Makarora, New Zealand

I woke up around 4am cause the moon hit me in the eye, not unlike a big pizza pie. Literally, the moon was shining in through a side window directly on my pillow. I tried to take some pics through the window, which looked pretty good except for the double reflection in the window of the moon :(

The mountains in the distance started to get colour from dawn; it was really beautiful so I just lay in bed awake and watched. Heather woke up at some point and did the same. So we didn’t get much sleep but it was really pretty. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The sheep and cows woke up and started bleating and mooing. Eventually the sun rose over the peaks east of us.

We had a big breakfast, yogurt and muesli, poached eggs, toast with peanut butter and honey, and French press coffee. Pretty good for self-catering if I may say so myself.

When we were chatting yesterday with our host, Pete, he had suggested that we do the 2hr Blue Pools Track. Most folks just walk in 15 minutes to the Blue Pools; Pete thought we’d enjoy the full walk; he said it was his favourite in the area.

So we were on the road by 10:15am, still a blue sky. The track was just ten minutes north on Highway 6. There was just a handful of cars in the parking lot at this early hour. We were fully geared up for sun and sand flies.

The Blue Pools were nice. (Someone we met later on suggested that some people visit from areas that don’t have blue water cause of all the sediment in the water, and so blue water is really unique for them. For us it’s not such a novelty).

We were the only people on the track beyond the pools. We followed the marked trail through forest, and then later parallel to a farm, through meadows and fields of wild flowers. It was very peaceful. Fortunately it hadn’t rained recently cause otherwise the track would be very muddy.

We turned back after an hour, for a total walk of about 2.5 hours. It was really relaxing.

We had lunch at Makarora Country Cafe. It was just a couple minute drive from Wild Earth Lodge so we went home first to freshen up.

The rest of the afternoon we relaxed at our lodge. We had a washing machine and did several loads of laundry. We had been changing locations every day for the past week and this was our first opportunity to do laundry in a while.

We had scotch steaks (aka ribeye) with grilled asparagus, red pepper, onion, eggplant and mushrooms. (I definitely need to get an instant read thermometer. I overdid the steak slightly).

We sat outside again to finish the wine and watch the sunset. It really is one of our favourite places we’ve stayed.