March 14, 2013
Urupukapuka Island has lots of walking trails, which makes it possible to see the entire island even if you only go to one anchorage. Your only limit is your level of fitness. Our level managed to get us up the hill, across the island, down to the south end, back across, up to the anchorage north of ours, and back down the hill to Paradise Bay (basically covering about 2/3 of the island). It nearly killed us, but cruising here means we’re in Legacy Boot Camp mode, and no one says boot camp is easy.
It helps when the scenery is gorgeous; so most of the time it hardly felt like exercise. The path starts from the beach, then zig zags up a hill through classic northland forest filled with birds (there are no predators on many of these islands so the number of birds goes up noticeably). Two standouts were the little fantail birds that flitted around us as we walked and the tui birds that chortled and whistled from the trees.
Near the top of the hill, the forest abruptly stopped and we emerged into a world of grassy hills, pohutukawa trees, and occasional sheep. Beyond the hills were views of the Bay of Islands with a surprising number of rock islands between the bigger islands, then the mountainous mainland beyond that.
One consistent feature of these islands is the side facing the ocean is rugged and rocky, while the side facing inland has still, clear water and those beautiful white beaches. We crossed to the rugged side and then down to the south end, tromping through thick grass at times and seeing an occasional pukeko.
We arrived at Urupukapuka Bay at the south side of the island. It’s just as beautiful as Paradise Bay, but the scenery features grassy hills instead of forest. We walked down the beach, then continued on towards Otehi Bay. The views of the coastline and the bay were stunning, so beautiful it momentarily brought tears to my eyes.
We reached Otehi Bay about 15 minutes later. It’s pretty, but there’s a ferry from Pahia that drops off visitors and campers; so this bay is busier and not as appealing as the others. There’s a small cafeteria at the head of the bay, but the food didn’t look all that great. We opted to walk back the boat, detouring to take a look at Otaio Bay, just north of Paradise Bay but too shallow for us to visit in Legacy. (It was lovely, but not quite as nice as our Paradise Bay.)
By the time we arrived back at Paradise Bay, we’d overdone it and were lurching along like a couple of zombies from The Walking Dead. It was about all we could do now to carry our dinghy to the water, launch it, and drag ourselves onto the boat. This fantastic walk was definitely sponsored by Advil. That, and a very nice sauvignon blanc. –Cyndi
As always, click on any image below to enlarge, and click on the right side of the image to continue in the enlarged mode.
