Unexpected Journeys: Part 1

The weather was continuing to be unseasonably fine, so on Friday we planned some journeying around the countryside.

First on the agenda was Cathedral Cove, which we had admired from the ocean a few days earlier. We arrived mid-morning and managed to snag a parking spot. (We had actually driven to the parking lot after our boat trip on Tuesday, but there was nary a parking spot in sight. It was too late in the day, and tourism is booming on the peninsula.) 

The signs predicted it would take us 45 minutes to reach the cove, but we had lots to do that day so we hoofed it, climbing over hill and dale with great speed, and made it in 25 minutes.

We felt pretty awesome!

The trail climbs up and down a lot and follows the coastal cliffs.

You can see Sail Rock off to the right, behind the big white cliff.

Here I am, trying to look Hobbit-ish and not quite succeeding.

The Cove was closed to visitors for several years, due to falling rocks. 

Not sure what changed in the meantime, but we were glad for it.

Many stairs were climbed that day, and many more descended as we reached the beach.

I had to make a dash in between waves, but somehow Anne managed to saunter casually.

It was such a glorious day, I was wishing I had brought my swimsuit.

Actually, I was wishing I looked human in a swimsuit.

My sister, on the other hand, looks quite fabulous in a swimsuit.

Not that I'm jealous or anything. If I ate as much pumpkin as she does, I would probably look good in mine too!

John, holding up Sail Rock.

Really, he is!

He got a little confused in this one and started doing his t'ai chi instead.

There is something about Sail Rock... 

The base of the rock is very eroded.

The grand pohutakawas at the entrance to the beach are covered in epiphytes.

I love epiphytes.

I also love pohutakawas.

You say poh-hoo-tah-kah-wah.

You're welcome.

Our sojourn at Cathedral Cove was short-lived, as we had places to go, so back we went.

We left the east coast of the peninsula and drove the notorious gravel 309 road to the west coast. 

There may exist in the world a more windy (long "i") and nausea-inducing road in the world, but I have not traveled it. It is only 22 kilometres long but feels much longer.

Anne and John had gone this way a couple of years earlier and have some hair-raising tales of narrow right-of-ways between road construction and sheer cliffs, but this time our trip was fairly uneventful.
As we neared the end of the road, we came across the main reason for our journey.

Stu and his pigs.

This eccentric man lives with and loves his pigs. There are about a hundred of them, by many accounts, and they wander freely around the road and his family's 500 acres and sleep in his bedroom. 

Sometimes, people drive recklessly past his farm and purposely run over the pigs, which makes Stu very sad. Mind you, one of the first things the pigs do when you pull up in a car is to try to crawl underneath it, so possibly they deserve it.

At first, we thought that Stu lived in the caravan, which was really too awful to contemplate, but he told us that he has a house on the other side of the road. The pigs inhabit this area.

This pig came over to me and promptly lay down and played dead.

Weird.

The pigs come from wild stock and are dead ugly.

Ugly, I tell you!

Stu said that people often drop roosters off, so there are quite a few poultry toddling around as well.

My sister, who is the proud owner of an over-developed sense of compassion, packed a grocery bag filled with fruit from her trees, cake, and chocolate to give to Stu, thinking that maybe he doesn't eat very well. As John and I were endeavouring to cuddle one of the ugly piglets, who kept squealing at us, she went to the back of the van and opened the hatchback. 

What you see here is the aftermath, because I was nowhere near quick enough to snap a photo of what took place. As soon as Anne lifted the bag out of the van she was attacked by a bevy of pigs, the largest of which tore a hole in the bag with his prodigious teeth and the fruit went rolling around on the ground. It was snatched up by various pigs in a matter of fractions of a second. 

Anne was slightly traumatized and John and I stood watching helplessly.  

Stu holds the remaining treats (luckily, the cake and chocolate were intact) and instructed John on the finer points of piglet-holding. We finally understood that the reason the piglet kept squealing was that his tail had been mangled, something to do with a car. Which was kind of gross, if you ask me.

Stu is a conundrum. He is well-spoken and seems to be intelligent. He loves his pigs and is sad when people abuse them. He must have money, because he isn't starving, yet he lives alone and chooses to go barefoot amongst the pig poo. He is quite proud of being a tourist attraction. Who knows, I suppose, what shapes such a person's choices?

Anne said, I don't think we'll stop there again.
Good idea, I replied.