It’s not actually Bali, but “Aitutaki hai” doesn’t have the same ring to it.
We are joining a dozen other ocean swimmers, three of whom we know, for a week in this particular version of paradise.
How do you know you’re on a tropical island? Roosters everywhere! However, for reasons shrouded in legend, there are no dogs allowed on Aitutaki. This is a good thing.
Aitutaki is part of the Cook Islands, which is technically a country but very tied to NZ. We flew 3 1/2 hours to the main island, Rarotonga, and then another 40 minutes to Aitutaki. There are about 2,000 residents, and something like 40,000 visitors per year.
Our bungalow is about where the yellow dot is. Here’s our view…
Today I’ll start with attending a service at the Arurangi Cook Islands Christian Church, the oldest church in the Pacific apparently, renowned for its singing and the ladies with their flowery hats. Then a short afternoon swim.
We had a few minor snafus getting in and settled last night. But they helped speed up our mental adjustment to being on island time. As our tour leader explained… everything works out here, but almost nothing goes according to plan.
This pumping station has been under construction for the last 2-3 years, snarling up parking at Mairangi Bay, which is my group’s home swimming beach. It’s finally operational.
The pumping station promises to move a bunch of wastewater from its big underground reservoir to the water treatment plant a few miles away. This is supposed to reduce the frequency and quantity of sewage overflows during storms. That in turn means cleaner water in the bays, and so more swimmable days. (Or maybe it’s better to say fewer unswimmable days, since actually the water is pretty darn good for being in a big urban area.)
We’ve had one big rainstorm since it opened, and all the beaches recorded sewage overflows (according to the Safeswim website) just like they always do. I don’t know enough to say whether the pumps are actually doing anything, but I sure hope we see some improvements!!
ANZAC Day, which is basically a counterpart of US Veterans Day, always starts with a Dawn Service. This year I attended a different kind of morning ritual… but we certainly counted our blessings that the war stories we told over breakfast were about big fish we saw or jellyfish we narrowly avoided instead of something more somber.
Later in the day I went out for a bit of metal detecting. Here’s what I posted to the Facebook group dedicated to that hobby…
“Went to the beach for an ANZAC Day hunt. Found a few items with a military theme as the Warbirds flew overhead: .22 shell casing, a lead soldier, and a Ukrainian 5 hryvnia coin. Among the crusty coins I did get three silver thruppence, so that’s a win.
“The gold ring rang up as a 34 on my Deus 2, which is normally the foil liner from a milk or juice bottle. But it was a strong tone, so I figured it would be shallow and I could get it off the beach. I went through the whole spectrum of detectorist emotions and reactions when the ring came out… excitement of course, followed by suspicion because of that low VDI number, then furtively looking around to see if I need to hide my treasure from marauders (luckily none were spotted), then hopefully but oh so casually looking for a hallmark, then sadly concluding that it rang up like a piece of foil because it sure ain’t gold!”
Last weekend, a couple of our Bay2Bay members who live a ways out of Auckland invited the group up for the weekend. I had too much else going on, so carpooled up with a van load for just a morning swim.
Mangawhai Heads is a dramatic rocky promontory (and a village of the same name) about an hour and a half north of Auckland. We swam 6 km up the estuary on the tide, which took about an hour and a half of not working very hard. It’s definitely fun to swim with the tidal push… it feels like walking fast on the moving sidewalk at the airport.
There were big sand dunes, deep parts with fish followed by spots so shallow we had to walk a bit… fun and different! Here’s a map, as I note that Google directions doesn’t include swimming amongst its modes of transport.
At the end, we carefully climbed up the boat ramp (sharp oyster shells ouch!!) and changed clothes in somebody’s backyard. I got the feeling that life for many Mangawhai Heads residents is sort of like being in a co-op: hey later on we’re gonna use your house for the swimmers ok?
And then … all within 100 metres of leaving the water… we wandered through the Saturday outdoor market and had a drink at the tavern (one of the non-swimming spouses who got roped into driving the shuttle car with all the gear asked how to find the tavern. “There’s only one” was all the answer needed).
Then a BBQ lunch and home in time for the rest of the day. Wonderful!
Since joining the Bay2Bay swimming group I’ve heard about how great the Huka River swim is. Now I’ve done it and yes it is! We got a nice Airbnb room and made a weekend of it, along with about a dozen other Bay2Bay’ers.
The Huka flows out of Lake Taupō, starting just about 1km behind me in the picture above. It has a steady current which is regulated with a set of gates… sometimes they let out more water, sometimes less. The swim is with the current, so you can clock your fastest 3k ever.
The current was gentle – think lazy float with an inner tube – but a couple of km below where we got out, the river narrows to create the Huka Falls. The water is spectacularly blue and clear, and it’s close to the road, making for one of NZ’s most visited natural attractions. A few intrepid people have done the falls on a kayak… but mostly that’s just dumb.
That’s our gang on race day, including a couple of former members who’ve since moved away.
There were about 300 people altogether, supposedly divided into waves based on expected finish times. But I’m thoroughly average, and even more people think they’re average than actually are, so it felt like my wave was pretty big. The whole race was a jumble of other people’s elbows and feet for me. Meh.
