Onward and upward
Salamander
Sat 18 Dec 2010 03:06
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Another day clocking up the miles as we have booked
a trip in the Karamea area which has one road in and one road out, so will mean
a 100km detour each way. Another stunning drive avoiding rock slides due to the
heavy rain of yesterday: lots and lots of birdlife. We arrive at 10.00 to find
the wrong time has been put on the voucher and we have missed the tour. After
receiving our refund, we decided to do some walks in the area anyway. We chose
to visit two limestone arches, and the box canyon and crazing paving
caves.
The first arch is low, but invoked another LOTR
moment, surely this is where Bilbo meets Gollum in The Hobbit?
 The whole park is full of amaxing moss-covered
trees and flowering tree ferns - beautiful in a slightly spooky
way.
 The tannin stained Karamea river
 The Crazy Paving cave has mud that dries and cracks
to resemble crazy paving. Apparently it takes millions of years to achieve this
and it's importance is unknown, but the rare cave spider only exists in caves
with this mud. This is its food, the cave weta.
 Cave spider egg sac
 In the box canyon cave, as we waited for our eyes
to adjust from sunlight through other peoples head torches, to darkness,
constellations of glow-worms appeared on the ceilings - impossible to
photograph, but great to watch them (well-) glow.
We enjoyed the walks and saw pretty much the same
types of things as we had now not paid to see, so good result all
round!
We zoomed through the Buller gorge, cut by the
chocolate coloured Buller river and popped across the longest swing bridge in NZ
and drove on to Golden Bay (in the dark - still saw no possums)
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