South Island, West Coast: Kohaihai to Monro Beach

From Little Wanganui, we headed north to the Department of Conservation (DOC) office in Karamea to get a map of Kahurangi, New Zealand’s second largest national park. We wanted to day-hike the lower end of the Heaphy Track along the Tasman Sea. The Heaphy is one of New Zealand’s Great Walks (4-5 days from Karamea to Golden Bay, north of Abel Tasman National Park). According to a sign at the trailhead, Charles Heaphy, a European explorer, was guided down the West Coast by Kehu, his Māori guide, in 1846. We stayed at Kohaihai, a DOC campground at the northern end of the Karamea- Kohaihai Road. It was small and undeveloped, but had toilets and potable water and cost $6 NZD per night. The campground was mostly empty and our spot had a view of the Tasman Sea out the back windows. The sandy beach behind us was steep, not very wide, and littered with weathered tree trunks.

Our caravan at Kohaihai campground

N Zed – The Beginning

Our plan was to spend five weeks circumnavigating the South Island of New Zealand in a campervan (known as a caravan in Australia and New Zealand). We’ve always gone camping, backpacking in our younger days and, more recently, out of the back of a four-wheel drive pickup on federal lands around the western U.S. New Zealand would be our first long trip in an RV as a test, not of our marriage, but of whether we’d like to own one ourselves. We arrived in Christchurch at midnight. Immigration was automated: scan your passport, answer a couple of questions, drop your incoming visitor card in a box welcome to New Zealand. Customs officers asked us questions about food and x-rayed our bags. A female officer asked if her beagle could sniff us and our luggage for fresh fruit; the dog tried to climb into Rande’s purse. She had an empty plastic bag that had carried apples and bananas, which we had eaten before we arrived. Outside the terminal, we caught the shuttle to the Sudima, a large, upscale hotel near the airport and fell into bed.

Mercedes caravan hooked up to electricity in a caravan park

Port Douglas – Part 2

A couple days after catching a cold, I felt good enough to go for a hike, so we drove up to Mossman Gorge (link, link) in the southern section of the Daintree National Park, another “must-see” attraction north of Port Douglas. The Mossman River spills down the Main Coast Range of mountains winding its way through weathered granite boulders the size of small cars. It’s hard to comprehend the amount of energy it took to move these massive boulders down the mountains, and the time it took for the water to wear them smooth.

Mossman River in Mossman Gorge

Port Douglas - Part 1

The two-lane road north from Cairns to Port Douglas winds 50 km (31 mi) up the coast past sugar cane fields and beach resorts, and through small towns and tropical rainforest. We passed a large group of wallabies (known as a mob) grazing in a large pasture along the road. I parked next to a lawn bowling complex and, camera in hand, walked around the corner of the building and began taking pictures. A man came out of the building and told us to come inside, but to stay behind the fence because "wallabies can be aggressive if you get too close." Inside the open-air facility, twenty people were bowling in a tournament. One of the women bowlers said that a few weeks earlier, a man taking photographs in the pasture was attacked by a male wallaby.

Agile wallabies

Beyond Brisbane

From Brisbane we drove north to Rainbow Beach, which is named for the brightly-colored cliffs rising behind the narrow beach. This small, busy town on the Coral Sea caters to campers, fishermen, kayakers, surfers and beachgoers. Before 1969, it could only be reached by boat. After the road was built, the name was changed from Black Beach to Rainbow Beach (link).

Rainbow Beach

Winter Texans (Part 1)

We rented a house on the Gulf Coast of Texas for a month and ended up staying for three months. We knew the birding would be good and the diving bad, but there were national seashores and wildlife refuges to visit, and coastal bays and estuaries to kayak. And while we had explored West Texas from El Paso to Big Bend National Park on the Rio Grande, we had not spent time in the Coastal Bend.

Rande and the Big Blue Crab, a local Rockport landmark on Little Bay

The Road North (Part 2)

…runs through mountains and along rivers and took us from northern New Mexico to Washington state. We drove north from Taos into the San Luis Valley in Colorado and then over La Veta Pass to Interstate 25 to northern Colorado, a route we've traveled many times. Our household goods are in storage there and we stopped to swap our summer clothes for warmer jackets and rain gear.

Sawtooth Scenic Byway, Idaho

For the rest of the trip, we planned to visit parts of the country we hadn’t seen before on roads we hadn’t driven before, mostly blue highways. That term appears in the first line of the 1982 book of the same name by William Least Heat-Moon: “On the old highway maps of America, the main routes were red and the back roads blue.” He was separated from his wife, had lost his teaching job and wanted to change his life. He outfitted a van for camping and drove 13,000 miles around the country on blue highways writing about people he met and places he visited.

