- Starting the trip, the Bay of Islands, and the Muriwai Gannet Colony
- The Coromandel Peninsula
- The road to Wellington
- Northeastern South Island — Wine Tasting, Abel Tasman, Nelson, and Havelock
- Kaikoura — marine life everywhere!
- Christchurch, a stay on the farm, and the TranzAlpine Train
- Starting down the West Coast — things are starting to get real!
- A glacier’ing we will go!
- Queenstown
- Milford Sound and Fjordland National Park
While the East Coast of the South Island is pretty genteel, the West Coast is wild and wooly. If you want adventure, you’ve come to the right place! And one of the things to see around here is caves. This part of the coast is honeycombed with limestone cave systems to be explored. And here we experienced our first significant adventure of the trip with a company called Underworld Adventures in Charleston to do some underworld rafting! to start this adventure you get dressed in wetsuits, hardhats, etc. and choose your favorite inner tube. After getting to the site, we climbed about up 130 steps to get to the entrance to a cave. Carrying our tubes we went deeper (both distance and elevation) into the cave, passing all manner of stalactites and stalagmites. When we reached the bottom of the cave, we got in our tubes in the subterranean portion of the Nile River. This is when it got exciting. For about 100 feet, the cave ceiling was right above your face (claustrophobic people normally freak out at this point). We had to push down from the ceiling and drag ourselves along until we came out into a dark cavern. But then we turned off our hemet lights and the light show began — thousands of glow worms making the cavern ceiling seem like the night sky. After floating gently for a while, everyone came back together for the last bit of the adventure — tubing down the rapids. Our butts were bouncing off the bottom until we reached our takeout point. Whew, what a ride!
After that adventure, we needed a bit of a rest. We stayed at a cottage on the ocean with the Paparoa National Park behind us. That afternoon we took the opportunity to take a short walk down to explore the Punakaiki Caverns and Pancake Rocks. Deb decided to take a nap, so Lauren and I went exploring. The cavern is just off the highway and somewhat accessible by a slippery slope to the bottom. From the entrance, we walked back nearly 500 feet with most of the ceilings being pretty high. Of course, without a flashlight things got a little dark. From there we went over to the Pancake Rocks, one of the strangest rock formations I have seen. The really look like stacks of pancakes! They were formed around 30 million years ago from layers of dead marine animals and plants that landed on the seabed, nearly a mile beneath the surface. The incredible pressures down there solidified subsequent layers and ultimately, seismic activity pushed the limestone above the seabed. From there, it was wind, acidic rain and seawater that sculpted these amazing formations.
I am a traveler and sometimes clay sculptor, following a long career working in consulting. My work allowed me to travel the world extensively and I was hooked. Today, I travel with my wife/best friend to explore new places, meet new people, and learn new things.