After the race we did what we do even better than swimming…
In the afternoon many of us took a short hike and swim out to the Māori Rock Carvings, which are cool enough but would be even more impressive if they had been made in pre-colonial times.
We had a BBQ together at ‘the big house’ where many of the guys stayed (we were just fine having our own space, having registered for the event somewhat late).
The next day, I got up early and took the metal detector to the swim staging area. I figured 300 people squirming in and out of their wetsuits and clothing would yield some dropped treasure, but I didn’t find diddly.
Later, about half of us swam the course again, just leisurely this time. That was way better. We played around in the current, jumped off rocks, and even stopped for a soak in some hot springs that flow right into the river.
In the afternoon, Lee and I took the tourist boat trip back out to the carvings, where I confirmed previous experiments showing I can’t take good selfies.
Taupō is a tourist town pure and simple. There’s plenty of public art as you walk among the restaurants and souvenir shops, and if you turn your head, there’s the magnificent lake. I can certainly see the appeal of taking your family vacations there, but I think I would find it relatively confining after a relatively short time. I remember driving through Tahoe once and immediately thinking about living there… similar in a lot of ways.
Sunday afternoon when the others had left, we stopped at a glass-blowing studio and paid to walk around their glass sculpture garden. It was very nice among roadside attractions, but we’ve seen other glass sculptures and so this one didn’t thrill us as much as we’d hoped. Then we went to the geothermal spa pools at Wairakei, which was nice and relaxing.
It was our first weekend out of Auckland in quite a while, and we had a good time, a nice combo of hard swimming, chilling with friends, walking around and gawking at stuff, and doing nothing.
Next confirmed swim-cation is Aitutaki in September…
That’s Rangitoto Island shrouded in clouds. The picture was taken from the Takapuna boat ramp, and my morning’s mission was to swim from the one to the other. About 5k, which is not crazy long, but is the longest swim I’ve done so far this summer.
If you look past the little waves breaking on shore, you’ll see the water is pretty flat, which definitely makes for a better experience. It rained on us sporadically too, but hey… we were there to get wet.
The swim isn’t really a race, but it’s organized by the local triathlon club, which includes some pretty fast people. We had to choose a group: fast, average, or slow. I picked average, along with about 35 of the 60 total swimmers. Then, at the first rest break about 15 minutes in, we split the average group in two. I was happy to stay in the “below average” bunch, which allowed me to swim briskly but not feel like I was struggling to keep up.
A little more than 90 minutes later, we stepped onto Rangitoto, and then all of us from the Bay2Bay swim club hitched a ride back in Chris’s boat. All in all it was an especially well-run event.
I felt great in the water and even though it didn’t feel like I was pushing, I posted a good time. I must’ve tired myself out more than I thought, because I didn’t get much done the rest of the day!!
Before last Saturday’s swim several of us stood around and took pictures of the wonderfully calm water and beautiful sunrise.
By the time I went to post mine to our group chat, there were already several more or less identical shots. I’ve posted variations on the same theme here several times.
So, I cropped and filtered to make this one a little different.
Today, Rangitoto island is a fun day trip on the ferry, where you can hike through the jungle to peer down into the crater. But when the first Polynesian explorers got to the area, it was a smoking, smoldering and scary place… a little local Mordor, more or less.
With or without a wetsuit, I’m coooollllldddd when I get out of an ocean swim in winter. Sometimes we have access to hot showers at the Mairangi Bay Surf Lifesaving Club, but mostly not. One of the other guys in the group turned me on to the solution on the right a couple years ago. Fill up a milk jug with hot tap water and wrap that into your towel. When you get out of the water, switch to a lid with some holes punched in it, and presto, it’s a hot shower.
But let’s be honest, it lacks a certain James Bond cool factor.
Thanks to the magic of targeted advertising, Lee was presented with the solution on the left the other day. And presto, a gift was born. You fill it up with hot tap water, pump the handle to create some air pressure, and presto again, it’s a shower. Very stylish.
I’m now the envy of all my friends, but luckily the new gadget holds more than twice as much as the milk jug, so I can afford to be generous with my good fortune.
That’s my buddy Nick a few hours into his recent swim across Lake Taupo’s 40.2 km. He almost beat his goal time, and did set the British record for the swim. In that video it looks like he’s barely exerting himself, just gliding along. In fact it’s a pace I can only hold for a couple minutes, if I’m concentrating hard and working harder. He looked somewhat different when he stumbled out of the water that evening, but even at his most fatigued he was pretty dang smooth. Despite practicing for years now, I literally don’t know how these fast swimmers do it and do it so elegantly.
I remember the day he first came to a Sunday swim a few years ago, wearing a scraggly surfing wetsuit and saying he hadn’t been in the water for a while. But then he easily kept up with our fastest group. We learned later that he had been competitive at the national level back home in the UK.
The video was taken by my other buddy Scott, who was on the pilot boat for 13+ hours. Of course that’s nowhere near as hard as doing the actual swim… but is plenty uncomfortable and impressive in its own way.
Since that first day with Bay2Bay Nick’s gotten way back into it… obviously! Kudos to Nick on his accomplishment and I’m eagerly waiting to see what challenge he takes on next.
Brattleboro Adventure – the Auckland Edition 