Distance: 8.6 km. Elevation low/high/total: 62/113/180 m.
Difficulty:4.1/10. Scenic: 8.3/10
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Fun hike along a beautiful river - with swimming and fishing holes!Click pic above for picture album, gps track is here |
It's quite warm here in New Caledonia this time of the year. Thus, Paul and I seek out hikes near water during the summer and the river system along the road to Yate is just spectacular for that purpose. This particular river we explored is the Rivière des Pirogues, where one also finds the Pont des Japonais where we've been many times. We drove Paul's 4WD truck some 5 km inland over a close-to-undriveable old mining/logging road. The plan was to hike back to the main road, near the Scout Camp that Paul has long been involved with, and he would mountain bike back to his truck to get a little extra work out. Well, the hike back from the parking spot was awesome and we found a couple of excellent swimming holes. We also encountered sizable fish populations feasting on the bits of granola bar we happened to drop in the water. After some good swims and a bit of a hike we decided that wasn't enough hiking and we just hoofed it back to his truck to make it an overall 8+ km hike and drove back out.
I returned the following week on my own to try out the fishing. Sadly, almost immediately upon arrival, a drenching rain began and basically continued all morning as I moved form fishing hole to fishing hole. I did catch three of the little bass-like fish (there are bigger ones to be caught that would make a fine meal ...), and now I'm trying to identify them down to species level.
A good hike to do with kids - it's flat easy to follow and so many places to swim even in times of low rainfall.
