Hunua Falls

There's something about Hunua that gets you almost the second you step onto the track. You're maybe forty-five minutes out of the city, past the last of the suburbs and into forest and farmland, and then you park up and the noise just switches off. Green light filtering down through the canopy, wet earth and leaves in the air, birds doing their thing overhead. If you've had a week of concrete and fluorescent lighting, this is about as fast as therapy gets. It's also, unglamorously, one of the better workouts you'll get without a gym membership. The Cossey-Massey loop barely has a flat metre in it. It's stairs or slope, slope or stairs, the whole way round, and your heart rate goes up and stays up in a way that a treadmill facing a wall never quite manages, because there's always something new to look at instead of a countdown timer. I've done this one twice now, once as the full loop and once on a shorter, lazier, cloudy-day version, and between the two visits I picked up a few things I wish someone had told me before I went the first time. The full loop is about 8.3 kilometres and takes roughly three hours, and it's built from three linked sections rather than one continuous path, which matters more than it sounds like it should. Not long after you set off from the car park, you hit a fork where you have to choose which order to walk those three sections in. The distance and time end up the same either way. What's different is which section you save for the way back, and that decision is the one thing on this walk actually worth thinking about before you commit. One of the three sections comes back down as a slope rather than stairs, and it is loose, slippery gravel underfoot, the kind that has you sliding half a step for every step you take, and it is not kind to your knees. The other option finishes with a descent down stairs instead, and while stairs sound worse on paper, these ones are actually built well, and going down stairs beats sliding down wet gravel every time. So when you hit that early fork, work out which order puts the slope early, while you're climbing it, and saves the stairs for the way back down. Climbing the slope is fine. Descending it is the part you'll regret. There are two car parks out here, which trips people up. One of them looks like it should be your starting point and actually leads straight to the dam section, but cars aren't allowed to drive in anymore, only walkers. The other is the main Hunua Falls car park, with the falls off to one side and the loop track starting on the other. When I went, part of the trail was closed for pest control spraying, which happens periodically out here. It's not a dead end, there's a detour sign, but it's easy to lose confidence in it, because it just points you out onto a public road with a handwritten sign telling you to keep walking uphill until you rejoin the track at the dam car park. If you're coming from the other direction, it's the same idea in reverse, down the road instead of up, until a sign sends you back into the trees. It looks unofficial enough that you'll second-guess it. Just follow it, it does connect back up. The second time I went, it was overcast and I wasn't in the mood for the full three hours, so I did the shorter version instead. From the car park there are two loop options heading to the dam, one that takes about fifty-five minutes and one that takes closer to two hours. I took the short one. It's uphill and stairs pretty much the entire way, and because it had been raining, part of the smaller path had slipped and was closed, so I got rerouted onto the wider access road instead. It's easier underfoot but there's no tree cover, so on a sunny day you'd feel it. By the time I reached the dam I couldn't be bothered continuing on to the full loop, which keeps climbing and eventually gives you a proper panorama over the reservoir, so I just turned around and walked back the way I came. Even under grey skies, the swing bridge and the photo frame near the entrance were still worth stopping for, the falls don't seem to care what the weather's doing. If you're coming from the CBD, it's about forty-five minutes to an hour, all forest and countryside roads, an easy drive. I'd drive rather than rely on public transport, because getting out here without a car is genuinely awkward. For the falls themselves, there are effectively two options depending on how much walking you actually want to do. If you don't go through the gate, you're looking at about two minutes on foot. Go through the gate and walk to the main falls instead, and it's five to ten minutes each way, barely any effort, which makes it an easy one for anyone travelling with kids or older parents who don't want a three-hour loop. There's free parking right at the falls entrance, and a few camping spots nearby if you want to bring a mat and stay longer. The main falls have that low, constant roar that somehow feels calming instead of loud, and they photograph well in pretty much any light. There are other forest tracks branching off around the area too, anywhere from five minutes to just under an hour, if you've got time and want to see more than just the falls and the main loop. One last thing: the ground gets properly slippery after rain, so don't wear anything without decent grip. And it does get busy on weekends, so if you want it quiet, go in the morning or later in the afternoon rather than the middle of the day.