The Top End of the South

March 6, 2014

Although we have looked at the map of New Zealand a thousand times by now, we never paid attention to the fact that the top of the South Island sits farther North than the city of Wellington on the North Island.  I guess we have too often looked at the islands separately.  And, just so you know, fall has officially arrived here in the Land Down Under … wait, that’s Australia.  New Zealand is referred to as the Land of the Long White Cloud because there are always clouds hanging over the island.  We have found this to be fairly accurate, but we have also had our share of lovely blue skies.  

The scenery is also quite breathtaking and the mountains are quite high.  After some contemplation we decided it was time to get out of the forest and back on the water.  We booked a daylong kayaking trip along the coast of the Abel Tasman National Park.  

A beautiful sunrise on our way to our day of kayaking.

Jens and me.

Jens at the back of the kayak. 

Apple Rock

Yesterday we made it to the top of the South Island to a place called Farewell Spit.  The spit is 38 kilometers long and is basically just one long sand dune.  It creates a resting/nesting place for the birds that have migrated from the Northern Hemisphere.  We saw the largest flock of black swans just off the coast and other than a beautiful soft sand beach, we didn’t see too much else.

 

A red beaked and red-eyed Mussel Catcher

More Mussel Catchers scurrying away.

There seem to be plenty of caves around this area.  We explored one more, which was quite dramatic and unique because of the large number of phytokarst features.  Now what the heck is a phytokarst?  The dictionary describes ‘phyto’ as “of a plant” and ‘karst’ as “landscape underlain by limestone that has been eroded by dissolution, producing ridges, towers, fissures, sinkholes, and other characteristic landforms.”  That doesn’t really help much in the way of explaining it.  So instead I’ll just show you some pictures including one of the description of phytokarst at the entrance to the cave.  Rawhiti Cave is a large cave, very deep and wide, and was also open for tourism in the early 1900’s but people stopped visiting it after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit the area in 1929.  I believe it’s safe to go there now … at least until the next earthquake.

Jens at the entrance to the cave.

Cave visitors from the 1900's.

Read this to understand why this cave is so cool.

A bucket that was used to catch water drippings has become calcified into the rock over the years.

Just about the most amazing cave we've ever been in.