March 4, 2014
The past few days have been spent visiting Pancake
Rocks, the Fox River Caves and the gold rush towns of Westport and Reefton as
we made our way North to Abel Tasman.
We were pretty excited this morning when Jens came
out of the van and almost stepped on what he thought was a Kiwi bird. There were three of these small flightless
birds foraging around oblivious to our campervan and us. I took a whole bunch of photos but on closer
inspection, the beaks just didn’t look right.
We weren’t sure they were Kiwis so we took the photo with us to the
closest i-Site only to be informed that it is a Weka – a very common flightless
hen. So common in fact that they are
often seen on the roads (flattened as they aren’t the brightest of birds) and
are frequently seen around campsites because they are extremely curious.
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| The Curious Weka - he almost jumped into the van |
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| A bit of an odd looking bird. |
Anyhow, the pancake rocks were pretty amazing and
our tramp into the caves was rather cool.
Cool because we had to cross a river twice – wading in frigid water up
to our knees. But also cool because
these caves were actually discovered in the early 1900’s by a farmer looking
for his lost cow. He fixed up the caves
a little, putting in a flagstone walk and clearing a nice path to the entrance
and decided to charge a fee to allow people into the caves, making it a tourist
site that is now more than 100 years old.
And, the nice thing is – it is now also free to visit.
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| Pancake Rocks |
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| Inside the Fox Caves |
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| Crossing the river. |
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| Looking out of the cave. |
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| Jens coming out of the cave - you can see the old gate above him. |
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