Highs, Lows and to the End of the Road

  

It's been a long time since my last post!  We've traveled the length of the South Island in the last two weeks and with a full memory card, there's lots of fodder for the blog now.  But even before we left, the boys were delighted to spend a rainy afternoon at Vertical Limits here in Nelson, exercising their muscles and problem solving skills.

We also squeezed in a training hike up the Grampians in preparation for our overnight tramp (future blog post) into Lake Daniell. 

They just love each other so much!  LOL  Much like bear cubs, I'm afraid. 

Off on the adventure, we travelled first to Westport with a stop at Cape Foulwind.
Apparently the name has more to do with the weather than a particular stench.
(Spot the van, we've put nearly 20 000 kms on it in 5 months, we've grown very fond of it!)
 

Seal spotting

Onwards over the Karamea Bluffs - plenty of height here!

Gotta love looking ahead at the road dug into the side of the mountain cliff!

Then we hit the warning signs about the road not being suitable for camper vans etc.

This area receives so much rainfall that the water is rust coloured, like tea, from the tannins that leech out of the decomposing leaves on the forest floor.  It was raining off and on, so we headed underground first to the Crazy Paving and Box Canyon Caves to go hunting for New Zealand's largest spider and the famous weka insect, see if you can spot the difference, or skip the next few photos if you're squeemish. 

 

These are the crazy paving stones!  The floor of the cave "naturally" formed like this. 

Spider - body the size of a loonie plus legs, not too bad.  They make egg sacs that hang like those lovely spherical paper party lanterns

Weka mommy and babies

I'm not cool enough to take photos like this one with the water all swooshy, all the credit goes to Dave!

The Oparara Arch does not lend itself to being captured on film.  To be there is to see its enormous size and marvel open-mouthed at it's height and length and the speed of the water rushing through it.  43 meters high and spanning 219 meters across the river, it rises above the forest.  Oparara Basin

This probably gives you the best idea of what we were facing.  Xavier is scared and I'm comforting him!  He just didn't want to fall into the water and seeing there were no railing etc, I quite happy to have him willingly agree to hold my hand! 

Next we followed up the west coast as far as you can go by car, to the start of the Heaphy Track and walked a half hour in by foot.  There are heaps of Nikau Palms like the ones below, which bring Dave great delight. 

The boys decided to amuse themselves on this hike (the 4th one of the day!) by using sticks as pretend guns and running ahead and hiding to ambush us like snippers.  They don't really understand why mommy doesn't like this game and why I don't shoot back. 

The rest of the hike involved Xavier tearing off a scab and with blood running down his leg, Dave tied a leaf around his shin while I started to head back to the car, only to put the keys in my pocket and discover sticky plasters (aka bandaids!).  Smart mommy!  But by that point, Dave and Jackson had carried on the trail and were out of sight and Xavier lost all of his motivation not being with Jack and playing guns, so I had to carry him a good chunk of the way up to the scenic lookout, which was certainly longer than the posted 20 minutes away.  Through mud.  Alas, there's always a bit of a story behind this lovely photos! 

Rest time on the beach.  Relaxing and enjoying the scenery.

 The boys (again!) had different ideas.  Who can blame them?  See a sand dune = must jump!    I giggled when they kept complaining that their gumboots were filling up with sand . . . so I suggested that they could take them off.  Seriously, who wears gumboots on the beach??  Anyhow, I LOVE these last few shots.  If nothing else, this year has given the boys time to try different things.  As they say here in NZ:  have a go!

I could end the blog post here.  Lovely, happy thoughts.  However, like I said earlier there's always a bit more of the story.  Jackson decided it might be clever to do a somersault.  Yeah, bad idea and we told him so.  Worse, Xavier copied him and got sand in his eyes.  Big bits of sand.  There was a lot of screaming and crying and Dave poking Xavier in the eyes to try and get it out, while convincing him to walk to the van to get some water to wash it out.  Oh, and did I mention that the sandflies were biting???