Greetings from lovely Takaka! We're here after a bit more than a week of travel from Duvauchelle, which was spent largely without internet. (SORROW, SOB.) So it's time to backtrack a bit and update you all on what we did! (And, to be honest, by the time we actually get this ready to post... it will be way late, haha.)
We left Duvacuhelle with a goal: Punakaiki or bust! Punakaiki is also known as the pancake rocks, and it's a town that has sprung up around a very interesting geological formation on the West Coast of New Zealand. We were very excited to see it, but first, we crossed back across Arthur's Pass from the East Coast, where Duvauchelle is, back west. We had a very intense drive- the wind was blowing and storms were threatening. It led to some very interesting light!
We headed back to the hostel for lunch, and met a very nice (young!) German tourist named Lily. She played a rollicking game of Cranium with us (I was feeling headachy and not too participatory, but it wound up being really fun as the game went on), and then decided she would come to the Punakaiki Rocks with us too.
So, I've mentioned several times that one should visit the rocks at high tide, and the reason for this is BLOWHOLES! Punakaiki-the-geological-formation are limestone rocks just offshore that are formed into layers that look like pancakes. Geologists still don't seem to have a firm reason why it's happened, but they do know that at some point many millions of years ago on the sea floor limestone and mudstone were formed into layers, and the mudstone has worn away more quickly against the tide than the limestone. Thus: PANCAKES! And, because it's limestone, the waves have formed many interesting caves and caverns, which end up in amazing blowholes that make some really amazing noises and sprays at high tide.
(Jordan says, Lily must have been a pretty trusting person to walk into a pitch dark cave with three strangers and no flashlight.)
The weather was very overcast, but not rainy, so while we didn't have the clearest weather for pictures we did have very atmospheric weather. We climbed down onto the beach from the carpark and immediately started passing waterfalls and cool rock formations. A lot of people had built their houses right above the beach, and so we got to snoop a bit on how they live. What a view! But kind of terrifying to live right against such a powerful ocean. (The waves in that area are particularly rough owing to a series of sandbars offshore).
The next morning was finally our day for the Fox River Tourist Cave, which was an interesting and eventually extremely challenging track. Kara really loved it, and so will update about it!
The hike began on a very simple track. It was a bit misty and wet, but not raining. Therefore, the track was wet and muddy, but we were dry and comfortable! About halfway in, you meet the river. We saw the orange marker for the path we were exiting, but had to strain and search for the next orange marker to tell us what we were supposed to do. Well, we knew we had to wade over to a rocky island, as there was nowhere to continue along the bank. We took off our boots and got over, then walked over the rock to find the next crossing. To our dismay, the two crossings we were supposed to make turned out to be four! The river must have been much more swollen than we realized. After some debate on whether to continue forward, or turn back now, we pushed on ahead. The multiple crossings were very slow in bare feet because of the stony river bed, and extended our tramp by a significant amount. BUT! I got my intrepid stream crossings that I had been hoping for!