feet above the forest floor.

At night, the walkway is artfully illuminated, and to me the experience was definitely giving off some Ewok vibes.

I generally think that lighting a natural environment in a way that is distinctly unnatural. Sometimes it doesn’t work so well (such as the neon lighting at the geyser at Te Puia). Here, the lighting nicely complemented the natural beauty.

While the lights were neat, I think the part I enjoyed the most was being able to look down on the huge tree ferns.

The walkways form a large loop through the trees, and after we traversed a little more than half way around the circle, we were able to climb a bit higher. The bridges moved quite a bit as we climbed them, particularly the bridges with staircases.

The platforms and bridges were connected to the trees with straps and movable blocks, so that the trees were not damaged. All in all, the whole experience really “worked.” I had my doubts about whether the forest would be fun at night. It was.

But make no mistake. These redwoods weren’t nearly as old or as big as the ones from California. A small cross section of a huge tree from California made this clear, particularly since this section came from 140 feet off the ground rather than near the thicker base.

We finished up our walk, piled in the car, and headed home. While we were still in the forest, Cassie spotted a wallaby.

Wallabies are invasive species in NZ, and we’d seen signs encouraging people to report wallabies. This sparked an extended discussion amongst the members of Team Hubbard+ about whether we’d narc on a cute fuzzy animal. Cassie asked whether reporting it would lead to capture or killing of the animal. Lydie pointed out that the reporting website was part of the “National Wallaby Eradication Programme,” so we were pretty sure that the goal was kill, kill, kill. In the end, we determined that wallabies are only a threat to the timber industry, not a threat to native animals. Armed with that, we joined the Wallaby Underground and declined to report the sighting.

The next day we decided to do a bit of mountain biking in the Whakarewarewa Forest. We hired some bikes and headed off to see what we could find. 

Our biking trip was largely successful, but we did have to revise our plans as we went. We probably could have done a bit more research about this part of the trip. It turns out that mountain biking in the Whakarewarewa Forest is pretty hardcore. The forest has hosted the World Mountain Biking Championships seven times in the past 20 years. We knew enough to stay off the advanced trails, but we found even the more modest trails to be quite challenging. The trails were steep and long. We had only 2 e-bikes and definitely could have used 5. We ended up splitting into a couple of teams, with Julie and Connor heading back early, while Cassie, Lydie, and I headed on.

After a couple of hours, we decided we’d had our fill and declared victory. We ended the day with dinner in the central business district at the night market, where there are food trucks and food stalls every Thursday night. We all agreed that we’d earned some comfort food after our biking adventures.

-Will

PS I suppose I should add that I turned 50 on July 24. The current conversion rate from US to NZ is about .6. So, I think I’m actually more like 30 in NZ. #denial