After a few weeks I finally decided to hit the road again. It’s strange that no matter how much I enjoy my trips out-of-town, and out of the house, it is so hard to actually start them. As soon as I’d decided I’d go, I was super excited though. I’d been wanting to go to Hanmer Springs for a while now and at just a two-hour drive, it was the perfect weekend trip. After a good gym class, mainly working on glutes and thighs, I drove towards Hanmer. I didn’t realise it was going to be a weekend-long gym class of glutes and thighs.
In the afternoon I arrived in Hanmer Springs, after making a short stop at a gorgeous view. I went to the campground straight away to secure my spot for the night. It seemed like a pleasant place, with good facilities and spacious forest sites. Then I made my way over the gravel forest road towards my first walk, the waterfall track. There were a couple of other cars in the parking lot and walking up the hill I saw a few people coming down. “Good luck.” said one of them. Ok. Do I need it? “It’s going to be pretty steep soon.” O joy! I continued along the path and to my surprise it didn’t get too much steeper. I guess I’ve seen steep by now and this was a not nearly the steepest.
Walking up was quite warm and sweaty though. It was hot even though the sun was hiding behind some clouds every now and then and the trees provided lots of shade. At my destination I looked up at a 41m waterfall that wouldn’t even fit in my photo. It was only a thin fall, but gorgeous nonetheless, flowing down over moss-covered rock. The water ended up in the tiniest stream, so it was easy to actually reach the waterfall. Since I didn’t want to take the same route back, I tried the Spur track. Soon I had amazing views over the Hanmer forest.
I crunched all the way down over the many pine cones that had fallen off the trees. At times the path was also slippery with needles. Going down wasn’t as fast as I liked. Then I suddenly ended up at a very steep opening in the forest. It seemed like they had cut down many of the trees. I just didn’t see a path anymore. On one side there seemed to be a track that had been used by vehicle. Unfortunately this was so steep that I was mostly sliding down, trying to keep my balance. It probably wasn’t the way I was supposed to go down, but I made it all in one piece.
The Fir track brought me back to my car, although this track wasn’t nearly as exciting as the other two. As a reward I soaked in Hanmer Springs thermal pools after dinner. Most of them were around 36 degrees, but some made it to 40. My muscles were grateful, although the massage waterfalls were more like torture. It was a good end to an amazing day.
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