Hiking the Sierra Travesaño

Standing at 1,500 m (5,000 ft) in Ajijic looking up at the 2,500 m (8,000 ft) Sierra Travesaño made us want to put on our hiking shoes and find a trail. We found several hikes out of town in a guidebook by Teresa Kendrick (2007), including El Tepalo. Her directions were simple and straightforward – from Calle Jin (the main east-west street) follow Incarnación Rosas to Callejon de Tepalo up (north) to the entrance of El Tepalo – the canyon of the waterfalls. It was the end of the dry season, so we didn’t expect any water (and there wasn’t any). Our objective was the ridge where several white crosses were visible with binoculars from the village.

Looking up to the Sierra Travesaño

Coastal Trail from Boca to Quimixto

We love to hike, so we were happy to learn of a two-mile trail along the coast from Boca de Tomatlán to Las Animas. Most tourists go by water taxi (panga) to Las Animas, Quimixto and Yelapa, coastal villages west of Boca. We asked about the trail in town and were told that it goes beyond Las Animas to Quimixto, over four miles (measured on Google Earth). We planned to start early, stop for lunch along the way and return to Boca by water taxi in the afternoon. We packed light, took several liters of water and snacks, wore sturdy trail shoes and started before the sun was over the hills behind Boca.

Start of the trail

Boca de Tomatlán

It’s cool in the morning before the sun rises over the Río Horcones. The breeze from the east is fresh and the leaves of the palm trees wobble as it swirls. White-collared swifts gather and wheel in the sky above the village announcing their presence with loud chattering. Noisy blue-rumped parrotlets fly through the trees in small groups at high speed. Great-tailed grackles are whistling and social flycatchers call from the tops of snags. 

Pangas on the estuary

Dripping Springs

One of the pleasures of traveling is finding places that are beautiful or interesting. In the U.S., some of these places have been protected by local, state or federal governments to conserve nature, preserve history and viewscapes, and for public recreation. We found one of these places on our way back to Mexico.

Organ Mountains - torrey mountain yucca (foreground) and soaptree yucca

We left northern Colorado in a snowstorm and stopped in Las Cruces, New Mexico for a couple days to collect the remaining documents we needed to complete our tax returns and plan our trip down the Pacific Coast of mainland Mexico. With some free time, we went looking for hikes in the Organ Mountains east of Las Cruces and found Dripping Springs Natural Area. It’s managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and has a small visitor center at 5,000 feet and more than four miles of hiking trails.

Wandering on Whidbey Island

We spent a week on Whidbey Island in northern Puget Sound in January in weather ranging from cold rain and fog to shirtsleeves and sunshine where I tested the landscape capabilities of the Sony RX100. Whidbey Island was named by Captain George Vancouver for Lieutenant Joseph Whidbey who explored the island in a launch from Discovery in 1792 (link). Vancouver had a penchant for naming things after his friends – he named Puget Sound after Discovery Lieutenant Peter Puget, Mount Baker after 3rd Lieutenant Joseph Baker, Mount Rainier after Rear Admiral Peter Rainier, and so on (link).

Ebey's Landing National Historical Reserve (NHR)
Ebey’s Landing NHR was established by Congress in 1978 as a partnership among the National Park Service; state, county and town governments; and residents of central Whidbey Island. It is administered and managed by the Trust Board of Ebey’s Landing NHR and is the first unit of its kind in the National Park System. The Reserve covers over 17,000 acres, most of which is privately owned, and includes Penn Cove and the town of Coupeville (link, link).

Farms at Ebey's Landing

Three Hikes

Baja has many opportunities for hiking – the challenge sometimes is finding them. If you have limited time, go with a guide (link); most tourist hotels can find one for you. This is a good plan for extended hikes because hiking trails can be confused with cattle trails. If you want to do it yourself, you can find trails on maps and blog posts and by word-of-mouth.

This post highlights three recent hikes. Hike #1 – Sol de Mayo – appears on low-resolution maps of the Sierra La Laguna Biosphere Reserve. The maps can’t be used for navigation. We learned about hike #2 – Arroyo Palmillas – on the Baja Pony Express (link), an English-language website with news, information and announcements for the gringo community. We learned about hike #3 – Sendero sin Nombre – by word of mouth.

Sol de Mayo

Located near the town of Santiago (KM 85 on the Transpeninsular Highway) on the east side of the Sierra La Laguna Biosphere Reserve, Cañon de la Zorra (Fox Canyon) is best known for its waterfall (cascada). Rancho Ecológico Sol de Mayo and has an entry fee of USD $6. Hike upstream from the waterfall (elevation about 275 m) and you'll find pools and wetlands and a beautiful canyon.

Entrance to Rancho Ecológico Sol de Mayo