Takaka (Nelson Part 4)

I won't even bother with the weather for the day until something changes. You guessed it, same as yesterday but hotter. We headed to Takaka as planned, it's about 100km, but with the mountain road, it took about 1.5 hours. I've mentioned how I love driving here, especially on the twisty roads, and this might have been the best of them yet. While the speed limit is 100km/h, there are long stretches where you can't get to more than 50, often down to 20 or less. Here's a snapshot of the twistiest part of the road over Takaka Hill, going up to about 800m. The section I'm showing is about 25km long.

We took a very short drive onto the road to Harwood's Hole, but soon turned back as it was awful, and 11km long. Glad we did, as it turned out there was a music festival going on, so it would have been a zoo. We stopped in Takaka for, you guessed it, morning coffee and a caramel slice. If I gain weight, which I'm sure I have, it's largely due to the slices. Oh, and the beer and wine. It's a nice little town, not quite as hippie as we expected, but definitely on the slower pace of life. Talking to a local shop keeper, we got a few good ideas, so headed out to check out a few of them.

First on the list was Labrynth Park, a series of paths and tunnels through a limestone hill. It's kind of short, but a good 30 minute diversion, would be fantastic for kids around 10.

Next, we drove east from Takaka past some more incredible golden sand beaches and blue ocean, on our way to Wainui Falls. A short 2km walk up to the falls and we had another great view for lunch. There was even a show as there were some kids jumping off one of the rocks into the pool, probably about 7m high.

There was a slightly wonky swing bridge, but Beth managed it fine :-)

One thing we'd read about and thought we wanted to get to was a set of caves called Ngarua Caves (right near the middle 60 on the map above). We thought they closed at 4pm, so we didn't stop at the beach. Too bad, as they closed at 5pm. A pretty good 45 minute tour through the only publicly accessible cave in the area. They are still discovering new caves under the surrounding hills, a recent one going more than 25km into the hill, and to a depth of about 800m, putting it below sea level. This is one of the many areas where some of The Hobbit and Rings Trilogy was filmed. For those who have been in the Bonechere Cave, this is leaps and bounds bigger. Because it is quite close to the surface, all of the stalagtites & stalagmites look like coral. Tough to photograph, but this is from the cathedral.

And, one of some interesting stalagmites.

Getting late in the afternoon, we headed back to Stoke (where our rental is) and found some ice cream. I can't believe we've been here two weeks and haven't had hokey pokey ice cream yet. This will be another reason why I gain weight this trip! I blame Carmel :-)

Tomorrow we take the ferry to Wellington to start our second vacation on North Island. Given what we've seen of this area, we wish we'd booked another week. If (or should I say when) we come back, I think we will spend quite a bit of time here, definitely around Golden Bay where we were today, as well as more around Nelson. I don't think I could get tired of this area, or run out of things to do.