Skyline Walkway

Another view of Wellington and its amazing countryside!!  So this will just be a short-ish post, because there's only so many times I can describe hiking through the amazing scenery around New Zealand in detail.  So on the 5th of May a group of Massey International students went on a hike on the opposite side of Wellington from Mt. Vic.  It was pretty awesome because it was one of those spots that I could see from a distance and always said "I want to hike that," and lo-and-behold that's where we were going.

 It was a warm, semi-sunny day, also known as a perfect hiking day.  We were picked up by shuttles at Massey and then drove out to the start of the trails.  Cherie, the International adviser was the leader of our group and shepherded us along the track.  It started with a walk through a kind of nature conservatory for native trees and vegetation.  It had rained a little bit the day before so the path got rather muddy.  There's was a lot of slipping in the forest path because it was almost entirely uphill. Typical New Zealand though, everything was a crazy green color, it was ridiculous!

 It was rather gray when we started the hike in the morning, but by about noon it had started to clear up, and the clouds were rolling across the sky.  They were fairly low, and moving quickly, but they were set against this beautiful baby-blue color.  I get way too excited about looking at the sky.  It's funny sometimes I get so side tracked with looking at the beautiful rolling hills and green countryside that I forget to look up.  Luckily, this was once we were out of the forest and the path we followed just went right across the tops of these rolling hills, so there were great views all around us of sky, ocean, and the distant Wellington city and harbor.

One side of the hills it dropped down and you could see the city a ways off, but on the other side you looked down and it was just green fields with this expansive rolling countryside.  All I could think about (typical) was how much fun it would be to go sledding there.  Seriously, these New Zealanders (especially the North Islanders) don't know what they're missing!  A cool side track that our whole group drifted too was this group of giant trees.  All of this land was farmland so it's all treeless for the most part, and here in the middle of it were these giants!  They look kind of like those trees you see in Africa that have the big trunks and then large flat tops.

Of course it wouldn't be a New Zealand path if it wasn't tiny and barely discernible as a path.  It was kind of funny because there was a horse trail that paralleled it and then joined up with the hiking trail for a little bit, and it still wasn't much wider.  I know this because some actual riders came up on our tramping party after a while.  We were all watching our feet after that to avoid droppings.

 

 And then we can't forget that it also went through pasture land, we saw some cows at one point (you'll get lots of pictures of those in my next post, hint, hint).  The best part was that we saw these sheep along the fence, it's New Zealand you expect sheep everywhere, but this one sheep was different.  We couldn't quite tell, but it either had the hiccups, or it was allergic to people and was sneezing at us the whole time.  Whichever it was it made a super adorable noise, and us being tourists, loved it.

Once we got up to the very top, which was just a hill that had a cell tower on it, we were exhausted. It had been one of those hikes where we could see our goal from a long way away, but then the walk to get there took FOREVER.  It would go up a giant hill, down a little bit and curve around, then up another giant hill and repeat until it came to a super big really steep last push to get up to the top. Once we were up there we had a celebratory lunch and break, and took a little shelter from the wind.  The sun was shining really brightly at that point, but the wind was so strong up at the top of the hill that we had to put on all of our extra coats and sweatshirts to keep protected.  We got a great view of the city though, and it looked like someone was taking advantage of the wind because all the sailboats were out in the harbor and you could just see the little white sails moving around down there.

Then it was time for the big downhill.  It turned out to be just as tough as the uphill, I mean it had to be since it was such a long walk up.  There were parts that were so steep you couldn't help but run down, and then once we were back in the woods it got muddy and slippery again.  Go figure!  Luckily once we got down we didn't have to walk back in to town.  It would've been an especially long walk considering that we ended the walk in Johnsonville.  We took a train back into town, only cost us $2 too!!  All in all, it was an excellent cheap fun walk right outside of Wellington.