This is beyond ridiculous. One Post for all of October. Sigh, it’s been a busy month actually, with a rogaine (it was how Maaike wanted to spend her Birthday – she even got cake!)

It was an excellent event, at Castle Hill (well, in and around). Great to be back out on the hills – and our navigation wasn’t too shabby either :)

Next up, it was up to Wellington to celebrate Glynn being in New Zealand for 10 years. He arrived one month before my friend Maeve and I arrived and he had everything sorted for us (a house, internet, what more do you need?) Maeve has left back to Ireland so it’s great to still have Glynn in the country. Now that he’s married to the lovely Jayne and has two children, I don’t think he’ll be leaving NZ any time soon (woohoo!).

Hmmm, I seem to have ‘filled out’ in the last ten years – definitely need to do something about that!

Next, it was up to Arthurs Pass to hang out with Nick and Cecile. It was an extremely wet weekend (as expected) … even the Kea were sheltering from the rain..

We had a weekend of games (settlers of catan and Ticket to Ride) and a very welcome fire to curl up next to and read a book by. It was a lovely weekend.

Finally, I went to Tekapo for the ‘Starlight Festival’. Tekapo is home to the biggest dark sky reserve on the planet, apparently. Basically you’ve got awesome horizons and not too much light pollution. Anyway, off down there with Steve and Michelle. We even got to make (and keep) a Galileoscope which was pretty cool.

Other than that, not too much. I must try to be slightly better about keeping this blog more up to date!

Doesn’t look like very much does it? Well, on the way back from Golden Bay we were going to do a 3 day tramp to the Thousand Acre Plateau. Unfortunately it had been raining for the previous days and we decided, for the first time, not to cross a stream. The water looked fast, the crossing looked nasty, and the consequences… while not fatal, certainly wouldn’t have been nice. That, and more rain was forecast.

So home, via a night at maruia springs to polish off an excellent holiday.

So, I’ve been up as far as Collingwood and the oh-so-wonderful Mussel Inn, (awful website, great pub!)… but I’d never been up to the very top of the South Island – to Fairwell spit.

First thing we did was to go to Wharariki Beach and have a potter about. We saw seals playing in the river which was a bonus. We didn’t *quite* get there at low tide, which prevented us from being able get right the way around – but still, good times.

Stunning spot. Also, on my friend Neil Charters’ advice, we did the “Cliff Top Walk”, which starts on the Eastern end of Wharariki beach. It was absolutely stunning. The *scariest* part, by far, was the lovely Japanese? tourists who followed Maaike and I up. There was one part where we were on two sides of one of these massive cliffs and they’d either ignored? or not understood (just as likely) the sign that said “Cliffs!”… . Maaike and I started waving to “get the hell away from there”, but our hero took that as a friendly hello and waved back, taking pictures with his SLR. I’m sure it would have all been find, and it was, but yeah, I was really quite scared that there was bugger all I could do to stop this guy getting a better shot and walking straight off the cliff. You’re in New Zealand now buddy, no barriers here!

That archway in the picture above is the most Northerly point on the South Island..

Anyway, then it was back to the carpark for sambos (where we were rudely interrupted by this peacock who was definitely not afraid of humans!)

Next it was on to Fairwell Spit. This place is awesome.. it’s a 30km? ish long sand bar. Now fully protected for birdlife (migratory mainly), you can walk on part of it

To get out further on it, you have to go on a tour. This is partly presumably revenue generating, but mostly to keep the numbers down and protect the wildlife.

We saw lots of these guys – there was a pair spaced pretty much every 2km up the beach. They’re called variable oystercatchers.

The variable oystercatcher (Haematopus unicolor, torea or toreapango) is found on rocky and sandy beaches. It is rare – there were around 3,500 birds in 1994, and they are found only in New Zealand.

Rare maybe, but definitely hilarious. This guy here standing on one leg:

It’s not actually that he’s an amputee, no, he’s just sleeping and resting one leg. His body acts as a wind vein and we actually drove the van around him (blocking the wind) and he turned with us, hilarious to watch.

The other classic thing was when two “families” came in contact. They’re all extremely protective of their patch of beach (all 2km of it) as there’s only so much food to go around. Unfortunately I ran out of memory card, but basically, they walk up to eachother and bob up and down… until they work it all out.

We went as far as the lighthouse There were some great stories about the lives of the people who ran the place back-in-the-day. Hardy folk. Sad in a way that it’s all remotely managed from Wellington now. But probably good from a cost, safety and reliability perspective ;)

Finally it was time to go back to the van and start the drive to our next adventure. Beautiful sunset – long long sandy beach! Happy days.

On our way through Takaka we also visited the Pupu Hydro Society.

It was a nice enough (if drizzely) hours walk up to the water race & penstock and around and back down to the hydro plant. Long story short, the water way way built for gold miners as a sluice for working the area for gold. They built a hydro plant using the water race from the gold miners time to bring the water across to the point where they dropped it into the generators. It ran from 1929 to 1981… but was then damaged.

In 1981 (when it has stopped operating) it was put up for tender and a bunch of keen locals put in a tender to restore it and turn it into a museum, at some personal risk! They took out loans for $140,000 and had to remortgage to guarantee the loans. It all went well and within 7 years they’d paid everything off.

On average the society earns $80 000 a year all of which is ploughed back into further restorations and road building.

Pretty impressive stuff really :) Well done to those locals getting involved & making it all work.

Next it was on to Mairehau where we walked (and 1/2 jogged) part of the Able Tasman Walk (a Dutchman)

That map is taken from linz.govt.nz. You can download all of the 1:50000 Topomaps .. it’s great! Anyway, had a nice couple of days hanging out there. Next it was on to Paynes ford over at Takaka for some climbing. Unfortunately, as expected, the rock was completely soaked so there was no climbing to be had. Coupled to that, the forecast was for storms for the following two days. We opted for the ‘lazy’ part of the holiday and holed up in a house truck.

It was a gorgeous little place to stay. The fittings inside were beautifully done. The evening we got there there was no power (lightning strikes or something) and we just had the gas stove to light the place (well, that and head torches!). The water for the outside bath was heated by gas, so no tricky lighting a fire underneath and needing to stay on a plank of wood to avoid burning your bottom (though that would have been fine too).

We did sneak one walk in to Taupo Point between the showers.

Wild and beautiful coastline. I’ve not tried, but have been reliably informed that you can literally walk across the tops of these trees they’re so tightly matted together.

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So yes, I’d definitely recommend it as a place to hang out in stormy weather :)